President Donald Trump’s second term in the White House has been filled with controversy – tariffs, threats of invasion, job losses, Oval Office rows, and a style of diplomacy that has shaken global stability.
He promised to Make America Great Again, but the outlook for the US economy is uncertain and his approval ratings show a split among the public. Is Trump’s presidency, less than 100 days old, showing signs of vulnerability? Three writers – Sarah Baxter, James Ball and Adam Boulton – give their perspective.
By the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, if Ukraine and Russia are at peace and Gaza is being rebuilt with help from the Arab states, the US President will deserve praise. He almost certainly won’t get it though, because he will have behaved so undiplomatically along the way.
There has been no cessation of war during these first months, let alone day one of Trump’s return to the White House. Russia has not stopped pounding Ukraine. Israel has resumed strikes against Hamas. But there has been a good deal of shuttle diplomacy and hopes of a ceasefire, and Europe is stepping up to its responsibilities on defence.
The US President has arrived in power at a time when Russia and Ukraine are exhausted, with over a million dead. Gaza has been reduced to rubble. This has enabled Trump to play the grand deal maker and global peace broker he has always wanted to be, and he may end up looking better in this regard than liberal critics think.
What will success look like for Trump? We know he will boastfully claim to have been the greatest US president and best world leader ever, no matter how much or how little he achieves.
He probably won’t get and won’t deserve the Nobel Peace Prize he craves, especially if he keeps bullying allies like Canada, Panama and Greenland – or worse, actually acts on his threats. But there have been undeserving Nobel prize winners in the past.
Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples” after being president for under a year. To his credit, he felt rather embarrassed but still turned up in Oslo to receive it.
Later under Obama, Isis overran huge swathes of Iraq and Syria, the Syrian and Yemeni civil wars broke out and Libya was thrown into turmoil. In Europe, the exodus of Middle Eastern refugees in 2015 contributed to Brexit in the UK and the rise of far-right parties like the AfD in Germany.
It is hard to argue that Obama left the world in a great place on his departure in 2016. Nor did Joe Biden, who presided over the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the 7 October massacre in Israel and hammering of Gaza.
Trump evokes so much fear and loathing that it is tempting to assign malevolence to all his actions. Any compromise on Ukraine is seen as pandering to Vladimir Putin by his fawning US fanboy, as if Trump is giving the Russian strongman everything he wants. Terms like the betrayal and surrender of Ukraine are being bandied about.
Yet Trump has the chance to make a deal. For Putin, nothing is surely more pleasing than Western liberals bemoaning that he has outsmarted the US president and triumphed in his war aims over Ukraine. That’s awarding him a propaganda victory he hasn’t achieved on the battlefield.
On the contrary, the supposedly mighty Russian military has been held at bay for three years by an astonishingly brave and resourceful army of Ukrainians, many of whom had to learn how to fight for the first time.
The war has been one long humiliation for Putin, from the stopping of the column of tanks on the road to Kyiv in 2022, the attempted Wagner putsch in 2023 and the grinding war of attrition that has cost so many Russian lives. He is being dragged to the negotiating table just as much as Volodymyr Zelensky, though far more politely.
Ukraine won’t be offered membership of Nato anytime soon, but the mineral deal is a form of US security guarantee, which may be backed up by the presence of European peacekeeping troops.
A Europe that has drawn closer together by 2028 and is more prepared to provide for its own collective security is preferable to one that is dependent forever on the goodwill of Uncle Sam. If Ukraine can join the European Union, so much the better.
If Trump’s diplomacy falters, it is more likely to be in the Middle East. But Egypt’s $53bn plan for the reconstruction of Gaza, endorsed by Arab states, offers a tentative way forward that has not been rejected out of hand by the US (persuading Israel to accept it may be more difficult). The Abraham Accords secured by Trump in 2020 offer some hope of a future agreement.
Under Biden, the war in Ukraine and invasion of Gaza had no end in sight. Today there are at least talks about talks. By 2028, we will know how Trump’s crude but unorthodox brand of diplomacy has panned out.
Sarah Baxter is director of the Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting