Trump’s international dealmaking – Israel-Palestine and Russia-Ukraine
Steven Fish, a political scientist who has done extensive research on the post-1990 political transition in Russia, explains the conventional perspective on how US alliance systems have worked in a way to strengthen US power and influence in the world:
The United States’ relations with European and East Asian allies have been both boons to our allies and great force multipliers for our own country. Every president has understood that these alliances are crucial to something resembling a rule-governed order that promotes America’s own security, prosperity and global preeminence.
The Trump administration is abandoning that world order to suit the interests of Vladimir Putin and his fellow autocrats. This kind of thing would have been unimaginable under any other president. Under Trump, the United States is now abandoning its democratic allies in Europe and may well soon do the same to our allies in the Asia-Pacific, including Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and Australia. Trump aims to drive America toward autocracy, and he is reorienting America’s foreign relations to align our country with foreign dictatorships.1 [my emphasis]
It's always worth keeping in mind that the type of “rule-governed order” that American supported also saw numerous departures by from United States from that very order, e.g., the illegal preventive war against Iraq begun by the Cheney-Bush Administration in 2003. The various allied countries also found advantages in the arrangements, even if their individual interests in some ways had to be compromised to participate in the alliance.
It's especially important to remember that the decision by Mikhail Gorbachev’s Soviet government to release members of the Warsaw Pact from that alliance – due to popular pressure from those countries’ populations pressure. facilitated by the political reforms that Gorbachev had promoted (and by the high costs of the USSR subsidizing those countries) – reset the defense challenges faced by NATO, whose central purpose was to contain any military expansion in Europe by the Soviet Union.
NATO did require that members be democratic governance and so it provided an incentive to maintain liberal democracies. But in practice, that was always a lesser consideration than military cooperation, as shown by NATO’s position toward authoritarian turns in Greece and Turkey pre-1989. In for recent years, it was primarily the European Union that has pushed NATO members Poland and Hungary to back off authoritarian turns away from liberal democracy, not NATO as such.
Gorbachev promoted the broad idea of new security arrangement for what he called a
“common European home” based on the concept of a “vast economic space from the Atlantic to the Urals.”2 As usual, there are always possibilities to blame The Other Side for such a possibility not being pursued seriously enough. But facing the current situation in which the US is tilting hard toward aligning with Russia in foreign policy and against the NATO allies, it’s worth remembering that the possibilities in that moment might have worked out in a far more constructive fashion than they did. Instead, we got “shock therapy” economics in Russia and an expansion of NATO as early features of the process that took the US and Europe from 1989 until now.
Trump diplomacy: A deal not a settlement
A recent Haaretz article about Trump pushing a deal to release all hostages, while Netanyahu appears to be focused on way to end the current agreement and resume war against civilians in Gaza, in a subhead: “the U.S. backdoor negotiations with Hamas shows Trump prioritizes a deal over resettlement.”3 I first read it as, “Trump prioritizes a deal over a settlement,” which struck me as a good description of Trump’s approach to diplomacy in general.
The article itself reports:
… Israel is trying to understand the significance of the latest American move – establishing a secret, backdoor channel of negotiations with Hamas via Trump's envoy, Adam Boehler, and Boehler's surprising statements in media interviews in both the United States and Israel.
On Monday, the administration apparently tried to take a step back due to the fury in Netanyahu's government. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Boehler's talks with Hamas were a "one-off situation."
Netanyahu and his closest associate, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, told cabinet ministers that Boehler was causing damage. However, Trump and his top envoy, Steve Witkoff, had reservations about his behavior.
Given the known chaos within the Trump administration – where many key positions still haven't been filled, with no connection to the cost-cutting campaign led by billionaire Elon Musk – it wouldn't be surprising if this were true. Boehler himself appears to be a particularly eccentric character even compared to the rest of this administration.
Nevertheless, it's clear that Trump still hopes to make a deal, and he probably doesn't think the only way to do so is by Israel reoccupying Gaza. He continues to threaten Hamas by saying he would support painful Israeli military moves, but he isn't standing in the way of agreements on a deal to free the rest of the hostages. [my emphasis]
This shows an important feature of Trump’s approach: get some crony to head the negotiations and get a quick deal of some kind that Trump can then tell his cult followers, “This is the greatest Middle East deal ever negotiated!” He wants the triumphant TV clip and seemingly couldn’t care less about the long-range or even medium-range effects of the deal.
Also, anyone who “appears to be particular eccentric character compared to the rest of this administration” is not someone I would ever want to have anything to do with!
Chaim Levinson writes:
This is the beacon guiding the United States in its coming deals in the Middle East. First, the return of the hostages; second, an end to the Israel-Hamas war; and third, the big Saudi deal.
Hamas, with the help of Qatar (or vice versa), understood Trump's message and is offering the same thing and more, according to Boehler on Sunday: A cease-fire for five to 10 years, laying down its arms and relinquishing its rule of the Gaza Strip.
This is the big picture, even if Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich explained on Sunday at the Greater Land of Israel caucus that they are "working on an administration" for promoting emigration from Gaza.
A source with detailed information on the meeting between Trump and Netanyahu in the United States told Haaretz that when Netanyahu brought up the issue of the government coalition's opposition to the continuation of the hostage deal, Trump replied that it's his responsibility to lead his coalition.4 [my emphasis]
This is an example of what people call Trump’s “transactional” style of negotiating. He’s dealing with a large mess in the Middle East, which the US’ closest ally Israel is constantly complicating. And he wants to be able to show a “win” but doesn’t seem to have any kind of what could be considered a strategic view. And this situation remains extremely complicated and is notoriously difficult, as successive President since Harry Truman have experienced.
Here again, the Abraham Accords of 2020 from the Trump 1.0 Administration that was designed to promote normalizing relations between Israel and Arab states sounded like a grand idea and was an accomplishment Trump could brag about. But a key characteristic of that deal was that it distanced the Arab states from a commitment to a meaningful settlement of the Palestinian question. In less than four years, the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel showed there were still intractable problems that have to be addressed and not sidestepped.
Steve Clemons takes a look of the diplomacy of the moment with former Israeli diplomat Daniel Levy of the US/Mideast Project5:
Russia-Ukraine War: a big, complicated strategic issue
If Trump finds it a major challenge to keep the Israeli government on board with its negotiating direction, despite Israel’s extreme military dependence on the US, negotiations with Russia brings its own major complications, with the survival of major NATO alliance on the line – and already on life support – and a host of major military, political, and economic complications on a far biggest scale than what Israel presents.
But, as Fish says, Trum seems to find something in Putin’s Russia that resembles ideological affinity. Or, as Fish puts it in the quote above, “Trump aims to drive America toward autocracy, and he is reorienting America’s foreign relations to align our country with foreign dictatorships.”
There are advantages in dealing with countries with similar forms of government and general ideological outlooks. At the least, it makes it easier for each side to relate to the processes of government on the other side. But it doesn’t mean that individual countries don’t continue to have national interest, nor that ideological similarity blinds either side to military, economic, and strategic options. A classic case is the Sino-Soviet split that began in the 1950s, during which China and the USSR both trashed each other at great length about having false and bad interpretation of their common Marxist-Leninist ideology.6
But, as Fish puts it, Trump thinks “Putin’s on his side.” But we always have to remember that for all his authoritarian, anti-democracy instincts, Trump is looking first and foremost for a deal from Russia and Putin that would be advantageous to Trump himself.
Pohl, Jason (interviewer) & Fish, G. Stephen (2025): As Trump upends foreign policy, Berkeley scholar sees irreparable damage to U.S. power and prestige. UC Berkeley 03/07/2025. <https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/03/07/as-trump-upends-foreign-policy-berkeley-scholar-sees-irreparable-damage-to-u-s-power-and-prestige/> (Accessed: 2025-09-03).
Pick, Hella (1989): Gorbachev outlines common home plan. The Guardian 07/07/1989. <https://uploads.guim.co.uk/2019/07/09/7_July_1989.jpg> See also excerpts at: <https://www.theguardian.com/world/from-the-archive-blog/2019/jul/10/gorbachev-vision-for-a-common-european-home--july-1989> (Accessed: 2025-11-03).
Harel, Amos (2025): Despite IDF Efforts to Obscure It, Soldiers' Burden and Doubts Hinder Israel's Reconquest of Gaza. Haaretz 03/11/2025. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-03-11/ty-article/.premium/soldiers-fatigue-and-u-s-secret-hamas-negotiations-hinder-rights-fantasy-of-gaza-war/00000195-81d2-daf4-a9b7-d5f6a52f0000?gift=7953ce2b701048f791d5c2bd64d096e7> (Accessed: 2025-11-03). Harel also talks about the negotiations in a podcast: <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/podcasts/2025-03-10/ty-article-podcast/trump-is-frustrated-with-netanyahu-so-he-pushed-through-a-back-channel-with-hamas/00000195-8174-d0f8-a1f7-9df7b7b10000>
Levinson, Chaim (2025): Fed Up With Netanyahu's Time-wasting, Trump Has Cut Him Out of Cease-fire Talks. Haaretz 03/09/2025. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-03-09/ty-article/.premium/fed-up-with-netanyahus-time-wasting-trump-has-cut-him-out-of-cease-fire-talks/00000195-7c93-d0f8-a1f7-7cd39d5c0000?gift=1df6077d7bc24568a998be25d10ce1a5> (Accessed: 2025-09-03).
Why is Israel trying to rewrite the Gaza ceasefire? Al Jazeera English YouTube channel 03/11/2025. (Accessed: 2025-09-03).
Jersild, Austin (2014): The Sino-Soviet Alliance, 132-226. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Lüthi, Lorenz M. (2008): The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Rozman, Gilbert: A Mirror for Socialism: Soviet Criticisms of China. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
There was undoubtedly a deterrent component to NATO's formation and existence because of the ideolgical rivalry between the US/West and Soviet Russia. There are also entirely obvious and legitimate historical reasons why many Eastern bloc countries, and others, wanted a guarantor against Russian revanchism. But there was, and remains, a profit motive too. Countries in NATO must use NATO-standard weaponry, the majority of which is American made. Thus there's always been an incentive to encourage market expansion and keep tensions boiling by poking the bear. The neo-cons worked hard at that. This gets overlooked by liberals, especially, due to Russophobia, and the fact that the Dems are now the natural home to the neocon ideology compared to the GOP. This flipping around of US party politics, in which mainstream Dems fully embrace the military industrial complex and a confrontational foreign policy while their GOP-MAGA rivals push for a return to Great Power politcs and spheres of interest (and Trump's crazed and chaotic transactional style) does not bode well for international relations. That's because neither side emphasizes any sort of sustainable diplomacy (seems like a lost art).