Two months after the Operation Midnight Hammer strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities and the ceasefire with Israel that soon followed, President Trump has once again upended conventional foreign policy wisdom. After years of escalatory rhetoric, moral posturing and seemingly endless funding packages, Trump’s twin high-profile summits with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders in Washington offer the clearest road map yet to finally end the tragic war in Ukraine.

And perhaps the toughest part for the foreign policy establishment to swallow: It would come to pass not in spite of Trump’s nationalist “America First” instincts, but because of them.

Three and a half years after Putin’s February 2022 invasion,

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