Trump and World Peace: Can he Help save the World?  

Trump and World Peace: Can he Help save the World?

      By Eno Udo

US President Donald Trump is one of the classic and archetypal existentialist heroes who always believe they can single-handedly save the world.
As the 47th president of the United States, he now has the world at his feet. But what will he make of it?
Already, he is a man with the Midas touch, especially in the business sphere, who wants to reach out to touch the skies. Everything he touches seems to turn to gold but can he touch the world with peace?
In fact Trump has achieved a lot of ‘firsts’, be it for good or bad reasons. He is the first US president to be convicted and the first billionaire-president.
More than that, he is a perfect fit of the saying that ‘you cannot kill the beetle.’ One Jesus Rivera and his colleagues actually tested the saying by deliberately running a car over a beetle and found out to their surprise that it was not crushed. Trump is a beetle, having surmounted the various attacks and pulldown-syndrome against him. Not many politicians would have survived what Trump faced in the last few years. He even cheated death and survived an assassination attempt on his life. No wonder Time magazine conferred on him the 2024 Man of the Year Award.
As a man full of ideas and whose son calls him a genius, Trump has a lot up his sleeves to surprise the world. At a point before September 11, 2001, he had planned to have the world’s tallest building but had to jettison it after he saw the attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre. At present, he has the fourth tallest building in the US – the 98-floor Trump Tower in Chicago, constructed in 1991, and a litany of skyscrapers around the world.
Having achieved a lot on the domestic front, he is back on the world stage where peace is the ultimate he now must achieve. But can he?

First Presidency
Antecedents from his first presidency (January, 2017- January, 2021) could provide far-reaching and deep insights into what to expect from his second term. Perhaps no American president had ever been subjected to such unprecedented mudslinging and vitriolic attacks as much as Trump faced in his first presidency. But he stoically weathered them. Even the media were against him with vituperation. There was a cacophony of voices that Trump would lead the world to catastrophy. They said he would cause wars and destruction. But did he? No, not any that anybody could pinpoint at the end of his first term
In his first presidency, Trump did not open any war front. Apart from isolated cases of taking out individuals he perceived as terrorists against the US, his term saw less of militarism. He took what he said was a preemptive killing of Iran’s General Quesem Soleimani on January 3, 2020. Before then, he hunted down ISIS leader Abu Bakr-Baghadadi on October 20, 2019. However, Trump was not trigger-happy as most of his critics had feared. If he were, he would probably have attacked North Korea in 2017 and Iran on June 24, 2019. At the onset of his first presidency he had a war of words with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. At that time, Kim was sabre-rattling so much so that an infuriated Trump had to call him the ‘little rocket man.’ But at the end of the day, both leaders warmed up to each other and were exchanging ‘love letters’. Why was the fear that Trump would cause wars? Both leaders even met on three occasions. As a demonstration of peace, Trump symbolically stepped on North Korean land , over the demilitarization line, at the border with South Korea. It was a gesture no American president had ever done.
Trump extended similar goodwill to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to the chagrin of most Americans. Until the coming of Trump, every American president perceived Russia as an archenemy. But he was different and had no mistrust of Russia. Americans were incensed to see him opening up to Putin. For more than a century, Americans have built a pathological hatred for Russia, but Trump did change all that world outlook.
While Trump is brash, brazen and outrightly audacious, he has compassion and milk of human kindness. Compassion stopped him from raining missiles on Iran on June 24, 2019 when he would have launched a reprisal attack after Iran shot down a US surveillance drone built at $130million. All was set for the reprisals and 66 sites had been selected to be hit to symbolise the 66 American embassy staff held hostage for about a year at the start of the Iranian Islamic revolution in 1979. But just 10 minutes to the countdown, he called off the operation on the grounds that. His reason? Had that mission gone ahead, at least 150 Iranians would have been killed, whereas no American life was lost in the downing of the surveillance drone. If that was not the highest demonstration of compassion, then what else could it be? If that did not portray him as a man of peace, then what was it? But the world never saw his actions from the perspective of peace making. In fact, the world was deliberately blind to all the good deeds of Trump.
In his quest for world peace, Trump got four Arab nations to recognise Israel. After Egypt had recognised Israel in 1979 and Jordan followed suit in 1994, the rest bluntly refused to recognise Israel. But he came along and got United Arab Emirates to sign an accord named ‘Abraham’ with Israel on September 15, 2020. Bahrain also signed to it in October 2020 and Morocco did same on December 10, 2020. Sudan also agreed to the accord even before Morocco. But how many of his critics did acknowledge the feat of brokering peace between Israel and the Arab countries?
It must be noted that the Middle East, particularly the Arab-Israeli conflicts, has been the greatest flashpoint in the world. Therefore, for him to have brought additional four Arab states to recognise Israel was a huge diplomatic breakthrough to enhancing world peace that should have been enough to earn him a Nobel Peace Prize. But he was overlooked for the award.
Also he was behind the agreement between Egypt and Ethiopia over the dam the latter built on the Nile River. Egypt has always warned that it would go to war with any nation that obstructs the flow of the river. Nile is an enormous source of life for Egypt. Therefore, when Ethiopia began constructing a hydroelectric power dam on it, Egypt considered it a belligerent action and declaration of war. But Trump intervened to work out an agreement between them. If that was not peace-building, what was it then?

Second Presidency
With the second coming of Trump as the US president, will the world experience more peace? For a start, he had said that should he be president again, he would end the Ukraine-Russia War in one day. Was it a mere boast? But he has been stringent about it. He also said if he had been in office as at February 24, 2022, when that war started, it would not have occurred. He equally added on a chilling note that should he not be back in the White House, the war will snowball into the Third World War.
Ending the war in Ukraine is one of his foreign policy thrusts and the warring parties are already hopeful he can achieve it. Should he get it through, he would not only have stopped more bloodshed in the war, but also send a strong message to perpetrators of other ongoing wars such as in Sudan, DRC Congo, Myanmar and Gaza that would futher lead to world peace. Should he achieve an end to the war in Ukraine, he would most likely be a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.
In his second presidency, it is most likely he would convince more Arab nations, notably Saudi Arabia, to recognise Israel. As already mentioned, the Arab-Israeli conflicts are, perhaps, the most destabilising to world peace.
Trump has always been an achiever and the world awaits to see if he can bring about global peace..
However, while he might save the world from bloodletting wars, he is already beating the drums of trade wars where tariffs would be the weapons. That will not cost lives though, but would definitely affect the economies of some countries. He has threatened trade wars with Canada, China, Panama, Greenland, and Denmark within a few days of his second presidency. Already, the World Trade Organization has warned that the trade wars he is threatening would harm global economy. But Trump is embarking on such wars for America’s national interest and feels justified. They are no bloody wars, no explosives, no soldiers, just tariffs. Economic interest is paramount to any nation and that is what Trump wants to achieve for the US with his looming trade wars.

*Enọ Udo, a veteran journalist, is editor of WatchmanPost