U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the Trump administration’s foreign policy is based on restraint and realism. But U.S. foreign policy actions across the world suggest a lack of understanding for what the concept means in practice. Restraint values diplomatic engagement over military coercion and domination. so don’t be fooled by Pompeo’s hollow language. The latest video from the Quincy Institute explains:
The aerial war between Israel and Iran over the past two weeks sucked most of the world’s attention away from the war in Ukraine.
The Hague NATO Summit confirms that President Donald Trump now sees paying for the war as Europe’s problem. It’s less clear that he will have the patience to keep pushing for peace.
One of the biggest diplomatic casualties of Israel and Iran’s aerial war was U.S. focus on and media coverage of the war in Ukraine. Despite continued exchanges of dead bodies and prisoners of war, there has been no further progress in peace talks between both sides that commenced in Istanbul in early June.
However, there has been talk of a third round of talks as early as next week. Before then, The Hague NATO Summit offered an opportunity to keep Ukraine on the U.S. radar. It didn't quite happen that way.
Instead, if the NATO Summit showed any real purpose, it was to lock in European allies’ commitment to spend 5% of GDP on defense, a key priority for President Trump since he assumed office.
Mission accomplished. With the exception of Spain, NATO allies have now made that commitment.
Chipper as ever, NATO Secretary General, Mark Rutte, sent a message to President Trump, so eye-wateringly obsequious that it might even make some pro-war neocons cringe and reach for a sick bag. “Mr President, dear Donald… you have driven us to a really, really important moment for America and Europe, and the world. You will achieve something NO American president in decades could get done.” He was then chided for making remarks like he was calling Trump "daddy" at the summit.
But there was nevertheless no escaping the feeling that Ukraine has fallen some way down Trump’s priority list, and therefore NATO’s.
While the 2024 Washington Summit Communique ran to over 5300 words rich in normative intent and bureaucratic babble, the 2025 Hague Summit Declaration ran to a pithy 425 words focused almost exclusively on the NATO spending goal.
Whereas, the Washington Communique said, “we will continue to support it [Ukraine] on its irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership,” The Hague Declaration did not, which has already been seized upon as a softening of NATO’s stance by some mainstream commentators.
European ire was further provoked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s indication that the U.S. would not support further Russia sanctions at this time.
The declaration simply said, “Allies reaffirm their enduring sovereign commitments to provide support to Ukraine, whose security contributes to ours, and, to this end, will include direct contributions towards Ukraine's defence and its defence industry when calculating Allies' defence spending.”
For those not familiar with interpreting the subtleties of communique language, this language said two things. First, including the word “sovereign” means that while some allies may make sovereign choices to fund Ukraine, others may choose not to.
This is a clear indication of what we have observed for some time, that President Trump sees paying for the Ukraine war as Europe’s problem, not America’s. Second, and more obviously, that funding for Ukraine can contribute to Allies’ 5% target although, at least for the UK, this is already the case.
During their meeting, it is understood that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked President Trump about the possibility of purchasing additional Patriot missiles. While Trump was non-committal on this point, it appears clear that any future Ukrainian purchases of American military materiel, if they happen, will in any case be made with European money.
For his part, Rutte appears single handedly trying to keep the European gravy train chugging forward. Speaking ahead of the Summit, he referred to pledges of $35 billion in additional support to Ukraine so far this year without providing specifics.
However, we do know that over half of the earlier April pledge of $24 billion included funds from Germany to be paid over 4 years. In reality, therefore, NATO has only, so far, secured a maximum total of $22 billion for 2025, adding further pressure to Ukraine’s huge war financing needs.
What we haven’t seen in The Hague is any impetus behind efforts to bring the war in Ukraine to a close. Instead, and on the back of a Hague Declaration that rowed back any condemnation of Russia, Sir Keir Starmer continues to insist that allies remain resolved to “push again to get Putin to the table for the unconditional ceasefire.”
Like the proverbial scratched record, the British Prime Minister still believes that with U.S. offering no new money, with Ukraine continuing to lose ground on the battlefield, and with Europe struggling to make up the difference, that Russia will make unconditional concessions from a position of strength.
For his part, President Zelensky has not given up on his aspiration for Ukraine to join NATO which renders any peace deal, and possibly any durable ceasefire with Russia, impossible.
If the Hague Summit proved one thing, it may have been that getting European allies to spend more on defense is a bigger priority to President Trump than bringing peace to Ukraine. More focussed on the conflict in the Middle East, President Trump has once again conceded the difficulty of bringing the war in Ukraine to an end.
“It's more difficult than people would have any idea,” he said. “Vladimir Putin has been more difficult, and frankly, I had some problems with Zelensky, you might have read about them. It’s been more difficult than other wars.”
One thing is clear, U.S. defense contractors will arguably benefit the most from The Hague Summit. To hit 5% of GDP, Britain would need to increase its spending by around $114 billion per year by 2035 and Germany has already pledged to hit the 5% target six years early, in 2029, hiking spending by $128 billion per year.
To kick off the spending spree, the UK has agreed to purchase twelve of the most modern F35A aircraft at a cost of $700 million. The F-35A is capable of delivering U.S. provided B61 nuclear bombs that were first designed in 1963. Keeping us safer, in this regard, relies on aircraft being able to fly far enough into Russia through its sophisticated air defences, to deliver a gravity nuclear bomb to target.
The most recent upgrade to the B61, during the Obama Administration, involved addition of a tail assembly to provide limited stand-off capability; it was so over-priced that every Sixties-era nuke is now worth more than its weight in gold, perhaps, the perfect allegory for Western defence spending.
With the fanfare of The NATO Summit starting to subside, the big question now is how much patience President Trump will have to push a peace agenda in Ukraine now that European allies have stepped up to spend more and buy American kit? My worry is, not much.
Eighty years ago, on June 26, 1945, the United Nations Charter was signed in San Francisco. But you wouldn’t know it if you listened to European governments today.
After two devastating global military conflicts, the Charter explicitly aimed to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” And it did so by famously outlawing the use of force in Article 2(4). The only exceptions were to be actions taken in self-defense against an actual or imminent attack and missions authorized by the U.N. Security Council to restore collective security.
And yet, after the United States bombed Iran’s nuclear program last weekend, the leaders of the E3 countries (the United Kingdom, France and Germany) released a joint statement that made no reference to international law, let alone the U.N. Charter whose 80th anniversary was just days away. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s post on X mentioned the risks of a nuclear Iran and the need for regional stability ahead of respect for international law, almost as if the latter were an afterthought.
When Russia launched its war of aggression against Ukraine in 2022, European leaders most certainly did not underline the need to preserve stability on the European continent above all else. Russia’s illegal invasion of its neighbor was seen as an attack on Europe itself and on everything that it stood for. A herculean effort was undertaken to punish Moscow and provide Kyiv with military assistance, financial support, and a path toward joining the West. EU leaders have even endorsed the establishment of a special tribunal to try Russia for the crime of aggression.
Due to pressure from the Trump administration, European decisionmakers have finally come around to the idea of a ceasefire in Ukraine. But after three years of war and hundreds of thousands of dead, they are still not prepared for a veritable and unavoidable compromise. Ukraine’s right to join NATO is still defended in many circles as a matter of principle, even though the administration ruling it out has rendered the entire discussion a moot point. Sanctions cannot be lifted while Russian troops remain on Ukrainian soil, even partially as a means of advancing a delicate peace process.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we were told, left the world a binary choice: either fight to preserve the “rules-based international order” or enter a dangerous new reality defined by the “law of the jungle.”
To be fair, the “rules-based order” was always a deliberately opaque term, designed to allow a subset of states to dictate the terms of legitimate interstate behavior. But while the U.S. under Joe Biden conceived of this order as a bloc with both proponents and opponents, the Europeans seemed to view it more earnestly as a neutral description of the post-World War II global system based on multilateralism, international law, and the peaceful resolution of disputes.
Unfortunately, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exposed — and deepened — Europe’s dependence on the United States for its security. This came after the EU’s worsening ties with Russia in the years prior to the war had already illustrated the tension between Brussels’ desire to “speak the language of power” while remaining a normative actor. As a matter of principle, no third country could exercise a veto over the EU and Ukraine pursuing mutually beneficial cooperation — but what if such cooperation exacerbated security tensions on the continent and was, therefore, of dubious strategic utility?
Three years ago, Brussels elites were patting themselves on the back over the resurgence of transatlantic unity and the EU’s newfound status as a “geopolitical actor.” Unbeknownst to them, they were actually laying the groundwork for the world to roll their eyes at any European reference to the “rules-based international order.” That European leaders continue to fall in line with the U.S. despite the major (and crudely manifested) rift that has opened up between them under Trump speaks volumes.
Going forward, appeals to international norms in the case of Ukraine will carry far less water. It has become clear as day that European governments refuse to compromise on Ukraine not to uphold universal principles, but rather because of their perceived security (and status-related) interests and fears. Ironically, this will come at the expense of Europe’s ability to get much of the rest of the world on board for its strategy of isolating Russia and increasing pressure on Vladimir Putin to compromise.
Twenty months of Israeli violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza have not prompted a significant break in relations between Jerusalem and European capitals. In that case, at least one could argue that Hamas was systematically violating the laws of war as well. But Israel’s attack on Iran was a clear-cut violation of international law — a preventive rather than pre-emptive war, aimed at averting an unfavorable security situation in the future rather than thwarting an imminent threat. In that sense, it was not entirely dissimilar from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which ostensibly aimed to halt Kyiv’s deepening ties with NATO.
All too often, we hear that the existence of a rules-based international order is the sine qua non of a European Union that itself is a rules-based organization composed of 27 equal member states. Yet Europe’s evident double standard in responding to the events of the past three years has laid bare its contradictory aspirations and the rudderlessness of its foreign policy.
With the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Russia’s more recent assault on Ukraine, the great powers have set a precedent that rising middle powers appear all too happy to emulate. To help reverse this trend, European governments will need to condemn violations of international law more consistently. They should also consider rallying a global coalition behind an effort to forge new and tighter international norms to regulate the use of force — a campaign that would also offer an opportunity to reset relations with Global South states that have been alienated by Europe’s response to the war in Ukraine.
Moreover, in recent years, countries such as Azerbaijan and Israel have succeeded in demonstrating that conflicts that high-minded internationalists insisted only had a political solution may have a military solution after all. It is imperative that Europe lead by example in sending a message to the world that diplomacy, rather than military coercion, represents the best way to achieve one’s political goals.
If Europe were more open to a genuine compromise peace with Russia — one that compartmentalizes disagreements but reaffirms key international norms — this would affirm quite powerfully that negotiations, rather than territorial gains, offer the most reliable means of guaranteeing one’s core security interests. Successful negotiations would also help to avert a decades-long cold war that risks going hot — and dealing the final blow to the world that the U.N. Charter envisioned in the process.
In a startling turn of events in the Israel-Iran war, six hours after Iran attacked the Al Udeid Air Base— the largest U.S. combat airfield outside of the U.S., and home of the CENTCOM Forward Headquarters — President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire in the 12-day war, quickly taking effect over the subsequent 18 hours. Defying predictions that the Iranian response to the U.S. attack on three nuclear facilities could start an escalatory cycle, the ceasefire appears to be holding. For now.
While the bombing may have ceased, calls for regime change have not. President Trump has backtracked on his comments, but other influential voices have not. John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, said Tuesday that regime change must still happen, “…because this is about the regime itself… Until the regime itself is gone, there is no foundation for peace and security in the Middle East.” These sentiments are echoed by many others to include, as expected, Reza Pahlavi, exiled son of the deposed shah.
Yet for many Iranians, regime change would represent a profound betrayal of their long-held democratic aspirations through peaceful protests. It also raises several uncomfortable but necessary questions: What person or what organizations are ready to govern the day after, and is there a viable roadmap for what comes next?
The answer, according to leading Iran scholars and analysts, is bleak.
“Absolutely no one,” says Hamid Dabashi, professor of Iranian Studies at Columbia University.
“The monarchists and the Mojahedin are positively despised by the overwhelming majority of the Iranian population with no grassroots support,” he adds. “Despite a significant opposition to the ruling regime, it is still widely and passionately popular among many others.”
The vacuum left by the regime’s collapse would not be filled by democratic forces, but likely by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the military organization dedicated to regime control and survival, or violent power struggles.
And yet, external promoters of regime change — from exiled elites to Western think tanks — continue to push a fantasy of democratization-by-collapse. They fail to answer the most basic questions: Who forms the interim authority? What coalition can command legitimacy across Iran’s deeply diverse and fractured society? How is order maintained in the days and weeks following the fall of the current regime?
Without consensus on even the basic norms of democratic governance, the opposition remains paralyzed and ill-prepared to step in if the regime collapses.
As foreign intervention again becomes a tool of Western policy, more Iranians are invoking the legacy of Mohammad Mosaddegh, the democratically elected prime minister overthrown in a CIA- and MI6-backed coup in 1953. That act of foreign interference cleared the path for decades of autocratic rule, first by the Pahlavi monarchy and eventually by the Islamic Republic itself. If the lesson of Mosaddegh means anything today, it is that externally engineered regime change often backfires and ends in more repression.
Beyond the leadership vacuum lies an even more volatile threat: the fragmentation of the Iranian state. Iran is a multi-ethnic society, and the sudden collapse of central authority could trigger a surge in secessionist movements among the Kurds, Balochis and Azeris. These groups have legitimate historical grievances, but they also risk becoming pawns in a larger geopolitical struggle.
“This is quite serious,” warns Dabashi. “These groups have legitimate grievances against the central government that have been put to illegitimate ends by Israel financing and arming them. They will remain legitimate only so far as they demand and exact their rights within the Iranian polity — the instant they raise the Israeli flag, get weapons from them, and side with the invaders of their own homeland they become illegitimate bandits.”
Neighboring countries will not stand idly by. Turkey, Syria and Iraq are likely to resist any Kurdish independence efforts, while Pakistan will fiercely oppose Baloch separatism. Azerbaijan’s meddling in Iran’s Azeri-populated regions could provoke confrontation. In the wake of its victory against Armenia in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, Baku’s irrendenstist rhetoric has sparked fury across Iran. On November 10, 2022, a private Azerbaijani TV channel sent a message to Iranian Azerbaijanis: “Your path is the path of justice. In this path, we stand by your side. We are with you until the end.” Images of the Khudafarin Bridge connecting the Azerbaijan border with Iran through the Araz River were shown in the background.
These dynamics raise the specter of regional war fueled by proxy militias, with Iran as the battlefield.
As noted earlier, the one force poised to fill the void is the IRGC. With a nationwide infrastructure and command over both military and economic assets, the IRGC may emerge as the de facto ruling power.
“IRGC at its core is a guerrilla operation,” Dabashi says. “One consequence of this Israeli invasion might in fact be a military coup in Iran by the IRGC rather than a democratic government.”
Thomas Warrick, former senior adviser in the U.S. State Department, concurs.
“The most likely ‘winner’ if the present government collapses would be a military dictatorship (‘election by coup’) by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which is the best-armed, and far away the richest actor in Iranian politics,” says Warrick, who also served as deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism policy. “They would likely install a figurehead religious leader to give their rule the mantle of legitimacy. But the level of internal repression would likely increase. This is not the only possible outcome, but it is the most probable unless outside forces intervene — which is unlikely at the moment.”
That scenario would amount not to liberation, but to a change in autocrats, from clerics in robes to generals in fatigues, propping up a new Ayatollah not only dependent on the IRGC for his security but also for his position.
And the international community must be prepared for any such possibilities. There is no historical precedent, Dabashi warns, for violent regime collapse in Iran or the broader Middle East leading directly to democratization.
“You cannot bomb, destroy and slaughter people to democracy,” he says.
Nor can Iran count on popular mobilization for change. The Arab Spring uprisings in 2010 and 2011 were characterized by protests and armed rebellions, and led to the overthrow of regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. Yet the 2009 Iranian Green movement prompted by allegations of election fraud against reformist Mir-Hossein Mousavi was quashed by Iranian security forces. Subsequent movements such as the 2019 Bloody November movement protesting the rise in fuel prices and the recent (and ongoing) Mahsa Amani protests have been met with more heavy-handed crackdowns and large-scale killings, to include executions, by authorities.
Iran is fertile ground for popular mobilization as a means of regime change. Yet, while the regime is unpopular, high inflation wreaks havoc among families and cultural warfare divides the theocracy and the people, such mobilization still faces a multi-layer security apparatus dedicated to regime perpetuation and political repression. Until there are visible signs of fractures in the Basij, the Iranian Army and/or the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the current regime is unlikely to change.
Still, many Iranians long for change. As Massoumeh Torfeh, an Iran specialist at the London School of Economics, notes, “Regime change is a deeply misguided idea. It may be what 80 percent of Iranians desire, but without a credible opposition or a unifying leadership figure, there is no viable alternative on the horizon” — at least before the passing of the Supreme Leader, 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
What is needed now is a reassessment of U.S. and Israeli policies toward Iran. Bombing campaigns and regime decapitation strategies have failed time and again in the region, from Iraq to Libya to Syria. Each time, they created new vacuums filled not by representative institutions, but by violence, warlordism and foreign interference. The lessons from these misadventures are clear: the plan for the day after is far more important than the war plans themselves.
In both the U.S. and Israel, recent comments from the Israeli defense minister and President Trump seem to indicate a willingness for regime change (even while positions seem to change daily) but they have offered absolutely no evidence that their teams have made serious efforts to develop plans to address “the day after.” This is not George Santayana’s “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Or an oft stated definition of insanity as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” This is worse. Those senior government officials and influential voices who still call for regime change when an opportunity for a return to diplomacy exists are committing egregious professional malpractice.
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