President Trump has appeared sidelined this week as the Gaza and Ukraine wars expand into allied countries, posing one of the biggest tests yet to his motto of "peace through strength."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kept Trump in the dark over his country's strikes in Qatar, and the president’s frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin did nothing to deter a Russian military incursion into Poland.

Trump's response to these escalations will be watched closely, as Poland summons NATO members for a meeting about how the alliance responds to what it calls an intentional act of war, and Qatar, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East, demands retaliatory measures against Israel.

Trump said he was “very unhappy” with Israel’s strikes into Qatar and, responding to Russia’s incursion into Poland, questioned Russia’s “violation” in a Truth Social post, adding “Here we go!”

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called for both Europe and the U.S. to increase pressure on Moscow “without delay” by ending Russia’s war financing and scaling up Ukraine's air defenses.

“It’s not the time for weak responses; they can only encourage further aggression. It’s time for peace through strength and real action,” he wrote on the social platform X.

Trump has put a high priority on ending the war between Israel and Hamas and Russia’s war against Ukraine, but the resulting actions in both cases appear to be a slap in the face to the president’s efforts.

“I think what we're seeing here is the ramifications of the Trump administration not really having a strategy to achieve peace in either conflict,” said Jennifer Kavanagh, senior fellow and director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, a Washington-based think tank.

“In both cases, the answer is........

© The Hill