'National disgrace': Former US ambassador blasts Trump’s foreign policy

U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hand with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as they meet to negotiate for an end to the war in Ukraine, at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, U.S., August 15, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Dennis Jett, former American ambassador to Mozambique and Peru, excoriates President Donald Trump's foreign policy in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and says there are massive problems with the president's plans to stop wars in Gaza and Ukraine.

"The first will fail and the second is a national disgrace about which all Americans should all be ashamed," he writes.

Part of the Gaza plan, drafted by Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, includes a temporary, apolitical technocratic Palestinian committee to govern Gaza, supervised by a "Board of Peace" chaired by Trump himself.

"The problem is this: Peacekeepers cannot succeed if there is no peace to keep," Jett writes, adding that the plan includes a "vague, maybe-someday reference to Palestinian self-determination and statehood."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately balked at that tenet, saying, “our opposition to a Palestinian state in any territory has not changed.”

In response to the plan, Hamas, the terrorist organization that has governed the Gaza Strip since 2007 and was responsible for the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel said, "Assigning the international force with tasks and roles inside the Gaza Strip, including the disarming of the resistance, strips it of its neutrality, and turns it into a party to the conflict in favor of the (Israeli) occupation.”

Jett says the plan is a no-win for anyone, writing, "Washington apparently thinks that Muslim countries and other nations will provide the funds, troops and bureaucrats to make the BOP and the ISF successful. Just which countries are willing to engage in urban combat with Hamas in a war that will never end?"

Jett notes that there are currently four peacekeeping operations in and around Israel that cost $686 million a year, "employ 13,628 soldiers and civilians, and have cost the lives of 724 of them. The four have been in operation for a combined total of 219 years with little to show for it, except the non-UN operation in the Sinai."

"There is no reason to think that a half-baked peace plan for Gaza will have any more success," he adds.

Regarding the war in Ukraine, Jett deems Trump "Putin's Santa," saying, "as for the plan to end the war in Ukraine, it amounts to one big, beautiful Christmas present for Russian President Putin."

"Secretary of State Rubio even reportedly described it as Putin’s wish list, though the State Department quickly denied it. Even normally subservient Republicans in Congress have blasted the proposal in harsh terms," Jett explains.

Requiring Ukraine to reduce its military by 25 percent, have elections within 100 days and agree to never join NATO, "the plan gives Russia all the territory it has been trying to steal, including some areas it does not currently occupy. All of it would be recognized by the U.S. as belonging to Russia," Jett explains.

The Russia plan, Jett explains, "was cooked up by Trump’s billionaire buddy Witkoff, in a meeting in Miami with a sanctioned Russian oligarch. It was done without consultation with any other country, yet it dictates what will happen with $100 billion in frozen Russian funds currently deposited in Belgium."

Explaining that the US will profit from these frozen funds as they will be invested in joint US-Russia projects, Jett adds, "It should come as no surprise that billionaires would come up with a way to make money from war."

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