Timothy Naftali
A U.S. president was trying to end an exceptionally violent war between Russia and its neighbor. He also had clear preferences on which side he admired more. “I like the Russians,” the president wrote. But the American people favored the other side, and, as a result, he noted, Washington needed to be “scrupulous in its impartiality between the combatants.” The president was Theodore Roosevelt, and the war was between Russia and Japan. U.S. neutrality, combined with Russia’s and Japan’s respect for Roosevelt and American power, allowed the White House to mediate an end to that bloody war in 1905. For his efforts, Roosevelt would become the first U.S. president to earn a Nobel Peace Prize.
More than a century later, another U.S. president is seeking to end another bloody war involving Russia and a neighboring country. Even more than Roosevelt, President Donald Trump favors the Russians in this war, while again most Americans support the other side. Trump has also made clear that he regards ending the war in Ukraine as a crucial goal for his presidency and that in bringing the two sides together, he, too, hopes to win a Nobel Peace Prize—adding to a hallowed U.S. tradition of presidential peacemaking. But this time, the path forward is far less certain. During his campaign, Trump promised he could end the war in 24 hours. Despite much maneuvering by the White House, however, the first hundred days of Trump’s second administration have come and gone with little prospect of the fighting ending soon. The administration has reached a separate deal with Ukraine, announced on April 30, to give the United States a stake in Ukraine’s mineral resources, but although the agreement is meant to signal U.S. investment in Ukraine’s future, it appears largely unrelated to the more pressing question of its war-torn present. All of which suggests that Trump has taken a very different approach to mediation from that of his predecessors.
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