My book, World War Trump: The Risks of America’s New Nationalism, was published by Prometheus Books in 2018. The book examines Trump’s first year of foreign policy errors when he was president, but it also outlines an alternative foreign and defense policy that is intended to prevent yet another global war―regardless of who is elected US president in November 2024.

The book remains relevant as Trump is once again running for the US Presidency. And is particularly relevant after the July 2024 assassination attempt against him, as Trump now claims to be a peacemaker and unifier, and not a war monger—because he has seen the light of Jee-Zus!!! after his near brush with death.

As it advocates a new foreign policy, World War Trump is also more relevant now that Biden has stepped down from the presidential race and the Democrats have picked Vice President Kamala Harris to run for president. Her pick of Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her vice presidential running mate appears to be a good one as Walz appears to know how to take on an inane Trump and his Vice Presidential crooner, J.D. Vance—and thus win working class and independent votes for the Democrats.

World War Trump explains how NATO expansion deep into eastern Europe, and US promises of NATO membership for Ukraine in 2008, has helped to provoke a dangerous Russian backlash. As was publicly revealed to the global media by Wikileaks, the Bush, Jr administration was, in fact, warned by then US ambassador to Moscow, now CIA director, William Burns, that Russia could reluctantly opt for a military intervention in eastern Ukraine if Washington promised to expand NATO membership to Kyiv, as Washington decided to do at the 2008 NATO Bucharest summit, against the views of France and Germany. And then, as was also discussed in World War Trump, Moscow’s fears that NATO would eventually take over the Russian naval base at Sevastopol, which was leased to Moscow by Kyiv, could lead Russian President Putin to seize all of Crimea in 2014.

In addition to warning that Putin could attack Ukraine to check both NATO and EU expansion near Russian borders, as Moscow subsequently did in February 2022, World War Trump also warned that a Sino-Russian-Belarus-Iran-North Korea-Venezuela “axis” was being formed that was intended to counter the US, NATO, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Israel among other US allies.

World War Trump accordingly examines the incoherence of Trump’s foreign policy decisions in the first year of his presidency. The book critiques Trump’s ill-conceived foreign policy in the name of the Reagan-era “Peace through Strength" mantras, his denunciation of NATO and the European Union without seeking to formulate an alternative framework for European defense and security in concurrently working with both Moscow and the Europeans, as well as his efforts to “contain” China both economically and militarily in part by strongly supporting Taiwan’s claims to independence.

The book thus examines how Trump dealt with a number of major regional conflicts: Russia vs. Ukraine; Israel vs. Iran; Greece vs. Turkey; China vs. Taiwan; India vs. Pakistan; and North vs. South Korea, among others. Trump now makes false boasts that “I'm the only president in 72 years... I didn't have any wars.” Yet other presidents who did not officially declare a war include Ford, Carter, and Biden. And all presidents, including Trump, have deployed US troops and used military force.

Trump’s propaganda overlooks his support for US military interventions and missile attacks during the ongoing “global war on terrorism” in Syria and Iraq against Iran and against the so-called “Islamic State.” Trump’s military interventions included his ill-advised use of the most powerful conventional bomb, the “Mother of All Bombs,” in 2017 against the “terrorist” group Islamic State-Khorasan in Afghanistan.

The latter massive and meaningless use of force set a dangerous precedent that lowers the threshold to use such powerful weaponry for such small stakes and provides the pretext for other states to deploy weapons of mass destruction―as was the case for the Syrian use of chemical weaponry in roughly the same time period from 2013 to 2018.

It was Trump’s failed diplomacy that left Biden in the lurch, resulting in the disastrous US/NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan. Contrary to Trump’s claims, it is dubious Trump would have done any better if it had been he who had withdrawn US and NATO forces from Afghanistan. Had Trump been president, it would have been him, and not Biden, who would have looked like a real “loser.”

Russia and Ukraine

Trump has recently claimed he could make peace between Ukraine and Russia “in 24 hours” if elected president, yet his ill-conceived policies only exacerbated tensions between those two countries when he was president from 2016 to 2020. Trump’s flip-flops and inconsistent policies eventually set the stage for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 during Biden’s presidency. Obama, Trump and Biden all failed to engage in diplomacy that could have prevented this war.

Trump, for example, did nothing to support French and German negotiations with Russia and Ukraine in the Normandy framework. The Normandy negotiations were intended to resolve the conflict diplomatically by pressing Kyiv to “federalize” or “decentralize” the Russophile provinces in the Ukrainian Donbass. Instead, Trump’s policies ended up buying time for Ukraine to build up its military capabilities that Kyiv would then use in the Donbass region against Russian backed “autonomy/ independence” movements.

In mid-2019, contrary to his pro-Putin image in the news media, the Trump administration upgraded several Ukrainian naval bases in order to give U.S. and NATO warships the ability to dock just miles from Russia-annexed Crimea. The Trump administration additionally agreed to provide training and limited “lethal” military assistance to Kiev that included sniper rifles, rocket launchers and Javelin anti-tank missiles, that were purportedly kept in reserve, in Kyiv’s struggle against autonomy movements in the Donbass. Biden then accelerated military assistance to Ukraine after the February 2022 Russian invasion.

In effect, the Trump administration tightened sanctions on Moscow and, most importantly from Putin’s perspective, Trump did not agree to the establishment of a “neutral” Ukraine and thereby drop NATO’s promises that Kyiv would join NATO as a full member at some point in the future. Had the Trump administrations taken the time to engage in real diplomacy instead of engaging in empty rhetoric―perhaps the Russia-Ukraine war could have been prevented. But Trump did not do what he claimed.

It was also Trump who dumped the 1987 INF treaty that helped to put an end to the Cold War by eliminating US and Russian land-based intermediate range missiles―but without at least attempting to revise that treaty, given Chinese deployments of such weaponry. Now, the US and Russia have both threatened to deploy new dual capable nuclear/ conventional intermediate range missiles that are, in effect, designed for offensive war fighting purposes. See The Insecurity-Security Dialectic and the Indo-Pacific If deployed by both Moscow and Washington in Europe and Asia, these new missiles could provoke World War III.

North Korea

Contrary to his present claims, Trump’s unprecedented visit to North Korea was a total fiasco and further alienated the “rocket man,” Kim Jung-un. Had Trump worked in depth with the State Department (but not with hardline National Security Advisor John Bolton) to implement a realistic peace plan, instead of cutting that department to the bone in the name of reducing government spending while heavily boosting military spending, Trump’s meetings with Kim might have proven to be successful.

Instead, his exercise in North Korean tourism in June 2019 proved to be nothing but a “photo op.” Immediately after Trump’s visit, Kim began to expand his missile and nuclear weapons testing in August 2019. Despite Trump’s hopes for a new meeting, Kim did not wait for Biden to come to power to take a more threatening stance. Trump still claims he can still make a deal with his new favorite friend, Kim—but so too can the Democrats if they engage in realistic diplomacy in working with China to calm Pyongyang.

Much as I argued when the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war began, Moscow has looked to North Korea for a tighter alliance. Such a close alliance has begun to force US and its allies, Japan and South Korea, to boost defense spending in the Pacific region, which, in turn, has helped to press China into a closer defense alliance with Russia.

Now both North Korea and China appear to be backing Putin’s criminal war effort in Ukraine―although Beijing has offered the possibility of a peace plan that has not been entirely rejected by Kyiv. Given Trump’s previously strong anti-China pro-Taiwan stance, it will be very difficult for Trump to work with Beijing to resolve the Russia-Ukraine war, while also working with Beijing to calm down North Korea. The Democrats may have a better chance to work with China, although not without difficulties.

China and Russia

It was largely Trump’s containment policies (not those of Obama) that helped press Beijing to move even closer to Moscow. China-Russia relations have grown much tighter into a “no limits” partnership since Moscow engaged in its so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine in February 2022. NATO now sees China as a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s war with Ukraine: an allegation denied by Beijing. Both Moscow and Beijing have also tightened relations with Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea―just as World War Trump forewarned.

Trump’s containment and sanctions policy toward China, coupled his very strong support for Taiwan’s independence, further antagonized relations with Beijing without pointing to a way to resolve the Taiwan and South and East China Seas disputes with China. Contrary to Trump’s claims that he can now achieve peace, the possibility of a devastating war between China and Taiwan is becoming increasingly credible―if there is no significant effort undertaken to rethink of US-China relations as argued in World War Trump.

Iran and Israel

Trump’s extremely ill-conceived decision to dump the Iran nuclear accord (JCPOA), that had been backed by the Obama administration, not only undermined a peace deal with Tehran that took 10 years to negotiate, but it also undermined positive multilateral US cooperation with the Europeans, Russia, and China. Trump’s decision to dump the JCPOA treaty (in large part under John Bolton’s hardline anti-Iran influence) has thus called into question American credibility and reliability in backing international accords and treaties in general, while further militarizing Iran.

A militarized Iran eventually dumped its “reformist” leader, President Hassan Rouhani, in 2021, and elected a much tougher ultraconservative pro-Hamas and Axis of Resistance hardliner, Ebrahim Raisi. Trump’s decision to dump the JCPOA had been intended to check much closer strategic and economic Iranian ties with China and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), but it failed miserably to do so.

Should Trump come to power, it will prove very difficult for the US and Iran to reconcile. This is not only because it was Trump who dumped the JCPOA, but also because Trump had opted to assassinate General Suleimani, considered a national hero by many Iranians. Washington has now alleged that the Iranians want to assassinate Trump.

Moreover, while Trump’s Abraham Accords helped solidify positive relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrein, among other states, the Accords also served to further provoke Hamas, as well as Iran―in that Trump and the Abraham accords ignored the Palestinians. Trump’s backing for the Abraham Accords accordingly represented a major factor in provoking tensions between Israel and Iran by raising Tehran’s fears of “encirclement”―particularly if Israel also recognized Saudi Arabia, as was being considered at the time.

In the eyes of Hamas, the fact that the UAE and Saudi Arabia did not appear to be taking Palestinian interests into account in its closed door discussions with Israel, coupled with Iranian opposition to a proposed Israeli-UAE-Saudi deal, helped spark the horrific Israel-Hamas-Iran war since October 2023. Once Hamas engaged in its savage attacks, Iran has sought to strongly support its “Axis of Resistance” against Israel. For its part, Israel has used the October 2023 Hamas attack to justify its efforts to eradicate the Hamas leadership and to assert Israeli hegemony over both Gaza and the West Bank—while literally trying to kill the very possibility of the two-state solution.

Left Democrats have been outraged by Biden’s policies in support of Israel, yet if Trump becomes president, he will continue to appease Netanyahu with no hope for a resolution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. A new Democratic Harris-Walz leadership, if elected, will need a fresh approach.

The Present Global Crisis

Evidently, the global situation has changed since Trump left office—primarily for the worse under Biden who has not-so-ironically engaged in his own “Peace through Strength” version of containment of Russia and China coupled with a massive US and NATO military build-up that has proved more costly than even that of Trump.

While it is theoretically possible for Trump to begin to negotiate peace with U.S. rivals as Reagan did with the Soviet “evil empire” in his second term—even if it was really Mikhail Gorbachev who took the lead in initiating that diplomacy and not Reagan―Trump appears too impatient and vitriolic to really work to achieve a lasting peace. And Putin or a possible successor will not prove as gullible as Gorbachev. It appears extremely dubious that Trump has changed his viewpoint and become a “peacemaker” as he claimed after the July 2024 assassination attempt against him. Trump is still broadcasting the same hackneyed “Make America Great Again” mantra.

If a major power war is to be prevented, a ceasefire, leading to the establishment of a “neutral” Ukraine in the heart of the new Europe, should be followed by the re-establishment of conventional and nuclear arms control/reduction measures, coupled with the deployment of international peacekeepers in key areas of dispute. The problem is to build a new system of European security in which the US and NATO (or a new organization) remains the background, while the Europeans and Ukraine find ways to cooperate with Moscow. Peace with Russia in Ukraine can then help set the stage for peace in other zones of conflict, particularly if the US works multilaterally with China, Turkey, India and other states.

The danger is that if the Russia-Ukraine war does not come to an end soon, the US-NATO-Israel-South Korea vs. Russia-China-Iran-North Korea conflict could soon escalate and extend to new regions.

The future has yet to be written, but contrary to Trumpist propaganda, it is still possible for the Democrats to once again try to “reset” US-Russian relations—as Biden himself had tried to do when he was Vice President, along with then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, under President Obama in 2008-09―an effort that unfortunately failed miserably. (I had participated in Track II diplomacy at the time.)

There is thus a possibility that a new Democratic leadership under Harris and Walz could try once again to reset relations with Moscow, as did Obama and Biden, if the Democrats win the presidency. After a review of foreign policy, Harris and Walz could make an “about face” once the neo-cons and neoliberals of the National Security “blob” finally realize that present US policies are risking the widening and intensification of the Russia-Ukraine war, while Israel shows no signs of relenting in its efforts to eradicate Hamas with little hope for a “two-state” solution, and as the China and Taiwan dispute is only getting more perilous.

For Trump, multilateralism is a bad word, yet contrary to his claims, global peace cannot be achieved by the US working alone. And if Trump really wants global peace, he would not continue to oppose efforts to ameliorate the dangerous global climate crisis, for example, as he did when president―as the climate crisis exacerbates social conflicts and mass migration―an issue that Trump tries to exaggerate as the major American problem. His refusal to address climate change and other major issues through multilateral efforts represents just one of Trump’s many absurd policy positions. “America First” is not the answer.

World War Trump is still very relevant as it provides an outline for an alternative foreign and domestic policy that seeks to fully engage in real concerted diplomacy to prevent major power war.

Praise for World War Trump

This is what the former editorialist for the International Herald Tribune, Jonathan Power, said about World War Trump: “Not even Zbigniew Brzezinski or Henry Kissinger have written such a book…. Every foreign affairs student, journalist, academic, and policymaker should make reading it a priority.”

May the reader judge...