The Prelude, Not the Peace

Trump’s deals, global brinkmanship, and a world confusing spectacle for strategy.

Good morning! If you’re feeling, as I am, like everything is heating up at once, that’s because it is. Ukraine, Gaza, Iran, Venezuela, Taiwan, every fault line is active, everyone is probing limits, and the United States is being led by a man who keeps insisting nothing is wrong while quietly admitting everything he claimed to have solved… wasn’t.

Donald Trump spent months declaring Iran’s nuclear program “completely and fully obliterated.” This week, standing outside Mar-a-Lago next to Benjamin Netanyahu, he quietly abandoned that fantasy. Now Iran is “maybe” rebuilding, there’s “smoke,” and if that turns into “fire,” the U.S. will have “no choice” but to knock them down again, immediately, powerfully, perhaps even more powerfully than last time. Translation: the earlier strike didn’t do what he said it did, deterrence didn’t stick, and escalation is back on the menu. Victory, it turns out, requires constant re-affirmation.

Netanyahu, for his part, could not have been happier. Trump didn’t just align with him on Iran; he publicly endorsed the idea that Israel should attack again if necessary, floated a pardon for Netanyahu’s corruption trial, and accepted a promise of the Israel Prize, the country’s highest civilian honor, traditionally reserved for Israelis and never before awarded to a foreign leader. Isaac Herzog’s office, that of Israel’s president, the largely ceremonial official who actually holds the power to issue pardons, later had to issue the diplomatic equivalent of actually, no, but the message had already been sent: loyalty over law, war over accountability.

Gaza, meanwhile, has been quietly shoved into the “later” pile. Trump warned Hamas it would have “hell to pay” if it didn’t disarm quickly, while calling Israel’s withdrawal a “separate subject” that could be discussed at some unspecified future time. Hamas must disarm first. Occupation is negotiable later. This is Trump’s peace formula in a sentence: compliance is mandatory for the weaker party; restraint is optional for the stronger one.

European observers aren’t fooled. A reader in the Netherlands pointed me to a sober analysis from Dutch public broadcaster NOS, which cut through the Mar-a-Lago theater with surgical calm. Trump’s Gaza “plan,” experts said, is barely a plan at all, twenty vague intentions with no timelines, no enforcement mechanisms, and no clear end state. Phase one never truly delivered. Bombing slowed, but Palestinians continue to be killed, aid remains insufficient, people are freezing in tents, and hope is scarce. Phase two, they concluded, lives or dies on U.S. pressure, pressure Trump appears deeply unwilling to apply. From the outside, this doesn’t look like peacemaking. It looks like prestige management. The Nobel committee, it seems, made the right call.

Now pivot to Ukraine, where the gap between performance and reality has become downright dangerous. Zelensky spent nearly three hours with Trump in Florida, pushing a revised peace framework. Trump emerged declaring progress, optimism, momentum. Within hours, the Kremlin introduced a familiar trick: an evidence-free accusation that Ukraine had launched a massive drone attack on one of Putin’s residences. Ninety-one drones, no photos, no damage, no casualties, but plenty of outrage. Targets for retaliation, Russia warned, had already been selected.

Ukraine’s response was blunt. There was no evidence. This was a pretext, another distraction, a setup. Andrii Sybiha, Ukraine’s foreign minister, called it a signature Russian tactic: accuse others of what you are about to do yourself.

What mattered more than the accusation, though, was Trump’s reaction. Asked if the attack might not have happened, he conceded it was “possible”, then immediately deferred to Putin anyway. Putin told him it did, that was good enough.

Former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink didn’t mince words. There is no evidence, she said. And the real problem is that the U.S. president is taking the word of a brutal dictator over that of a democratic ally. Brink resigned shortly after Trump began his second term over exactly this issue, and now she’s saying publicly what she could no longer defend privately.

Europe saw this coming. Before Zelensky ever set foot in Mar-a-Lago, European leaders privately warned him to be careful. Very careful. Notes from a pre-meeting call show Macron, Merz, Frederiksen, Tusk and others urging Zelensky not to go too far, not to concede too much, and above all to extract clarity on what happens when, not if, Russia says no. Denmark’s prime minister put it starkly: for your sake and for the sake of Europe, be careful. That warning aged like prophecy.

Trump restrains Ukraine, blocks long-range weapons, scolds Kyiv for “bad timing,” and says he understands Russia’s refusal to agree to a ceasefire, even as Moscow keeps bombing civilian infrastructure and manufacturing excuses to escalate. Trump even volunteered that he had personally blocked Ukraine from receiving long-range Tomahawk missiles, saying flatly, “I stopped the Tomahawks”, a reminder that restraint, in his view, applies almost exclusively to Kyiv.

Trump is also picking fights closer to home. He’s now openly acknowledged that U.S. forces destroyed a dock facility in Venezuela, the first known strike on Venezuelan soil, while refusing to say whether the military or the CIA carried it out. He knows who did it, he says, but doesn’t want to tell us. Convenient. Judges and lawmakers are already questioning the legal authority for these actions, but ambiguity is the point. You can almost imagine Trump watching the movie version of Clear and Present Danger, since reading isn’t his thing, and missing the part about consequences.

China has encircled Taiwan with rockets, bombers, assault ships, live-fire drills, and maritime exclusion zones overlapping Taiwanese territorial waters, simulating a blockade in its largest exercise in eight months. Beijing says it’s a warning to “external forces.” Analysts say the quiet part out loud: this is about deterring U.S. involvement. Taiwan reports 130 Chinese aircraft and 22 naval and coast guard vessels in a single day. Trump’s response? A shrug. Naval exercises happen all the time, he says. Nothing to worry about.

Put it all together and the pattern becomes unmistakable. Russia is testing how much fiction it can sell before retaliation becomes normalized. Israel is signaling that war is politically useful and accountability optional. Iran is back in the crosshairs after a “total victory” that wasn’t. Venezuela is learning what undeclared conflict looks like. China is pushing the boundary to see how close it can get. And the United States keeps insisting this is all background noise.

Which brings us, awkwardly, to Canada. While Trump waves tariffs like a magic wand and treats trade as punishment, the most decorated Toyota manufacturing plant on Earth is quietly operating in Cambridge, Ontario, under the same North American trade rules, with the same supply chains, and the same company. The difference isn’t nationality; it’s priorities. Canada invested in skills, stability, and long-term production while Washington chased slogans, cost-cutting, and financial extraction. The result is excellence that can’t be tariffed away. You can’t threaten your way into quality, and you can’t tax your way into competence, a fact that neatly punctures the entire mythology behind Trump’s tariff politics.

Right now, the world isn’t sliding toward conflict because everyone suddenly became irrational. It’s sliding because too many leaders are confusing performance with power, pressure with strategy, and symbolism with substance. Everyone is probing, but no one is de-escalating, and the referee keeps insisting the game is under control while the players start throwing punches.

So Marz and I are stubbornly maintaining our evening moonbeam vigils, cycling through versions of Carol of the Bells. Last night it was Teja Bell’s, and somehow it felt especially necessary.