Displaced Palestinians flee with their belongings after the Israeli government issued warnings to evacuate their homes, in Gaza City on Thursday, March 20, 2025. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and President Donald Trump have been mirroring each other as they go to war with their own governments, according to a New York Times analysis. SAHER ALGHORRA NYT
(News Analysis)
LONDON — When it comes to confronting global conflicts, President Donald Trump is a man in a hurry.
Even before his inauguration, the president claimed credit for what he called an “EPIC ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip. He has raced to get Ukraine and Russia to quickly embrace a pause in fighting. And with Iran, Trump wants an agreement within two months to prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon.
It is the foreign policy version of the president’s “flood the zone” approach in Washington, where he and his lieutenants have used blitzkrieglike tactics to dismantle the bureaucracy, consolidate executive power and attack his political enemies. On the world stage, too, Trump has embraced a hurry-up foreign policy approach designed to quickly resolve the disputes he inherited.
But his diplomatic impatience is now running headfirst into the complexity of war and peace, raising questions about the durability of what he has achieved so far. The ceasefire between Hamas and Israel has collapsed. Trump’s proposal for an immediate 30-day ceasefire was rejected by President Vladimir Putin of Russia. And an Iran nuclear agreement — not unlike the one he withdrew from during his first term in office — seems to remain far over the horizon despite his push for a speedy deal.
“Trump’s MO is to always be in a hurry, looking for the transaction, for the temporary, for the now,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator and a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“American foreign policy — Ukraine, Gaza, Iran — they’re not measured in terms of administrations. It’s generational time,” Miller said. He added that rushing a solution was risky, “because he’s in such a hurry to get results, he’s sort of misdiagnosing the problem.”
The president’s allies reject that assessment. They argue that his approach is designed to create momentum to obliterate what they derisively call the “international, rules-based order” that has dominated global foreign policy for decades. In addition to Iran, Israel and Ukraine, they note that Trump has shocked the world with threats to use force to acquire control of both Greenland and the Panama Canal.
“Geopolitically, it’s all gas, no brake,” Steve Bannon, a former Trump administration strategist, said in an interview. He said the president is dispatching aides — what he calls “shock troops” — to quickly confront the global conflicts in much the same way that he has deployed Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency inside the federal government.
“What he’s doing geo-strategically and geo-economically, it far, far surpasses what he’s doing domestically,” Bannon said. “If you look across the board, the method to his madness is deep, it’s meaningful, and it’s going to have the biggest implication for national security.”
The president’s push for momentum has been at the heart of his approach to the two most searing global conflicts in recent times: the yearlong fighting between Hamas and Israel in Gaza; and the three-year war that began when Russia invaded Ukraine.
In both, Trump has repeatedly blamed former President Joe Biden for failing to prevent — and then move quickly enough to resolve — the conflicts. In his speech to a joint session of Congress earlier this month, the president boasted that “a lot of things are happening in the Middle East.” Of the conflict in Ukraine, he declared his impatience: “It’s time to stop this madness. It’s time to halt the killing. It’s time to end this senseless war.”
Clifford D. May, the founder of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Trump appears eager to move past global crises so he can focus his attention elsewhere.
“He’d rather do his war on woke. He’d rather do immigration,” May said. “He would like this off his plate.”
But he said Trump’s push for a resolution in Ukraine has “hit a substantial speed bump” in the form of Putin. In a telephone call Tuesday, the Russian leader slammed the brakes on Trump’s desire for a quick ceasefire agreement between Russia and Ukraine, agreeing only to stop attacks on energy infrastructure.
May said that Putin is playing on Trump’s desire for a quick resolution by purposefully slowing down the American president’s efforts to disrupt the status quo that has existed throughout the war.
“The disruption factor probably can be useful in some cases,” May said. But when it doesn’t work, as with somebody like Putin, who is savvy, who is patient, who sees what you’re doing, who tries to play you,” he added, “then you may have to step back and say, OK, what’s plan B here?”
In Israel, Trump used his social media platform to push for a quick truce days before taking office. Until the resumption of Israeli attacks in Gaza this past week, the president had hailed his efforts at peacemaking, even musing to reporters that he deserves to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.
“They’ll never give it to me,” he added.
Bannon rejected the idea that the collapse of the ceasefire in Gaza is evidence that the president’s desire for a quick fix in the region led to a halt in the fighting that was not sustainable or durable. He said Trump’s support for Israel — and his unequivocal condemnation of Hamas in Gaza — has given Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, more freedom to conduct the war.
“He’s actually showed the world that, ‘Hey, you can’t deal with these people, they’re not trustworthy,’” Bannon said of Hamas. “And then Israel comes in and now you don’t see any firestorm like you saw at the beginning.”
Other longtime observers of American foreign policy said that while there is merit in moving quickly when it comes to global diplomacy, that can often spur actions that are not based on solid information.
Lawrence Freedman, an emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College in London, said the problem with the president’s desire for urgency is that it shortchanges the detailed and often laborious work usually required for a long-term solution to wars.
“He thinks if he blusters enough, then people will sort of fall away and that you can get on to the stuff you really want to do,” Freedman said. “But because it’s not based on a serious assessment of the situation — of the problems at hand — it doesn’t really work.”
Miller said Trump is less interested in the long-term solution than the short-term political benefit he gets from announcing a diplomatic achievement.
“You’ve got an extraordinarily impatient, impulsive person,” he said, “where speed, frankly, matters more than the policy.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Displaced Palestinians in Gaza City with their belongings after the Israeli military issued warnings to evacuate their homes on Thursday, March 20, 2025. Until the resumption of Israeli attacks in Gaza this week, President Donald Trump had hailed his efforts at peacemaking, even musing to reporters that he deserves to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his work. (Saher Alghorra/The New York Times) SAHER ALGHORRA NYT
FILE -- President Donald Trump delivers an address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol in Washington, on Tuesday, March 4, 2025. Allies say the foreign policy version of “flood the zone” is working. But critics argue that the hurry-up approach in Israel, Ukraine and Iran may not lead to stable, durable solutions to conflicts around the world. (Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times) HAIYUN JIANG NYT
FILE -- A banner showing pictures of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine’s visits to the White House, with a warning about trusting American diplomacy, in Tehran on Tuesday, March 4, 2025. An Iran nuclear agreement -- not unlike the one Trump withdrew from during his first term in office -- seems to remain far over the horizon despite his push for a speedy deal. (Arash Khamooshi/The New York Times) ARASH KHAMOOSHI NYT
FILE -- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, Feb. 4, 2025. The American and Israeli leaders have been mirroring each other as they go to war with their own governments, according to a New York Times analysis. (Eric Lee/The New York Times) ERIC LEE NYT
A fire burns in a building after Shahed-style drones launched by Russia struck targets on Wednesday night in Sloviansk, Ukraine, on Wednesday, March 19, 2025. Allies say the foreign policy version of “flood the zone” is working. But critics argue that the hurry-up approach in Israel, Ukraine and Iran may not lead to stable, durable solutions to conflicts around the world. (Nicole Tung/The New York Times) NICOLE TUNG NYT
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This story was originally published March 22, 2025 at 10:26 AM.