Responsible Statecraft:

By DANIEL BRUMBERG

While Donald Trump has repeatedly bragged that he can end international conflicts in days, he is clearly frustrated that global leaders are not bending to his will. Only last week, he said that he is “angry” that Moscow has not offered a Ukraine deal and that he might impose secondary “tariffs” on Russian oil sales. He also warned that if Iran doesn’t “make a deal, there will be bombing.”

This lashing out is not part of some grand “madman” strategy. Rather, it is a product of Trump’s apparent need to project power. The trick is to know how to reward that projection: Putin’s commissioning of a portrait of Trump — which his personal Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, claims the Russian leader asked him to deliver to the president — paints a vivid example of the nature and perhaps limits of such strategic flattery.

Iran’s Supreme Leader would never stoop to such antics. Still, it is possible that Ayatollah Khamenei understands that his negotiators might use Trump’s abiding need to display his global acumen to get American concessions on a nuclear deal. Because Trump’s volatility can open doors or blow them up just as quickly, international leaders — and his own advisers — are constantly struggling to manage (or exploit) an approach to the world that lacks any coherent strategy or even tactics.

Thus, it is hardly surprising that while Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian insisted after Trump’s latest threat that “th[e] path for indirect negotiations remains open,” an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leader warned that American troops deployed “at least ten bases -around Iran” are “sitting inside a glass room.” Grappling with his impulse-driven foreign policy, Trump’s rivals find it difficult to get any sense of his bottom line.

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