When I try to imagine the global landscape President Donald Trump will leave for his successor, I often think of the questions raised by his plans for a White House ballroom.
By the time Trump exits, will the ballroom be a partially finished shell or a sturdy, fully completed structure? Will it be too flawed in design, or politically toxic, for the next president to keep? And will it ultimately have been worth the cost?
At least Trump, a real estate guy at heart, is intensely interested in the ballroom and wants to finish it before January 2029. He appears less prepared to craft lasting solutions to the world’s geopolitical crises, including the one he helped create this year in Iran.
Trump and his team offer 30,000-foot visions that sound great in theory, but they have little to show for it beyond half-measures. Sure, they’ve shepherded ceasefires as far afield as Southeast Asia and offered a vision for Gaza, but the deeper, structural conflicts persist.
Trump still has years left in office to come up with durable compacts, and it’s a tall order for any president to resolve many of the world’s decades-long challenges. But Trump also is quick to claim victory and move on (“At long last we have peace in the Middle East,” Trump said last October to mark the Gaza ceasefire). He has also gutted the capacity of the U.S. government to carry out peacebuilding work. That means waves of instability are likely to follow from his loose agreements.
“A framework can buy time. A real deal changes behavior,” an Arab diplomat told me. “In the Middle East, many fear that ‘frameworks’ become a way to manage crises rather than solve them.“
I granted the diplomat and several other officials anonymity to be candid about Trump’s approach to global crises.
At present, Middle Eastern and other foreign officials are acutely worried that Trump will walk away from the Iran war without fully resolving it. Sure, he might agree to an indefinite ceasefire. His team may float a slide deck of bullet points that promise to eventually tackle big challenges, such as Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
But few, if any, foreign officials see the Trump crew turning that framework into a lasting, in-depth agreement that begins to satisfy various parties’ concerns, such as Israeli and Arab fears about Iran’s use of proxy militias.
This is in part because Trump keeps policy discussions limited to a handful of people and does not trust the U.S. bureaucracy that could offer manpower and expertise. Through budget cuts, department reorganizations and straight-up firings, Trump has tossed out of work numerous government staffers who specialized in global conflict resolution or countries such as Iran. Numerous U.S. embassies still lack ambassadors who can help keep negotiations on track.
In addition, Trump has repeatedly insulted and alienated key countries who could help him pull together a serious pact.
“We end up kind of in this zone we’re in, which is no peace, no war, little skirmishes here and there,” a Gulf Arab official predicted. “This is where we will kind of live for a while.”
When I asked the White House for comment on these concerns, spokesperson Olivia Wales used a Trump-coined term to describe my timing.
“This is a column written less than two years into President Trump’s time in office, and — as the Panicans continue to panic— President Trump has proven time and time again to Trust in Trump,” Wales said.
Trump has a way of claiming victory regardless of conditions.
He says he already has ended at least eight, and as many as 10, “wars.” In several of those cases, however, he has merely hit pause or eased tensions in a long-running dispute. India and Pakistan have still not resolved their disagreement over Kashmir; Thailand and Cambodia’s border lines are still unsettled; Congolese forces are still fighting Rwandan rebels.
One war Trump says he ended was the one between Israel and Iran last June, which the U.S. joined in the final days. Trump did help bring about a ceasefire for that 12-day conflict, but was that really a war on its own or the first chapter of the war now underway?
Then there’s Gaza. Trump and his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — both also real estate guys involved in Iran talks — put together a broad framework with multiple phases designed to bring a long-term resolution.
At first glance, that sounds like good planning. And the ceasefire it established — though constantly tested— remains in place. But the time that it has bought has yielded little progress toward a lasting peace.
The “Board of Peace” envisioned in the framework has struggled to define itself amid low funding, logistical hurdles and questions about its international and legal legitimacy. Hamas is refusing to disarm and has largely reasserted its authority in the parts of Gaza that Israel does not control. An International Stabilization Force has yet to materialize as countries hesitate to commit troops to a still insecure region. Gazan civilians remain in misery, crowded together in even less space than before.
One European diplomat got poetic in describing such scenarios: “Perhaps this administration is just happier to deal in ambiguity, like a Keats negative capability situation, but for politics.”
Ambiguity is not always the worst choice in policymaking, and many past presidents have opted for it when taking a clear position is too risky for political or security reasons (See: Taiwan). Still, ambiguity can also appear feckless and breed policy paralysis (See: the Biden administration’s inability to take a clear position on Western Sahara).
When I point out to U.S. and foreign officials that ambiguity and half-measures may merely kick a problem down the road, they reply that that’s often the only option they have. Some challenges are too hard to resolve in a single presidential term, and aiming too high — for an end-all-be-all peace deal — risks winding up with nothing.
Trump administration officials and people close to them counsel patience, saying he and his aides still have plenty of time for follow-ups and breakthroughs. They point to the Abraham Accords and hard-line moves against China taken by Trump in his first term as examples of thought-out successes.
“I don’t think that we should dismiss ceasefires and other negotiations designed to solve immediate problems, because only by solving those issues can we hope to build more lasting frameworks for peace and significant changes to the global order,” said Alex Gray, who served in Trump’s first-term National Security Council.
“Many of the negotiations that his critics say are ‘stalled’ are progressing but waiting for the right moment,” a current Trump administration official added.
Yes, patience is important in cases such as Gaza, Iran or other relentless conflicts. What also matters is how you use that hard-won time. People experienced in negotiations say you need constant diplomacy and the willingness to occasionally play hardball with your friends. You need expertise. You also need envoys who are laser-focused on specific issues, not ones who are handling massive crises such as Iran, Ukraine and Gaza all at once.
Even with all the pieces in place, it can take many months to come up with a long-term deal. The final push for the Good Friday Agreement lasted nearly two years.
Trump and his aides “believe in speed and pressure more than rigor,” a former U.S. official who dealt with the Middle East told me.
At the same time, many current and former U.S. and foreign officials argue that the Trump administration, along with Israel, made the already difficult problem Iran posed an order of magnitude harder by veering into a war ill-prepared.
Some say Trump’s insular and stunted policymaking process meant he went to war when negotiations were still an option. Had more U.S. nuclear and Iran specialists been looped into diplomatic conversations with Tehran before the war, some analysts argue, they might have helped Trump’s envoys understand that the Iranians had put a decent offer on the table in February.
True, the U.S. has imposed an economic blockade on Iran, which could over time weaken its Islamist regime. But that regime now has control of the Strait of Hormuz, which it did not have before the war and which is damaging economies around the planet.
The president and his aides must keep trying for a long-term, multi-faceted resolution in the Iran war, officials in the region say. The fallout is so vast that Trump will have a hard time looking away.
“It is having domestic and global effects too big to ignore — bigger than Russia, Ukraine, Gaza and Venezuela,” a senior Arab diplomat told me.
Trump’s successor will likely have to deal with some fundamental questions, said Dennis Ross, a veteran Middle East negotiator. Among them: “Is force discredited as an option? Do we pull our bases out of the region?”
If only solving foreign conflicts was as easy as building a ballroom.