Vance: Is Trump “aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now”?
It was Friday evening, and I was enjoying dinner at a French restaurant in the West Village when I made the mistake of opening my Sidechat app. It was filled with comments expressing concern over how Immigrations and Customs Enforcement had entered Columbia dormitories. I would later find out that ICE had detained Mahmoud Khalil, a student activist and recent graduate of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. The Khalil situation is not only a free speech controversy; it illuminates the blatant hypocrisy in President Donald Trump’s modus operandi as a paleoconservative realist on Ukraine, but a neoconservative war-hawk on the Middle East, severely damaging his credibility as the anti-war candidate.
For Ukraine, the president generally advocates against US and NATO interventionism, and for an understanding of the emerging multipolar world order. In his clash with Zelenskyy last month, Trump harshly rebuked the leader for “gambling with World War III”.
Trump has long been critical of US interventionism, also in areas not directly related to Russia such as the Iraq War. During his first term, he was the first president since Jimmy Carter not to have entered American troops into a new conflict. This is all laudable. But Trump also has a penchant for Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and for the Russian elite. In 2008, his son Donald Jr. claimed that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot” of the assets of the Trump Organisation. Unveiling his “Gold Card” scheme for wealthy foreign nationals in February 2025, the president himself claimed that he knew “some Russian oligarchs that are very nice people”.
For the sake of argument, let us assume that Trump is operating in good faith regarding Ukraine. While it is difficult to wholeheartedly support the brash manner in which Trump treated Zelenskyy during his state visit, America and its neoconservative foreign policy has been no saint in stopping the advent of this conflict. Scholars such as John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs have written extensively about how the US orchestrated a coup d’état in Ukraine in 2013-2014, ousting democratically-elected President Viktor Yanukovych in favour of pro-Western leader Oleksandr Turchynov. Then-Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland even made a phone call outlining aspects of this plan.
Yet, on the Middle East, Trump has taken a markedly different approach. One of his first executive actions was the suspension of foreign aid, though Israel and Egypt were exempt. Two weeks later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the first foreign leader to visit the White House. During a joint press conference with his Israeli counterpart, Trump unveiled a plan for a “Middle Eastern Riviera” in Gaza that would necessitate the expulsion of all Palestinians from the territory.
It is true that Trump has backtracked on this plan following pushback from multiple Arab states, but his general Middle East stance remains unchanged. He has relentlessly targeted the Houthi leadership in Yemen, arguably going even further than his predecessor, Joe Biden. The official White House social media pages have touted Biden’s response to the Houthis as weak, and in Trump’s words, “IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!”
Paleoconservative isolationism and “America First” cannot legitimately apply to Ukraine and not the Middle East. Throughout the 2024 election campaign, the president portrayed himself as a “peace candidate”. He sent his daughter Tiffany’s father-in-law, Lebanese billionaire Massad Boulos, to reach out to Arab-Americans, who went on to abandon the Democratic Party in record numbers in key states like Michigan.
Trump’s abandonment of peace in the Middle East is impacting our freedoms here in America. My Columbia peer Khalil never committed any crime, did not participate in the encampments in Spring 2024, and has a Green Card. The White House is nonetheless attempting to deport him for countering the foreign policy interests of the US. It has also successfully pressured Columbia University into penalising anti-Zionism.
That said, the president’s own movement certainly embodies a more paleoconservative understanding of the world. Take one of Trump’s closest confidants and arguably the chief voice of the populist MAGA movement, Tucker Carlson. While Carlson is not without controversy, a quick scroll through his X account will reveal his total opposition to Western involvement in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, his endorsement of leftist figures like Glenn Greenwald who advocate against the projection of US global hegemony, and his harsh criticism of Israel.
On 17 March, Carlson took to X, writing that, “It’s worth pointing out that a strike on the Iranian nuclear sites will almost certainly result in thousands of American deaths” and that “A bombing campaign against Iran will set off a war, and it will be America’s war”. Carlson is representing the voices of the many Americans who voted for the president as someone who would take on the foreign policy establishment, foster change, and forge peace. Anti-terrorism is a legitimate objective. War with a power like Iran, backed by the Russians and Chinese, is not.
As a leak to the Atlantic’s Jeffery Goldberg made clear, Carlson’s viewpoint has a key ally in the Trump Administration: Vice President J.D. Vance. Carlson pushed for Vance as vice-presidential nominee because of his anti-war stance. Vance expressed precisely the concern that bombing the Houthis while pursuing peace in Eastern Europe would be hypocritical, writing, “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now.”
Trump’s neoconservative stance on the Middle East could leave Yemen and Iran in ruins, just as we left Iraq and Libya in 2011 and 2019. It could displace many more Palestinians in a bid to appease Israel. And in the process, our rights to free speech are being attacked here at home under the guise of national security, starting on my own campus, Columbia. Trump’s unwavering support of neoconservative objectives in the Middle East does not forge peace but peril and could actually cause the World War III he so claims to oppose. Two hurrahs for Vance. But the hypocrisy is still staring us not only in America, but across the West, right in the face.
Nikos Mohammadi
Nikos Mohammadi is a student at Columbia University, freelance writer and reporter, staff writer for the Columbia Political Review, and associate staff writer for the Columbia Sundial.