Trump’s peace diplomacy

OPINION:

One of President Trump’s greatest desires is to go down in history as a peacemaker. He has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but because the two are pariahs among the liberal political elite that controls the prize it’s unlikely that Mr. Trump will win it.

Mr. Trump’s peace diplomacy aims to solve not only Russia’s war on Ukraine, but the Israel-Hamas war and the Iranian threat to civilization. But those wars are not like the wars of the 20th century.

In World Wars I and II, there were clear delineations between aggressor and defender, good and evil. They were fought until one side was decisively defeated and had its ideology destroyed. The Korean War muddled those distinctions and Vietnam did away with them altogether. Of the wars that Mr. Trump’s diplomacy seeks to settle, none seems susceptible to his kind of diplomatic solution.

Russia’s war on Ukraine is a bit like a 20th century war because Vladimir Putin — mandated by his philosopher, Alexander Dugin — is set on conquering Ukraine to begin restoring the old Soviet Empire. Like Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm a century earlier, Mr. Putin, threatened by NATO’s rounds of expansion, may have felt surrounded by adversaries. That doesn’t excuse his war of aggression, but it apparently puts it beyond Mr. Trump’s ability to deliver peace.

One of Mr. Trump’s most bitter thoughts is that Mr. Putin has rejected every peace plan Mr. Trump has proposed.

What appeared a week ago to be a cutoff of arms shipments to Ukraine was corrected by Mr. Trump on Monday, when he said the Ukrainians are being hit very hard and must be able to defend themselves. The Pentagon needs to replenish our own stockpiles and Mr. Trump should be going to Congress for more aid to Ukraine.

Mr. Putin doesn’t care how long the war lasts as long as he wins it. The same can be said of Hamas and Iran because those wars — to the extent they can be thought of separately — are both ideological and religiously based.

Mr. Trump’s Monday meeting with Mr. Netanyahu predictably made little progress in ending the Hamas-Israel war. Mr. Trump had proposed a 60-day ceasefire during which Hamas would release at least half of the remaining Israeli hostages in exchange for Israeli-held prisoners.

Of course, Hamas didn’t agree and made counter-proposals which Mr. Netanyahu rejected, demanding Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, control over humanitarian supplies and negotiations toward a permanent peace. But there can be no permanent peace while Hamas remains a government or even a credible force in Gaza.

It is precisely as U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said last week: To allow Hamas any continued presence in Gaza would be as senseless as if we had allowed the Nazis to rebuild Germany. He was echoing Mr. Trump’s promise that Hamas would have no future in Gaza in any form.

Mr. Trump can stick to that promise and, eventually, oversee some form of peace in Gaza. Hamas can have no role whatsoever.

Mr. Trump deserves great credit for having our B-2 bombers drop massive ordnance penetrators on Iran’s principal nuclear weapons sites and for engineering a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. But no matter how much damage the B-2 raid did, Iran will continue to develop nuclear weapons.

Iran has reportedly turned its once-great nation into a replica of North Korea. Cellphones are seized and searched and people suspected of spying for Israel just disappear. The internet has been effectively shut down for Iranians. This is the ayatollahs’ reaction to the B-2 raid and indicates a growing paranoia within the regime.

This column has often suggested that the president sign a secret presidential directive ordering the CIA to topple the Tehran regime. But the problem there is that no organized opposition to the ayatollahs’ regime can exist while the government exerts such total oppression. The answer may be in an action of Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former shah.

Mr. Pahlavi has opened a supposedly secure internet platform by which members of the Iranian regime and its military can defect and join a resistance. It’s likely that this platform is not proof against Iranian monitoring, but it remains one source of organized resistance to the regime. There should be others, and perhaps they can proliferate.

Mr. Trump’s biggest problem lies in the fact that 21st century Western powers don’t fight wars with the ruthlessness necessary to win decisively. We were defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan because we lacked the will to win. How a bunch of dirtbags could defeat us in two wars remains a mystery to our military.

Israel has the will to win and Mr. Trump should not be countenancing any continued presence of Hamas in Gaza. The same goes for Mr. Putin’s will to win and Iran’s resolve to develop nuclear weapons. Mr. Trump should aim his diplomacy toward seeing that these wars end on our terms.

• Jed Babbin is a national security and foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Times and a contributing editor for The American Spectator.