19 November 2025

America’s Quasi Alliances

Rebecca Lissner

During his successful 2024 U.S. presidential campaign, Donald Trump assured voters that he would end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, perhaps even before taking office. But both conflicts dragged on at great human cost, and diplomacy proceeded only in fits and starts. Nine months into his presidency, Trump finally brokered a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas—but only after presiding over the breakdown of the truce he inherited from President Joe Biden and an escalating humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The war in Ukraine, meanwhile, continues unabated.

These challenges are not unique to Trump; they bedeviled Biden, too.

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