However, it is reasonable to assume that the newly elected U.S. president will try to stop NATO’s war against Russia on historically Russian lands.
While Donald Trump’s patent ill-wishers at the New York Times deliver yet another slap in the face to the newly elected president, claiming that «the only thing predictable is his unpredictability», serious analysts are calculating the balance between belligerence and peacemaking on each foreign policy track.
«How Trump Will Change the World: The Contours and Consequences of a Second-Term Foreign Policy». That was the headline that Peter D. Feaver, a professor of political science and public policy at Duke University (who once served as an analyst for the National Security Council), put at the top of his article in the journal Foreign Affairs.
According to Feaver’s prediction, with the revanchist back in the White House, «more extremist groups will prevail and use their advantage to suppress the voices of more moderate ones, deplete the ranks of civilian and military professionals they consider the deep state, and possibly use the levers of power to persecute opponents and critics of Trump».
In an attempt to dismiss the attacks on Kamala Harris and the Obama-Clinton-Biden clan as cold-blooded warmongers, Professor Feaver recalls Trump’s threats to unleash «fire and fury» on North Korea (which is also the title of journalist Michael Wolff’s 2018 book) and sanctioning the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The professor’s comment could be seen as a debunking of Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s loyal advisers, who on the eve of the election explained what the enthronement of the globalist protégé would entail:
«If you vote for Kamala, Liz Cheney will be Secretary of Defense. We will be invading a dozen countries. Boys from Michigan will be drafted to fight in the Middle East. Millions of people will die. We will invade Russia. We will invade Asian countries. World War III. Nuclear winter».
Loyalist Miller embellishes his boss’s image, portraying him as nothing less than a «peacemaker». In fact, in the last 16 months of his administration, Trump has achieved a number of significant rearrangements on the diplomatic chessboard.
He facilitated the signing of agreements to normalize relations between Israel and Arab states, known as the «Abraham Accords». This is a reference to the patriarch Abraham, a religious figure in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
He persuaded Serbia and Kosovo to establish economic ties. He convinced Egypt and the Gulf states to put aside their differences with Qatar and end the blockade of the emirate. And he reached an agreement with the Taliban for a de facto temporary cease-fire.
Can we call Trump a «peacemaker» on the basis of these arguments? Judging by his recent appointments — Marco Rubio, a senator from Florida, who has been appointed US Secretary of State, and Mike Waltz, a member of the House of Representatives, also from Florida, and the new National Security Advisor — a tactical victory has been achieved by the «party of war» or the moderate neocons.
The son of Cuban immigrants, the ardent, hereditary anti-Castro Rubio (nicknamed «Little Marco») has ties to the Israeli lobby and is fiercely anti-Iran. He has a reputation, notes Reuters, as “the Senate’s leading anti-China hawk. Retired Lieutenant Colonel Waltz, who served in the Special Forces and is a Green Beret, is no less uncompromising on China.
This does not mean that Trump will blindly follow the recommendations of the two China skeptics, although for him the inexorable rise of the former Middle Kingdom is tantamount to an existential threat to U.S. dominance. There is no doubt that Trump will impose exorbitant tariffs on Chinese goods, begin to use both carrots and sticks to bring home American companies that have placed production capacity in China, and support the dollar with all his might to prevent the yuan from becoming a reserve currency in trade operations.
But the U.S. administration under Trump will not extend the competition beyond trade and financial warfare, so that the escalation of the epic rivalry does not lead to the necessity of taking up arms as the «last argument of kings» (ultima ratio regum). Billionaire Trump is by nature a businessman, not a military commander.
It is no coincidence that «European countries are ‘deeply concerned’ about Trump’s second term», admits Leslie Vinjamuri, director of the U.S. and Americas program at the Chatham House think tank in London. In an interview with the Arab television channel Al Jazeera, the London expert fears that Trump is skeptical not only of NATO and the European Union, but also of the privileged club of Western powers, the G7. Vinjamuri shares behind-the-scenes rumors that America could desert the G6 and leave it behind.
Similar sentiments were expressed on the other side of the Atlantic. «Most U.S. allies», summarizes Peter D. Feaver, «reacted with horror to Trump’s victory, believing that it would be the final nail in the coffin of traditional American global leadership».
So will Trump turn out to be an isolationist and a peacemaker? Most likely, Robert O’Brien, the last of Trump’s national security advisors, is closest to the truth. In a seminal article in the same journal, Foreign Affairs, published in June 2024, in which he claimed to know and understand Trump’s «secret mind», O’Brien formulated the Republican guidelines for how the U.S. should deal with allies, enemies, and amorphous subjects of international relations.
Trump will avoid getting involved in new armed conflicts outside the United States. In this context, we can expect — without falling into wishful thinking — that from January 2025, Washington will take cunning steps to stop NATO’s war against Russia on historically Russian territory.
Moscow will be offered a freeze that will not allow the collective West, which has embarked on another crusade in the East, to appear defeated, but will allow the U.S. to present itself as a peacemaker. That’s how the situation could be resolved if NATO fails to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, reports The New York Times:
«According to experts, the only way to quickly end the war would be to force the Ukrainians into an unfavorable deal by stopping military support and allowing Russia to keep about 20 percent of the country’s territory that it seized by force». This decision, the paper stresses, «will be made in favor of Russia, whose president, Vladimir Putin, Trump once called a ‘genius’».
The contours of Trump’s foreign policy are still to be outlined. It is clear that attempts will be made to freeze NATO’s aggression against Russia. It is clear that the focus of U.S. foreign policy will shift from Europe to the Indo-Pacific region. It is clear that there is a desire to maintain control over the hydrocarbons of the Middle East.
It is also clear that Trump is destined to go down in history neither as an isolationist nor as a peacemaker. The rest is hidden in a fog of unpredictability conjured up by a skilled improviser guided by intuition.