What explains the bizarre contradictions between Trump’s Israel and Ukraine policies?

Under the presidency of Joe Biden, the US supported two countries, both of which had been attacked by forces that killed military and citizens alike and, to a greater or lesser degree, did not even accept their target states’ right to exist.

In the past week, however, the US has halted all military aid to one, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio has bypassed Congress to send $3 billion in arms, including 2,000-pound bombs, to the other. The administration of President Donald Trump wants one to agree to a ceasefire without explicit security guarantees, but to the leader of the other country, who may decide to resume fighting even though there is currently a ceasefire, the US President has reportedly said: “You do whatever you want.”

The President of the first country recently received an unprecedented public scolding from Mr Trump and his Vice President, JD Vance, in front of the world’s media in the Oval Office. But it was all smiles when the Prime Minister of the second country made a similar visit last month.

The differences in the approaches taken to Ukraine and Israel by the Trump administration could not be more stark and have led to key supporters making statements that, on the face of it, appear to be contradictory. On Tuesday, for instance, Tom Cotton, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, posted on X that he was pleased that the US would now be sending more arms to Israel. “They shouldn’t be forced to fight with one hand behind their back,” he wrote. “Today’s announcement will bring more well-paying jobs for American workers.”

Just the day before, however, Mr Vance seemed to be against sending US-made munitions abroad. “The bitter irony of America’s present predicament is that the very people who cheer for permanent arms shipments to Ukraine also supported the de-industrialisation of America,” he wrote on X. “The very things you want us to send are things we don’t make enough of.”

Such is the dissonance that the question has been asked: if Mr Trump could dramatically reverse previous US support for Ukraine, was he capable of doing the same with Israel?

It seems extremely unlikely, and there may be a host of reasons why there is such a contrast in the way Mr Trump is treating the two states.

Consider his first term in office. Not only did he recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital – in defiance of international rulings – and ordered the US embassy to relocate there, Mr Trump also officially recognised Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which the rest of the world considers to be Syrian territory illegally occupied by Israel. Back in the White House this year, Mr Trump may as well have asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who he would like to be Secretary of State, National Security Adviser, ambassador to the UN and ambassador to Israel, so reliably pro-Tel Aviv are Mr Rubio, Mike Waltz, Elise Stefanik and Mike Huckabee. Mr Huckabee, a former US governor, has even said: “There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria.”

Mr Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is a long-time family friend of Mr Netanyahu. So when Mr Trump declared “I love Israel” in 2023, there was – and is – no reason to disbelieve him. Meanwhile, he has issued ultimatums to Hamas – like he did on Wednesday, telling them to release the remains of all deceased hostages or “it is over for you”. He may well view the group’s attack and the Israeli response in completely black and white terms. We cannot assume that he considers October 7 in the wider context of Palestinian displacement and suffering, still less that he has taken any notice of the narratives about settler-colonialism that inform the opinions of many younger people around the globe.

And if he thought the people of Gaza could be easily accommodated in other Arab countries, perhaps he’d been listening to Mr Huckabee, who has also said: “There’s really no such thing as a Palestinian.” So I don’t think Mr Trump’s overly accommodating stance towards Israel is at all surprising – so long as he can still claim credit for ending a war.

Mr Trump wants the same in Ukraine; but here there is context.

In the minds of his administration, the issue is not as straightforward as most European leaders believe it to be. “The war didn’t need to happen – it was provoked. It doesn’t necessarily mean it was provoked by the Russians,” his special envoy Steve Witkoff said last month. “There were all kinds of conversations back then about Ukraine joining Nato … It basically became a threat to the Russians and so we have to deal with that fact.”

Add to that the beef Mr Trump had with Volodymyr Zelenskyy when he tried and failed to pressure the Ukrainian President to investigate Mr Biden and his family’s business dealings during his previous administration – which led to his first attempted impeachment – and the fact that only last year Mr Trump accused Mr Zelensky of making “nasty little aspersions” about him, then it’s no wonder that the current White House is less well disposed towards Kyiv.

One war doesn’t map on to another. Some may like to build a template for conflict resolution, but if Mr Trump sees Hamas as so irredeemable that Israel has every right to try to eliminate it, and Russia as a great power with a legitimate grievance, then he would feel no need for consistency – a concept he does not view as a virtue, in any case.

Mr Trump wants peace, and the Nobel Prize he believes he was cheated of before. He doesn’t need the approval of those who might be forced to the table to sign off agreements with gritted teeth. But he will need their acquiescence if any peace is going to hold. Mr Trump should bear that in mind, even as he bats away accusations of unfairness and double standards – and leaves his officials scrambling to explain why what is good for Israel is not good for Ukraine.