Published June 7, 2025
President Donald Trump seems frustrated that his many attempts to resolve global conflicts, including those in Ukraine, Iran, and Gaza, appear to be stuck on hold. He shouldn’t be — he’s being stymied because the leaders he is negotiating with simply don’t want the same things that he does.
Trump implicitly seems to believe that all rational leaders want peace, trade, and the prosperity that comes with it. In his worldview, the obstacles to peace are negotiable differences over temporary obstacles. Remove those, and the default condition of peace and prosperity returns.
But that’s not what dictators historically want. Whether they are ancient monarchs or modern autocrats, the type of person who aspires to and obtains sole, absolute power defines themselves and their country’s greatness in terms of conquest.
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Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, studies and provides commentary on American politics. His work focuses on how America’s political order is being upended by populist challenges, from the left and the right. He also studies populism’s impact in other democracies in the developed world.
