On Thursday night in New York, Michael Wolff, the bestselling author of Fire and Fury, was celebrating the publication of his fourth volume on Donald Trump. His newest contribution to the Trump multiverse is called All or Nothing, because his subject risked everything in pursuit of a second term in power – and triumphed.
Wolff said, as the drinks flowed: “Everything Trump did should have destroyed him, but it turned out that his self-destructiveness is actually a fundamental part of his ‘charm’.” He added: “The good news, however, is that self-destructive behaviour is still self-destructive and in the end, he will bring himself down.”
Can we afford to wait before the runaway Trump train crashes to a halt? The President has dominated US politics for more than a decade and is determined to leave his stamp on the world the second time around. In little more than a month, he has torn up longstanding alliances, praised US rivals, and inflicted his unique brand of attention-grabbing chaos on perplexed foreign leaders.
For Ukraine, Trump’s vanity and insistence on lording it over a desperate nation pose an existential threat to the nation’s survival. In Washington the US president and his attack dog (or rather lapdog) JD Vance publicly berated the heroic Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, for having the nerve to stick up for his country’s independence.
Trump told Zelensky he was “gambling with World War Three”, that he was being “disrespectful to the country”, that he had not been sufficiently “thankful”. Trump thinks he should be more thankful? We should thank the Ukrainian people for their sacrifice.
Meanwhile Russian leader Vladimir Putin has been rewarded with base flattery and indulgence. It is deeply embarrassing for the US to have a President who suffers from such obvious dictator envy.
Cancelling the press conference with Zelenksy and slinging him out of the White House was a shameful piece of reality TV from Trump. Yet it is too soon to write Trump off as an appeaser. Fundamentally, he has always craved power and respect. He wants those he regards as snooty global elitists to recognise his might and acknowledge his prowess as a master deal-maker. However fragile things seem – and nothing is more fragile than Trump’s monstrous ego – there is still leverage for Ukraine and its European allies in this.
The veteran conservative broadcaster, Bill O’Reilly, said on NewsNation this week: “I know exactly what Trump is aiming for. He would like to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.” He is right. More than anything Trump wants that badge of international validation. Bringing peace to Ukraine could provide it.
The rare-earth minerals deal which had been offered to President Volodymyr Zelensky – and which must now be in doubt – was effectively a US security guarantee for Ukraine, even though it felt like a humiliating heist. In O’Reilly’s words, “Once we get that deal in Ukraine, we put American structure into that, which makes it much, much, more difficult for Bad Vlad to drone it, to bomb it, because there’ll be Americans there.”
If all goes to plan, the US will have an enduring economic stake in Ukraine’s freedom and independence, with Britain and the rest of Nato providing the military muscle to keep Russia at bay. Under pressure from Trump, Europe will have to do a lot more heavy lifting on defence. But isn’t that what Western allies have been promising for years?
Although Nato membership for Ukraine is a distant prospect, it could join the European Union by 2030 or earlier, as Ursula von der Leyen, the EU Commission President, has suggested. There is no need for American consent on this, so if the EU means what it says about protecting Ukraine, they should get on with it.
If a ceasefire can ultimately be agreed between Ukraine and Russia, and Ukraine is close to joining the EU by the next US presidential election in 2028, Trump’s foreign policy legacy could look more successful than it does today.
There are a lot of “ifs” in this. Putin hasn’t offered a single concession towards peace, while America horrified its allies by voting “no” with Russia on a United Nations resolution condemning the invasion of Ukraine on the third anniversary of the war. The symbolism was degrading for the world’s most powerful democratic nation.
Dressing down Zelensky was a particular low point for the US. But Trump believes he is treading a famous path by embracing his enemies – one that has become known as “Nixon goes to China”.
In 1972, Richard Nixon paid a historic visit to communist leader Mao Zedong in China, with the encouragement of his master-diplomat, Henry Kissinger. It was thought only a Republican president could pull off such a move, because any Democrat would have been accused of kow-towing to a Marxist.
The idea in those days was to drive a wedge behind Beijing and the Soviet Union, which already had an adversarial relationship. Trump is said to be pursuing a “reverse Nixon” by making nice with Russia at China’s expense.
This week’s Economist magazine portrays Trump as a “gangsta” leader of the world’s bad guys, Reservoir Dogs style. It explicitly rejects the idea that Trump is “walking in the footsteps of Nixon and Kissinger” and suggests he lacks the obsession with history shown by Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping.
But that’s not true. Domestically, Trump is always comparing himself to former US presidents. As a 1970s man, he reveres Nixon and Kissinger. He may not be much of a reader, but he was pen pals with Nixon in the 1980s and tried to persuade the former president and his wife Pat to move into Trump Tower in New York.
“I think that you are one of this country’s great men, and it was an honor to spend an evening with you,” he wrote to Nixon in June 1982, eight years after the latter had resigned in disgrace over Watergate. Nixon returned the compliment by saying Pat thought Trump would become president one day.
Trump was also in awe of Kissinger. In 2017 he welcomed the veteran diplomat to the White House, saying, “We’ve been friends for a long time, long before my emergence in the world of politics… He’s a man I have great, great respect for.”
When Kissinger’s friends would ask why he was wasting time on a bozo like Trump, the diplomat would smile enigmatically and say he was always available to advise US presidents. Kissinger died aged 100 in 2023. He was worlds apart from Trump on support for Western allies but they both regarded themselves as consummate dealmakers.
If anybody had a tendency for self-destructive behaviour, it was Nixon. Trump always felt Nixon was unfairly treated over Watergate, but he had only himself to blame. Yet most of his troubles were on the home front. The same may turn out to be true for the current Republican President.
Nixon’s foreign policy is largely regarded as a success, and not just with regard to China. He negotiated a ceasefire in Vietnam and pursued detente and nuclear arms reductions with the Soviet Union. Although he didn’t get a Nobel Peace Prize, Kissinger did, despite being reviled as a war criminal on the left.
Playing to Trump’s vanity with flattering comparisons to his two 1970s mentors is the best way to make sure that some vestige of the international rules-based order survives his time in office. By all means, tell him he deserves a Nobel if he can pull off an honourable peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine, however much it sticks in the craw. And maybe, just maybe, this will eventually turn out to be true.
Sarah Baxter is the director of the Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting
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