Ignore the vitriol from the Left, the truth is that this week Trump CAN become the world's Peacemaker-in-Chief: NILE GARDINER

Daily Mail​

3 days ago

Donald Trump is able to do what no other world leader, no other man or woman on the planet, can dream of achieving.
He alone has the power to drag Russia 's dictator Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table. And he alone has the diplomatic leverage necessary to force an end to the war in Ukraine.
There are many on the Left who will decry him for doing it, who will condemn any peace settlement simply because it is Trump who brings it about. To them, everything Trump does is abhorrent, and that includes stopping wars.
But the wider world, which has felt itself on the brink of global conflagration in the past few months, should feel profoundly grateful to the US president.
In his second term at the White House, he is proving the most effective American leader since Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War and set in train the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Trump is to meet Putin for talks in Alaska on Friday – I write from Anchorage where history is unfolding before our eyes – and if he can strong-arm the Russian dictator into halting his slow annexation of Ukraine, which has claimed an estimated 350,000 lives with more than million combatants and civilians wounded, he will deserve the world's gratitude.
European leaders warned on a call with the President yesterday that the 'territorial integrity' of Ukraine's borders must be respected. But empty rhetoric from EU capitals will achieve nothing. Moscow has no regard at all for the European Union.
Putin respects only one thing: strength. And Trump has demonstrated that repeatedly this year, both in military and economic terms.
His unilateral decision to wipe out Iran's nuclear programme with a bunker-busting bomb assault in June was a dramatic display of US power. Iran has been defanged, and the planet is safer for it. Moscow took note.
He has also shown a repeated determination to douse local conflicts. Most significantly, his intervention obliged India and Pakistan to back down from a renewed border dispute in May after military strikes between the two nuclear-armed countries.
He also stepped in to quell tensions between Serbia and Kosovo.
And in June, the foreign ministers of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo signed a peace agreement brokered by Trump to end their deadly, nearly 30-year conflict.
Another US-backed peace deal was signed this month by Armenia and Azerbaijan which involved the creation of a profitable trade link – the 'Trump corridor' – between the two nations.
Ignorant Left-wing critics mock Trump for his supposedly undisguised ambition to earn the Nobel peace prize, and his self-appointed title of 'Peacemaker-in-chief'.
His foreign policy is motivated by vanity, they claim.
I don't believe that is true. He deplores the loss of human life, as we have seen from his angry social media posts condemning Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities. But he also believes in protecting America's national security and economic interests, and his instincts tell him this is best done through peace – a peace achieved by strength.
The brazen hypocrisy of those who taunt him about the Nobel prize is ugly to witness. These are the same voices from the Left who are pleading for peace in the Middle East. Are they really so shallow that they care about human lives only when these can be saved by politicians of their own stripe?
Barack Obama was awarded a Nobel peace prize in his first year as president, when his foreign policy had achieved nothing. Seven years later, he had still done nothing to merit it.
Joe Biden managed less than nothing. It's hard to escape the conclusion that Biden's weakness emboldened Putin to attack Ukraine.
Russia did not count on the doggedness of Ukrainian resistance, nor the way that Brexit Britain under Boris Johnson would rally European opposition to Putin's so-called 'special operation'. But Putin did gauge Biden's lack of resolve correctly. The response from Washington was craven.
Nothing about America under Trump can justly be called craven. Nato too has rediscovered its backbone. For more than 30 years, as the Soviet threat receded, European countries were content to be freeloaders under US protection.
Bloated welfare state provision was funded by money saved on defence. Trump has not fully reversed that state of affairs, but he has begun to change it.
The Nato summit in June was a triumph for his deal-making, as America's allies reached a reluctant decision to invest 5 per cent of GDP in defence.
Putin knows Nato's military might far outguns anything his war-ravaged country can muster. Nato's long-range ballistic missiles, its phenomenal powers of intelligence gathering, its utter supremacy in air power and space communications, and above all its vast array of nuclear weapons, guarantee that Russia can never be victorious in a global conflict with the West.
Of course Nato is a defensive alliance but Putin dare not provoke it now. The threat of a Russian invasion of the Baltic states, for example, while still real, has receded since Trump took office in January.
What Putin fears most, though, is not only American military power but its economic might. Trump has sent shockwaves through the global financial system by imposing, lifting and reapplying tariffs. Most observers assumed he was doing this largely as leverage to achieve better trade deals.
But we are also increasingly seeing the strategic application of tariffs and economic pressure against America's adversaries.
They are the economy's equivalent of nuclear weapons, capable of bringing an enemy to his knees almost overnight. Russia is already subject to stiff sanctions. But these are not a complete financial stranglehold. Billions of roubles still flow into the country as oil and gas flow out.
India and China are its biggest customers. And despite all the West's condemnation of the Ukraine invasion, Europe also remains one of the major markets for Russian fossil fuels.
Those markets will dry up overnight if Trump chooses. He can tell China, India and Europe to cease doing business with Russia, or face unprecedented tariffs. Self-interest will force them to comply.
As Trump and Putin meet this week, the world's most powerful man and leader of the free world will be facing one of the most dangerous and evil dictators on the planet. The US president will need to prove himself a deal-maker as never before.
But if anyone can end the Ukraine war and bring peace to Europe's eastern border, it is Donald Trump.