It is too easy to blame Donald Trump for everything that goes wrong in the world. The ability of any US president to fundamentally change or control the behaviour of other major powers is frequently overestimated. Yet by posing as a sort of uncrowned global monarch and grand arbiter of war and peace, Trump perpetuates fantasies of US hegemony, omnipotence and divine right. Intoxicated by such ego-inflating delusions, he pledged before taking office to swiftly end the Ukraine and Gaza conflicts. Perhaps, in his vanity and hubris, he truly believed he could.

Eight months on, the exact opposite is happening. Both crises are expanding and escalating. The bubble has burst, his bluff has been called, the emperor has no clothes – and there is no denying that Trump, by alternately appeasing, excusing and encouraging the two foremost villains of these twin tragedies, is greatly to blame. Last week’s multiple Russian drone incursions into Nato member Poland – which Polish officials are right to call deliberate – risk transforming the Ukraine war into a Europe-wide conflagration. Likewise, the reckless, illegal Israeli airstrike in Qatar, which blew up the Gaza peace process, physically and metaphorically, has supercharged regional tensions.

A common factor in both developments is US weakness, which is to say, Trump weakness. Has any other US president devoted so much effort to making himself look like a strong leader while failing miserably to act like one when it matters? Much of what he does, whether it’s promulgating illegal executive orders, firing senior officials, bullying neighbours and defenceless migrants,

© The Guardian