Trump’s Attempts to Resolve Global Conflicts Quickly Face Diplomatic Reality

When it comes to confronting global conflicts, President Trump is a man in a hurry.

Even before his inauguration, the president claimed credit for what he called an “EPIC cease-fire” in Gaza. He has raced to get Ukraine and Russia to quickly embrace a pause in fighting. And with Iran, Mr. 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 blitzkrieg-like tactics to dismantle the bureaucracy, consolidate executive power and attack his political enemies. On the world stage, too, Mr. 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 Israeli-Gaza cease-fire has broken down. Mr. Trump’s proposal for an immediate 30-day cease-fire was rejected by President Vladimir V. 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,” Mr. 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.”

Allies of the president disagree with 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 Mr. 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,” Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump administration strategist, said in an interview. He claimed that, similar to how he has deployed Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency within the federal government, the president is sending aides, or "shock troops," to quickly confront global conflicts. “What he’s doing geo-strategically and geo-economically, it far, far surpasses what he’s doing domestically,” Mr. Bannon stated “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 approach to the two most vexing global conflicts in recent times—the year-long conflict in Gaza between Hamas and Israel and the three-year war that began when Russia invaded Ukraine—has been centered on his desire to maintain momentum. In both, Mr. Trump has repeatedly blamed former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for failing to prevent — and then move quickly enough to resolve — the conflicts. The president boasted in a speech earlier this month to a joint session of Congress 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 Mr. Trump appears eager to move past global crises so he can focus his attention elsewhere.

He would rather wage war against woke. He’d rather do immigration,” Mr. May said. “He would like this off his plate.”

However, he stated, Trump’s push for a resolution in Ukraine has “hit a substantial speed bump” in the form of Mr. Putin. In a telephone call on Tuesday, the Russian leader slammed the brakes on Mr. Trump's desire for Russia and Ukraine to reach a quick cease-fire agreement in which they only agree to stop attacking energy infrastructure. Mr. May said that Mr. Putin is playing on Mr. 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,” Mr. 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, Mr. Trump used his social media platform to push for a quick truce days before taking office. The president had praised his efforts to make peace, even suggesting to reporters that he ought to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts prior to the resumption of Israeli attacks in Gaza this week. “They’ll never give it to me,” he added.

Mr. Bannon rejected the idea that the collapse of the cease-fire 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 stated, 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.

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,” Mr. 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.”

Mr. Miller said Mr. Trump is more concerned with the short-term political benefit of announcing a diplomatic achievement than the long-term solution. “You’ve got an extraordinarily impatient impulsive person,” he said, “where speed, frankly, matters more than the policy.”

“He’s actually showed the world that, ‘Hey, you can’t deal with these people, they’re not trustworthy,’” Mr. Bannon said of Hamas. "Then Israel enters, and now there is no firestorm like there was at the beginning," Image