 "US President Donald Trump has taken a harsher line on Vladimir Putin recently. Reuters File")
Donald Trump surprised many by giving Vladimir Putin just 10 days to reach a peace deal with Ukraine.
Trump’s original 50-day deadline was panned by many including leaders of Nato nations and Republicans.
However, Trump now seems to be fed up with Putin, whom he had praised incessantly in the past, over the Ukraine war.
Trump is also struggling to get a handle on Gaza, which many people around the world have for months claimed is a genocide, amid visuals and reports about people facing mass starvation.
However, Trump has had some successes. For example, the Trump government in June managed to broker a ceasefire between Rwanda and Congo.
Trump also announced he had urged the leaders of Cambodia and Thailand to come to a ceasefire in July.
What explains this?
So, what’s the reason behind his failures to bring peace to Ukraine and Gaza?
Trump has been successful in cases where he has leverage. For example, Trump Clearly told Thailand in Cambodia that there would be no trade negotiations until the ceasefire was reached,
However, when it comes to Ukraine, Trump does not have any leverage over Putin . Russia has already brushed aside the threat of sanctions. Besides, Trump has done little to follow through on his threats.
The intricacies involved in the Ukraine and Gaza situations may also be a factor. Trump, for example, seems to still be entertaining the notion of striking a deal with China and Russia to limit each of their spheres of influence.
In West Asia, Trump needs to tread carefully given America’s current alliance with Israel. He also needs to take into account his Maga base and their motivations.
Conversely, the Rwanda-Congo deal was a simpler matter. Trump brokered the peace in exchange for US investors getting access to the DRC’s minerals.
The third and final factor is that simpler solutions are easier to achieve. Thailand and Cambodia can simply revert to type.
It is ultimately also in the interests of the conflict parties. They have had a chance to make their violent statements and reinforce what they will and won’t tolerate from the other side. The required investment by an external mediator to end battles that have achieved what the warring sides want anyway – to avoid further escalation – is consequently quite limited.
Attention to detail
Bringing peace to Ukraine and West Asia also requires prolonged engagement and attention to detail. These conflicts are at a stage in which a return to how things were before is not in the interests of the parties or their external backers.
Nudging warring parties along on the path to agreement under such conditions requires a well-designed process, which is absent in Ukraine and failing in Gaza.
Thanks to funding and personnel cuts, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, is now required to perform multiple roles . Trump relies on personal envoys with at best limited foreign policy expertise, while insisting he makes all the decisions.
This ultimately suggests that the White House simply may not have the bandwidth for the level of engagement that would be necessary to get to a deal in Ukraine and the Middle East.
This is a self-inflicted opportunity lost, not only for the United States but also for the long-suffering people of Ukraine and West Asia.
professor of International Security, University of Birmingham
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .