Trump’s “Peace” Is Just Surrender—And That’s the Point

Justice has never been the goal—only obedience

What is the future for this Ukrainian woman?

What if Donald Trump brokers peace in Gaza and Ukraine? Would he deserve a Nobel Prize? Should my native Norway roll out the red carpet? Should the world celebrate?

The answer depends on what you think “peace” really means. Because here’s the hard truth: peace is easy—if you don’t care about justice.

Deport every Palestinian from Gaza, and you’ll have peace. Force Ukraine to surrender under U.S. and Russian pressure, and you’ll have peace. But what you won’t have is justice.

And that is the trick I fear too many will fall for. Trump—along with his enablers in the Republican Party—will claim victory if the bombs stop falling, no matter how it happens. They will paint the left as the warmongers for demanding that victims be able to stand up to their aggressors.

It is a con as old as history.

The Peace of the Oppressor

World War II wasn’t inevitable. It could have been avoided if Europe had simply kept giving Hitler what he wanted. The Rhineland? Sure. Austria? Of course. The Sudetenland? Why not? Czechoslovakia? Well, okay, just this once.

Then came Poland.

That’s when the world finally realized that “keeping the peace” wasn’t peace at all. It was surrender. That same logic applies today. The “peace” Trump and Putin want is no different from what Hitler wanted: complete submission by the weaker party.

Trump’s rhetoric about Ukraine makes this clear. “Well, you’ve been there for three years,” he told Ukrainian officials. “You should have ended it three years ago. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”

This is the logic of the abuser. If only you hadn’t resisted, you wouldn’t have gotten hurt. If you’d just let the bully take your lunch money, you wouldn’t have been punched in the face.

Or, to put it more bluntly: if the victim had just agreed to be raped, it wouldn’t have been rape at all. We cannot frame the act of resistance as the problem.

And of course, Trump sees the world this way. He is a bully. He is, according to a jury, a rapist. He understands power, not justice. His instincts are always to sympathize with the strong, the oppressor, the one who takes what they want. That’s why he admires Putin, Xi, and every other dictator.

Breaking the Will to Fight

For Ukraine, Trump’s hostility is more than a policy shift—it is a gut punch. When you are a small nation caught between superpowers, morale matters as much as weapons.

Finland learned this the hard way when it stood alone against the Soviet Union in 1939. They fought heroically. They inflicted devastating losses on Stalin’s Red Army. But in the end, they were alone. No one came to help. And so they lost.

Finland’s price for “peace” was brutal.

• 20% of its industrial capacity? Gone.

• 12% of its farmland? Seized.

• 10% of its population? Displaced.

• Reparations to the Soviet Union worth 20% of its GDP.

That’s what peace looks like when you have no allies. That is the future Trump offers Ukraine.

Already, Ukrainians are starting to lose hope. Some are considering leaving the country altogether. This is how Trump “wins” peace—not through diplomacy, but through demoralization.

And this is what Republicans will sell as a triumph. A “peace” that comes from beating Ukraine into submission. A “peace” that forces the oppressed to accept their oppression.

Trump’s America Is a Global Threat

Republicans love to call Trump a “peace president.” But what kind of peace president threatens military force to seize Greenland? What kind of peace president openly fantasizes about invading Venezuela?

Trump is not a peacemaker—he is a predator. And the only thing worse than a strongman with dreams of conquest is a strongman in control of a nuclear-armed superpower.

Let’s not kid ourselves: Trump wields more raw power than Hitler ever did.

• Hitler faced the combined might of Britain, France, the USSR, and the United States.

• Trump rules over the world’s only true superpower.

• The U.S. military has 1,000 bases across 80 countries.

• No single nation—or coalition of nations—can challenge America’s military supremacy.

If the United States descends into fascism, the world will be at its mercy.

We worry about China’s rise. We should be just as terrified of America’s unchecked power.