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A flurry of diplomatic activity in the past two weeks was designed to end the war in Ukraine: U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff went to Moscow on Aug. 6 to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin went to Alaska on Friday to meet President Donald Trump. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and various European leaders went to the White House on Monday to meet Trump.

U.S. leaders and their Soviet or Russian counterparts have met many times in the more than eight decades since Franklin D. Roosevelt journeyed to Tehran in 1943 for a summit with Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill. The Friday meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in Alaska was far from the worst. But it wasn’t good, either, except from the Kremlin’s vantage point.

“BRICS is dead,” President Donald Trump proclaimed in February. He was referring to the loose grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, which has been expanded to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, along with various “partner countries” from the Global South.

President Donald Trump’s unhealthy obsession with winning the Nobel Peace Prize has driven him to make a series of rash decisions in pursuit of ending the war in Ukraine. The latest example is the scheduling of a premature summit with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in Alaska — an object lesson in how not to do diplomacy.

For lifelong supporters of Israel like me, its war in Gaza is a gut-check moment.

Like many American Jews, I was brought up believing that Israel was a light onto the nations, that the United States should always support Israel, and that, indeed, support for Israel was inseparable from the Jewish faith. As I grew older, I lost my religious faith but maintained my love of the Jewish state, a vibrant, Western-style democracy in the heart of the Middle East.

In January, President Donald Trump declared trade war on China. It gives me no pleasure to report that China — a ruthless anti-American dictatorship — is winning. But the evidence is inescapable.

You can see it in the economic numbers: China’s economy grew by an average of 5.3 percent in the first half of the year, America’s by only 1.25 percent. You can see it, too, in Trump’s failure to wring significant concessions from Beijing. While most countries have acquiesced to U.S. trade bullying, China has not. In April, Trump hiked U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods to 145 percent. China retaliated with 125 percent tariffs on U.S. goods. Then President Xi Jinping ramped up the pressure by restricting exports of rare earth metals to the United States, threatening to halt production of everything from cars to fighter jets.

Back in February — before he belatedly realized that Russia, rather than Ukraine, was to blame for the failure of peace talks — President Donald Trump denounced President Volodymyr Zelensky as a “Dictator without Elections.”

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled in late May that President Donald Trump exceeded his authority with the “reciprocal tariffs” he imposed on dozens of countries in April. The court’s temporary injunction was lifted, however, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which will hear oral arguments in the case on July 31. That has allowed the president to continue imposing tariffs on any country for seemingly any reason.

President Donald Trump’s announcement on Monday about aid to Ukraine proves once again that he is nothing if not unpredictable.

If Trump has been consistent about one thing throughout his tumultuous, decade-long political career, it is support for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and skepticism of Ukraine. In 2014, Trump praised Putin’s illegal seizure of Crimea — a prelude to Russia’s full-blown invasion of Ukraine — as “so smart.” Trump’s anti-Ukraine animus reached its nadir in February when he engaged in an Oval Office shouting match with President Volodymyr Zelensky. That led to a temporary pause on U.S. aid to Kyiv and could easily have signaled that the United States was abandoning Ukraine altogether.

There is so much happening in the Trump administration that events often pass in a blur, and their significance can’t be grasped until weeks, months or even years later. The slow-motion dismantling of the National Security Council is a case in point. At first it seemed like a minor bureaucratic blip, but now it is evident that the NSC’s weakness is contributing to incoherent U.S. policymaking on matters from Venezuela to Ukraine and beyond.

On June 19, facing pressure to join in Israel’s bombing campaign against Iran, President Donald Trump announced, “I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks.” Cynics assumed this was yet another example of the president putting off a difficult decision indefinitely. “TACO,” some said, employing a popular acronym for “Trump Always Chickens Out.”

The 12-day war pitting Israel and the United States against Iran is over. Now the questions begin over what it did — and did not — accomplish.

Despite the impressive advances in airpower since the 1950s—like the precision-guided munitions employed in Saturday’s attack—there is only so much airstrikes can accomplish.

The U.S. attack on Iran is another ripple effect from Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The more time that goes by, the more significant 10/7 looms. It is one of those hinge points in history — like 11/9 (the day the Berlin Wall fell in 1989) or the 9/11 terrorist attack in the United States — after which nothing will ever be the same again.

To bomb or not to bomb? That is the question which, quite unexpectedly, has come to dominate U.S. politics in the past day or so.

I arrived for the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary parade in Washington on a drizzly Saturday afternoon with considerable consternation and concern.

I knew that President Donald Trump had been agitating for such a spectacle since 2017, but that his first secretary of defense, Jim Mattis, had refused, because he viewed this as something that occurred in dictatorships such as Russia and North Korea. In private, Mattis reportedly said he would rather “swallow acid” than have troops parading through the capital.

You have to give President Donald Trump credit. For all of his bellicose bluster (remember when he threatened to rain “fire and fury” down on North Korea?), he is not a warmonger — except, possibly, in California. In the international arena, he clearly wants peace. He just doesn’t know how to achieve it.

U.S. history should make any president cautious about deploying troops — whether the National Guard or active-duty personnel — to quell domestic disturbances. One of the events that led to the American Revolution, after all, occurred in Boston in 1770 when British troops deployed in response to anti-tax protests. Rather than putting down an incipient uprising, the Redcoats ignited it by opening fire and killing five protesters in what became known as the Boston Massacre.

I know there are many bigger outrages in the world, but today I would like to share with you the frustration that gnaws at me as a fan of the New York Knicks following the firing on Tuesday of our gruff but beloved — and widely respected — head coach, Tom Thibodeau.

On June 14 — the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army and, not so coincidentally, the 79th birthday of President Donald Trump — a gaudy display of U.S. military power will parade through Washington. No doubt Trump thinks that all of the tanks and soldiers on display will make America, and its president, look tough and strong.