Donald Trump regularly claims that his strong leadership prevented the outbreak of war during his presidency. However, it’s an argument that doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny.

 

Some of the conflicts that have dogged his successor Joe Biden’s presidential administration are the direct result of policies put in place during Trump’s time in the White House. Not to mention the time Trump’s grandstanding almost embroiled the United States (US) in a conflict with North Korea in 2017.[1]

 

The first foreign policy act for which Trump criticised the Biden administration was the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. The fact is that Biden was following the previous administrations’ plan, having been left with little choice but to implement Trump’s deal with the Taliban in February 2020.[2]

 

This agreement, done without the involvement of the Afghan government, involved the US committing to withdraw militarily from Afghanistan in return for the Taliban pledging not to attack American forces. There was no corresponding requirement to prevent the Taliban attacking Afghan government forces, no mechanism to enforce this agreement, and the deal sanctioned the release of 5,000 Taliban fighters who soon found themselves back on the front line.

 

The US withdrawal also involved the removal of military protection of US contractors who serviced and maintained Afghan army helicopters and other equipment. Their withdrawal contributed heavily to the rapid defeat of these forces.[3] Mark Esper, Trump’s then defence secretary, criticised the deal for pulling out too many troops, too quickly for nothing in return.[4] H.R. McMaster, Trump’s second national security adviser, went further in calling the deal “a surrender agreement with the Taliban”.[5] So, although Afghanistan was a defeat on Biden’s watch, it was a failure of the Trump administration’s making.

 

Similarly, it can be argued that a contributing factor behind the decision by Hamas to launch its murderous attack on Israel in October 2023 was to derail the normalisation of relations between the Arab world and Israel that the Trump administration initiated through the Abraham Accords.[6] The bilateral agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco is seen as one of, if not the, signature foreign policy achievements of the Trump administration. [7]

 

However, the Accords failed to address the Palestinian question meaning efforts to extend normalisation to Saudi Arabia were perceived by Hamas as the abandonment of their plight. While talks of normalisation paid lip service to the need to address the Palestinian question, Hamas, amongst others, were clearly of the opinion that that framing of the Abraham Accords that Trump set in motion was decidedly and deliberately exclusionary of their interests.

 

That Hamas’s plan was a success in this regard was borne out by the subsequent statement in 2024 by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that: “No relations with Israel will be established before progress is made toward establishing a Palestinian state”.[8]

 

While Biden could have deviated from Trump’s policies in both Afghanistan and the Middle East there would have been costs associated with doing so. In Afghanistan, it would have required sending huge numbers of American military forces back to the region. In the Middle East, it would have meant unpicking a diplomatic initiative that has already granted Israel diplomatic progress without the requirement to make concessions.

 

That he did not do so does not mean that responsibilities for these debacles lays solely with Biden. These were all policy decisions of which Trump would have reaped the consequences had he won a second term in November 2020.

 

What is most often forgotten about Trump’s years in the White House is how close America came to war with North Korea. In July 2017, Pyongyang developed an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) with the capability to reach the continental US, something that candidate Trump vowed would never happen. While the military advised quiet defensive measures and military signalling, Tump took to twitter, calling Kim Young Un “Little rocket man” and promising: “Fire and fury like the world has never seen.”[9]

 

His threats towards North Korea, however, were not confined to escalatory rhetoric. Instead, Trump ordered three carrier battle groups to the region and flew numerous simulated air attacks against the country.[10]

 

Discussion within the White House over a US nuclear attack against Pyongyang’s rocket forces were so advanced that Defence Secretary Jim Mattis was being dropped off at Washington’s National Cathedral on his way home from the Pentagon, in order to pray for guidance as he prepared plans to “incinerate a couple million people.”[11]

 

It was a crisis that could have so easily have escalated had Trump not been seduced by a series of vague promises and the opportunity to meet the North Korean leader in three media-drenched summit meetings. On this occasion Trump’s love of the cameras, the sense of anticipation and the belief that the summits were in themselves substantive, persuaded him to drop the pressure on North Korea and effectively accept the nuclear threat that Kim now presents to America.

 

At the time Trump declared “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea”, with US Senator Chuck Schumer responding: “Saying it doesn’t make it so.” [12] Since this episode US relations with North Korea have only worsened.

 

Trump’s handling of the threat of Iranian nuclear proliferation also brings into question the idea that his return to the White House would be conflict free. In May 2018 Trump withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action for Iran – the “Iran Nuclear deal”, without having any alternative plan beyond sanctions of limiting the development of Tehran’s latent nuclear weapons programme.[13] As a result, Iran is much closer to a nuclear weapons capability than ever before.  Trump’s response to this is to publicly support the notion that Israel should pre-emptively destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities before they can develop the capacity to reach the United States. [14] In order to be successful such an action would likely require a joint US Israeli attack of considerable scale.[15]Hardly the impression that Trump likes to give of what his second term would be like.

 

How a second Trump administration would deal with threats over Iran, North Korea, the Chinese threat to Taiwan, the war in Ukraine will play out are unknowable. Yet what is certain is that the track record of his first term in office is no guarantee of peace and security for the next four years.

 

David Hastings Dunn is Professor of International Politics at the University of Birmingham, he writes on US and international security issues.

 

Photograph courtesy of The White House from Washington, DC, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not reflect the views of The Foreign Policy Centre.

 

[1] James Hohmann, The Washington Post, 16 September 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/09/16/daily-202-us-came-much-closer-war-with-north-korea-2017-than-public-knew-trump-told-woodward/

[2] David Petraeus and Andrew Roberts, Conflict – The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Gaza, 15 October 2024 https://www.harpercollins.com/products/conflict-david-petraeusandrew-roberts?variant=41467744092194

[3] ibid.

[4] Amber Philips, The Washington Post, 26 August 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/08/20/trump-peace-deal-taliban 

[5] Bari Weiss, X, 19 August 2021, https://x.com/bariweiss/status/1428191060791005186

[6] Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Steven Tian and Dan Raviv, Time, ‘Why Hamas Tried to Sabotage Arab-Israeli Peace Prospects With a Massive Unprovoked Attack’, 08 October 2023, https://time.com/6321671/why-hamas-sabotaged-peace-prospects-israel-attack/

[7] Quint Forgey, Politico, ‘‘The dawn of a new Middle East’: Trump celebrates Abraham Accords with White House signing ceremony’ , 15 September 2020, https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/15/trump-abraham-accords-palestinians-peace-deal-415083

[8] Tamir Pardo and Nimrod Novik, The Jerusalem Post, ‘Former Mossad chief warns Netanyahu’s ‘curse plan’ endangers Israel’s regional future – opinion’, 30 September 2024  https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-822472

[9] Bob Woodward, Rage, Simon & Schuster, 31 May 2021, https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/Rage/Bob-Woodward/9781471197741

[10] ibid.

[11] James Hohmann, The Washington Post, 16 September 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/09/16/daily-202-us-came-much-closer-war-with-north-korea-2017-than-public-knew-trump-told-woodward/

[12] Donald Trump, X, 13 June 2018 https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1006837823469735936

Peter Baker and Choe Sang-Hun, The New York Times, ‘Trump Sees End to North Korea Nuclear Threat Despite Unclear Path’, 13 June 2018 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/13/us/politics/trump-north-korea-denuclearization.html

[13] Mark Lander, The New York Times, ‘Trump Abandons Iran Nuclear Deal He Long Scorned’ 8 May 2018 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/world/middleeast/trump-iran-nuclear-deal.html

[14] AFP, The Times of Israel, ‘Trump says he thinks Israel should ‘hit’ Iran nuclear facilities’, 05 October 2024 https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/trump-says-he-thinks-israel-should-hit-iran-nuclear-facilities/

[15] Doreen Horschig, CSIS, ‘Why Striking Iranian Nuclear Facilities Is a Bad Idea’, 25 October 2024, https://www.csis.org/analysis/why-striking-iranian-nuclear-facilities-bad-idea