Though US President Donald Trump likely has greater concern for Israel than Ukraine, his de facto peace for both nations is transactional. In predictable obeisance to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the American president now expects Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to accept Ukraine’s tangible dismemberment in exchange for “collective defense.”
Like Trump’s assurances to Israel about Hamas disarmament and a Gaza “stabilization force,” this offer is manipulative and false. It also violates basic principles of authoritative international law, most notably those norms concerning rights of sovereignty and punishment of aggression.
In essence, Trump’s proposed peace for Ukraine is a validation of Russian war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity. Recalling the US-supported Nuremberg Principles (1946 and 1950), this initiative declares that even the most grievous international crimes should sometimes be rewarded. Remembering the Munich dismantling of Czechoslovakia in 1938, Trump’s proposal to Ukraine is abhorrent and indefensible.
There is more. Any coerced dismemberment of Ukraine would represent the first step toward future Russian aggressions. Significantly, these Nuremberg-level crimes could extend to NATO states, an extension that would raise the prospects of a genuine nuclear war. Could any reasoning observer believe that Trump would risk nuclear conflict with Russia on behalf of a victim state for which he hasn’t the slightest regard?
Putting both Ukraine and Israel in danger
Trump’s “peace” for Ukraine is a contradiction in terms. It calls for that persistently heroic state to accept its own annihilation. Credo quia absurdum, said the ancient philosopher Tertullian: “I believe because it is absurd.”
These issues are pertinent to Jerusalem. If you like the American president’s “peace” for Ukraine, you’ll love his “comprehensive plan” for Israel. To wit, by his recent agreements with Qatar and Turkey, and expanding financial relations with Saudi Arabia (some of them personal and familial), Trump has already clarified that Israel’s “qualitative edge” will no longer be Washington’s top regional priority.
There is more. Incrementally but uncompromisingly, Jerusalem should expect escalating pressures from the Trump administration to accept a Palestinian state. If Israel feels pressured to carve a relentless adversary from its own still-living body, it could suffer a fate similar to the one Trump plans for Ukraine.
World peace requires respect for world law. Under modern international rules, system-wide anarchy was confirmed at the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, but anarchy is now morphing into something much more ominous. With a wink and a nod from the White House, it is becoming chaos.
In Trump’s “peace” between Israel and Hamas, jihadi terrorists are being granted safe haven in Qatar. Guaranteed by the president’s new mutual defense agreement with Doha, jihadi terror criminals can expect immunization from Israeli retaliatory punishments in that Gulf state. Ipso facto, such lawless protections should also be expected by Islamist terrorists operating from Turkey, Syria, and Iraq.
Current US plans for peace will not help Israel. Although it is true that Trump-ordered preemptive strikes against Iranian hard targets were beneficial for Israel in the June 2025 conflict, the Islamic Republic is getting ready to fight on another day.
The dangers facing Israel
Among other things, an already-nuclear North Korea or Pakistan could, at some point, act as Tehran’s nuclear surrogate. While there is no scientific way to calculate war-scenario outcomes, there is nothing to suggest that Israel could ever survive a nuclear exchange with Pyongyang or Islamabad.
Trump has mused openly about nuclear weapons as usable instruments of war, not just elements of strategic deterrence. Putin has voiced similarly dangerous nuclear musings. Under Trump’s peace plan for Gaza, no action is contemplated against jihadism in any of its more insidious or recalibrating forms. Even a meaningful defeat of Hamas could do nothing to reduce the risk of radiation dispersal weapon attacks by jihadi elements in Sinai, the West Bank (Judea/Samaria), Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, or Yemen.
Trump’s plan for “stabilizing” Arab forces to govern Gaza would heighten the chances of a wider regional conflict. Does anyone plausibly expect that terror-supporting Islamic states (both Sunni and Shi’ite) would actively discourage Gaza deployments of such Hamas replacements? Does anyone reasonably deny that these injurious Trump policies toward Israel are a gift to Putin?
There is still more. Various interactions between catastrophic harms could render the risks of regional chaos more urgent. If Jerusalem should at some point have to face a jihadist state adversary with access to nuclear weapons, Israel’s strategic deterrence posture could be fatally undermined. In principle, at least, such a challenge would signify tangible threats of nuclear terrorism and nuclear war.
There are related questions of rationality. In world politics, irrationality is never the same as madness. An irrational adversary could, at some point, value certain intangible goals even more highly than national self-preservation. A mad adversary, on the other hand, would display no determinable preference ordering of any sort and thus not be subject to any calculable threats of deterrence.
Realistically, for Jerusalem, no analytic choice will be available. Whether Israel would prefer to confront irrationality, madness, or both together will not be Jerusalem’s decision.
Israel is not Ukraine, but it could still fall victim to a false peace contrived by Trump. Accordingly, Jerusalem should regard the US president’s law-crushing ultimatum to Ukraine as a direct warning. In words written portentously on medieval maps: Hic sunt dracones, “Here are dragons.”
The writer is an emeritus professor of international law at Purdue University and the author of many books and scholarly articles on international law, nuclear strategy, nuclear war, and terrorism, including Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; second edition, 2018).