Trump can lay claim to the ceasefire in Gaza – doing the same in Ukraine will be much harder

Trump heads into the White House thoroughly puffed up by his role in securing the Gaza ceasefire, writes Sam Kiley. His allies and enemies around the world will now be plotting to exploit his vanity further

When outgoing president Joe Biden was asked if he or Donald Trump deserved credit for the Gaza ceasefire deal struck in Qatar he shot back: “Is that a joke?” It wasn’t. Trump’s claim of having secured the “EPIC” deal was comic, but his contribution was real.

Biden’s team worked in tandem with Trump’s incoming administration – and his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff – to deliver the agreement which had taken many months to thrash out.

It was no accident that it was struck in the dying days of the Biden years, less than a week before Trump was due to move back into the White House. Israel’s prime minister knew that involving Trump would set him up to warm relations with the 47th president.

Hamas knows he’ll always be an enemy, but one who might actually make good on a threat to “rain hell” on the movement if no deal was made.

Trump is often dismissed as a toddler prone to tantrum in the world of foreign affairs. But his record as 45th president shows his brand of “peace through strength”, and “America first”, plus a reputation for unpredictability, was better than the mess that Biden is leaving behind.

Biden’s term has been marked by a failure to give Ukraine enough military support to drive out Russian forces, but enough to keep on bleeding.

He failed, if he ever wanted, to rein in Israel’s massive bombardment of Gaza using American weapons – which has resulted in war crimes charges against Israel that may yet dog America, too. Under Biden, Iran was able to expand its destabilising operations throughout the Middle East, until Israel stopped it with attacks on its homeland and by shattering Hezbollah in Lebanon. The pathetic end to 20 years of war and loss of blood and treasure for the West in Afghanistan came under Biden, too.

Trump heads into the White House thoroughly puffed up by his role in securing the Gaza ceasefire. His allies, and enemies, will now be plotting how to exploit his narcissism and vanity further. Will he now have an eye on a Nobel Peace Prize?

From Russia’s perspective, this is an ambition to be richly encouraged. Trump has repeatedly boasted that he could end the war in Ukraine. He wants to preside over talks between Moscow and Kyiv.

If Russia can keep that thought alive, then perhaps Trump will cut military aid to Ukraine and force president Volodymyr Zelensky to give up on the eastern regions already captured by Russian invaders. A deal like that would not actually bring Trump Nobel prizes nor peace to Europe – but by then Putin would have won all he could realistically have hoped for.

Yet Trump has shown signs, recently, that he may not be willing to take a simplistic approach to Ukraine. He’s indicated that far from ending the war in 24 hours, it could take six months. And he won’t want to be seen as the man who lost Kyiv in the same way that Biden is blamed for losing Kabul.

He’s often appeared to be anti-Nato and has threatened to leave the alliance that has guaranteed Western security since the Second World War. But he’s softened his approach by demanding its members up their defence spending to 5 per cent of their GDP (most are below the 2 per cent minimum agreed Nato threshold). Poland is already close to 4.7 per cent and there are signs that many European nations are trying to catch up.

So, the Europeans will deal with Trump delicately – acceding largely to his demands to look after themselves – for fear that he’ll help Putin to partial victory. From an American perspective, this is good. Russia isn’t much of a threat to the US. It is a danger to Europe, so Europe coughing up for its own protection is both sensible politics and sound economics.

France – and now the UK – are considering whether to send troops to guarantee Ukraine’s security (if, indeed, Kyiv agrees a ceasefire with Russia). Russia would not countenance such a move as it would bring Nato members to its doorstep.

Trump’s instincts are mostly local. He’s obsessed with immigration issues and Central America. Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador are in turmoil; riddled by narcopolitics and mayhem – he may try to focus attention in Central and South America rather than continue recent American adventures into the Middle East and beyond.

His designs on Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal are loopy and threaten the very foundations of international law that the globe relies upon – but they’re also signs that he’s focused on trouble closer to home.

His problem is that China is a real rival for global power. It’s driving ahead with military expansion and unmatched levels of economic diplomacy. Its networks of economic and military ties extend across the developing world from Calcutta to Cape Town and Caracas. China has intelligence gathering bases in Cuba and has flooded America with opiates that have killed tens of thousands.

He has threatened China with a trade war over tariffs on Beijing’s imports to the US, while Taiwan remains under a real military threat from the mainland. When asked whether he’d defend the island nation if China invaded, he said only: “I’d prefer they don’t do it.”

Trump is seen as transactional. So he is likely to try to get normalisation between Saudi Arabia and Israel back on track. He drove through the Abraham Accords that “normalised” relations between the Jewish state and the UAE, Morocco, Bahrain and Sudan.

But part of the reason that Hamas launched its murderous attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023 was the very fact that the Palestinian cause had been ignored in the quest for “normalisation” and the Abraham Accords.

Optimists may now believe that Trump has a renewed taste for diplomatic triumphs after the Gaza ceasefire talks. He has influence on Netanyahu, good relations with Saudi Arabia, and a better understanding of the need for an equitable solution for the Palestinian people, plus security for Israel. The new US president may even be tempted to lead efforts to reopen a peace process.

That would indeed be “epic”, but also long and too dull and inevitably doomed. Trump doesn’t ever want to be seen to fail. So the lesson from Gaza is that Trump likes success and the plaudits it brings. Looking like a “loser” is something he’s unlikely to risk even when it comes to Putin – which may be good news for Ukraine.