Donald Trump is already on course to fulfill a primary promise of his campaign: end the war in Ukraine, and prevent a more dangerous broader conflict.

Examining the landscape and the body language, it’s apparent that Trump doesn’t care about Ukraine one way or the other beyond what benefit it could bring to the United States.

He has been clearly concerned that the conflict, either through miscalculation or accident, could spin out of control into World War III.  

So, as he and Putin prepare to meet in Riyadh to end the conflict that has killed some 150,000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers and damaged the lives and fortunes or millions of others, Trump intends to stop the fighting, end the barbaric killing. 

Not everyone is happy.  There are going to be winners and losers. 

His primary ally is Putin, whom he respects as the head of Russia, a leading nuclear power and a country with numerous interests shared with the U.S., including control of nuclear weapons; the space race; control of technology and A.I.; and, longer-term, dealing with the more intractable Chinese threat. 

Trump enjoys the mutual respect of Putin, who is faced at some level with the anger of thousands of gold star mothers, thus giving Trump the ability to leverage that relationship to end the war. 

This is Kissinger-level big-boy politics that understands and accepts the reality of raw global power to deal with the world’s problem.  This is the same Henry Kissinger, you may recall, who took his right-wing Republican boss Richard Nixon to meet and greet the greatest mass murderer in history.

Trump is no fool.  He figures that if he can help Putin wiggle out of his disaster, Putin will owe him big, and Trump will find a way to gain control of the rare earth minerals in Ukraine. 

The hapless Western Europeans have maneuvered themselves into secondary status in all of this.  So Trump is pretty much ignoring them.  He recently strengthened relations with India and Japan, two major Asian powers. He is already close to South Korea as well as other Southeast Asian countries, including Vietnam, which openly fears China. 

So place the pins on the map, and bingo: you begin to see what Trump is up to. 

In South America, Trump is going to retake control of the Panama Canal, pushing the Chinese out, and find ways to roll back other Chinese initiatives in the region, à la the Monroe Doctrine.  That was the genius of appointing my old acquaintance Marco Rubio as secretary of state.  It keeps Marco busy in a constructive manner and protects Trump’s flank with Hispanic voters.

Like a coiled cobra, China is the ultimate threat.  But the Chinese are also pragmatic.  Xi also respects Trump.  They are both strongmen.  They understand each other. 

Meanwhile in the Middle East, Iran and the Palestinians are still to be dealt with.  I suspect that Pete is making plans now.  At this point, I would not bet on the long-term health of the mullahs’ regime during the Trump era.

Also under Trump, the Palestinians could be swept away into history.  Trump has already ordered two killer strikes at radical Islamic targets.  He now views Gaza, which represents the total failure of a so-called two-state solution, as a real estate play.  The Palestinians had their chance and blew it. 

This brings us to the Saudis, who will be expected to provide the funds and financial leverage to get the Egyptians and the Jordanians to play along.  The Saudis have their own dream of building a new super-civilization in the desert in harmony with Israel, as outlined in Netanyahu’s speech last year at the U.N.

In the meantime, Netanyahu has been given carte blanche to deal with the Palestinians without any restrictions from Washington.  It’s a brave new world.

Former spy, foreign correspondent, and international businessman Frank Hawkins is the author of the novels The Zurich Printout and Ritter’s Gold and co-author of the hilarious novel $ea Weed, written together with his daughter Liv.  Frank and his wife Inge live adjacent to the Everglades in a space they share with an alligator they call Fred.

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