Last week, President Donald Trump announced that Israel and Hamas had signed off on the first phase of his Gaza peace plan — one of the most significant diplomatic breakthroughs in the Middle East in years. For our nation and the world, this was a moment of rare convergence, of both clarity and action.
While much of the world has grown accustomed to the language of stalemate and moral equivocation, Trump’s foreign policy achievements underscore a deeper principle that realism and prudence are themselves instruments of peace. His most recent address to the United Nations General Assembly reflected the same conviction. It was not the speech of a diplomat pandering to anyone, but of a statesman determined to reassert that truth-telling is the first act of order.
Instead of masking hard truths in euphemisms, Trump offered a direct summons — that candid, realistic assessments of the world must precede our return to civilizational greatness. His address exemplified the essence of statecraft: speaking what we know is true (what many dare not say) and turning uncomfortable realities into a foundation for decisive action. In Trump’s realism, the statesman’s first task is not to flatter but to prepare, not to admire decline but to arrest it.
More than once in his speech, Trump bluntly invoked the mass migration and energy crises of the West, telling Europe, “You’re destroying your heritage,” and plainly warning, “Your countries are going to hell.” Here, the president deliberately bound truth-telling to deterrence because, following that up, he addressed the cartels, saying, “We will blow you out of existence.”
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