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In its well intentioned but rushed and ham-handed attempts to end the war in Ukraine, the Trump administration is flirting with disaster. Apparently, President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, real estate developer Steve Witkoff, has crafted a peace plan after traveling to Moscow for three lengthy meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin — but never once going to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The one-sided plan is now being presented to the Ukrainians on a “take it or leave it” basis, with Trump on Wednesday writing online that Zelensky “can have Peace or, he can fight for another three years before losing the whole Country.”

Is there a better example of the Peter Principle — the theory that, sooner or later, most employees get promoted above their level of competence — than Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth?

By many accounts, he appeared to do well as a junior officer in the Army National Guard, serving as a platoon commander at the Guantánamo detention facility and in Iraq, and later as a counterinsurgency instructor in Afghanistan. On the battlefield, Hegseth appeared calm and levelheaded, two soldiers who served with him told The Post’s Dan Lamothe, even though in Iraq, Hegseth was part of a brigade that was notorious for its brutal tactics.

Since suffering the worst attack in Israel’s history on Oct. 7, 2023, the Israel Defense Forces have won one battle after another against both Hamas and Hezbollah, greatly diminishing the threat posed by both terrorist groups. But is Israel’s military getting dangerously overextended in a “forever war” in the Gaza Strip?

In 2014, eminent political scientist Graham Allison published an influential book called “Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?” The subtitle referred to a famous passage in Thucydides’ “History of the Peloponnesian War”: “It was the rise of Athens, and the fear that this inspired in Sparta, that made war inevitable.”

Nobody would ever accuse President Donald Trump of being a coherent or consistent thinker. But, less than three months into his second term, a recognizable Trump Doctrine is emerging in foreign policy. It can be summed up with these famous words of Thucydides: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Unlike most of his predecessors in the Oval Office, Trump shows no interest in promoting or defending democracy, the rule of law or free trade. He is all about power politics in a crude and blustering way that is a disturbing and dangerous throwback to the 19th century.

The full economic impact of the shockingly large “reciprocal” tariffs that President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday remains unclear because consumer behavior often changes in response to tax or tariff rates. But assuming that Americans continue to buy as many imports as they did last year, his plan would amount to an $880 billion annual tax hike that will be paid not, as Trump insists, by foreigners but by U.S. businesses and consumers. That’s 2.9 percent of gross domestic product, which would make this the largest tax increase since 1942. And that’s not even counting the cost of the likely retaliation from affected nations — or the billions lost in the stock market in response to Trump’s announcement.

If you want to see a maestro at work, pay close attention to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s negotiations over Ukraine with President Donald Trump and his special envoy (and fellow real estate tycoon) Steve Witkoff. The Russian president is playing the Americans like a Stradivarius.

The “Signal scandal” — the fact that top Trump administration officials planned military strikes using the Signal messaging app and included the editor in chief of the Atlantic in their supposedly secret discussions — shows what happens when a president selects senior officials for personal loyalty rather than competence or experience. Thus, you have Cabinet-level appointees and the vice president engaging in shocking “op sec” (operational security) breaches that, if committed by a lower-ranking official, likely would result in immediate dismissal and possible criminal charges.

Canada is, quite literally, America’s closest ally. It is also our second-largest trade partner. Little wonder, then, that for as long as anyone can remember, U.S. presidents have been praising our northern neighbor.

There is a sickening symmetry to President Donald Trump’s actions: While undermining U.S. democracy at home, he is also trying to end U.S. government support for democracy abroad. His victims range from a leading human rights organization to the U.S. government networks that beam factual information to victims of oppression around the world.

In case there was any doubt about which country — Russia or Ukraine — was the obstacle to peace, the Kremlin dispelled it this week with its response to the 30-day ceasefire plan pushed by the Trump administration. Ukrainian representatives unconditionally agreed on Tuesday to the ceasefire during a meeting with U.S. envoys in Saudi Arabia. But on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin turned down the U.S. overture — even if he did so in language designed not to offend President Donald Trump.

President Donald Trump’s affinity for Russian President Vladimir Putin is of long standing. Who can forget his reply in 2015 when asked about Putin’s killing of journalists? “At least he’s a leader, you know unlike what we have in this country,” Trump responded, later adding. “I think our country does plenty of killing also.” Or Trump’s infamous news conference with Putin in Helsinki in 2018? Asked about the U.S. intelligence assessment that Russia had interfered in the 2016 U.S. election, Trump replied, “President Putin says it’s not Russia. I don’t see any reason why it would be.”

If you want to see a maestro at work, pay close attention to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s negotiations over Ukraine with President Donald Trump and his special envoy (and fellow real estate tycoon) Steve Witkoff. The Russian president is playing the Americans like a Stradivarius.

For Europe, this is a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency moment. The United States, which has guaranteed European security against Russian attack for 80 years, appears to have switched sides under President Donald Trump.

In his first weeks in office, President Donald Trump did serious damage to America’s soft power by moving to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development and defund the National Endowment for Democracy. Now he seems bent on damaging U.S. hard power, too.

As Ukrainians mark the third anniversary of Russia’s horrific full-scale invasion, they have to contemplate the once unthinkable possibility that they might be abandoned by their most important foreign ally. And ponder whether, and for how long, their fight against the invader could carry on without U.S. assistance.

Amid the assault on federal institutions orchestrated by tycoon-in-chief Elon Musk and his U.S. DOGE Service disciples, the National Endowment for Democracy has found itself unable to gain access to its congressionally appropriated funds at the U.S. Treasury. As a result, sources told me, NED’s operations are grinding to a halt.

Since President Donald Trump returned to office, he has repeatedly threatened other nations with steep tariff hikes unless they do what he wants. In the case of Colombia, he dropped his tariff threat after that country’s president agreed to keep receiving Colombian deportees from the United States. In the cases of Mexico and Canada, Trump agreed to delay his 25 percent tariffs for at least a month after the leaders of those countries offered assurances they would do more to stop the flow of fentanyl and migrants (even though they were already doing much of what they promised to do). And, in the case of China, Trump imposed additional 10 percent tariffs, apparently as punishment for that country not doing more to stop fentanyl shipments to the United States. (Naturally, China retaliated with its own tariffs.)

Political scientist Joseph Nye coined the term “soft power” in 1990 to denote “the ability to affect others by attraction and persuasion rather than just coercion and payment.” Long before this capability had a name, it was a key part of America’s power projection: Soft power helps to explain why the United States has military bases in at least 80 countries, why the dollar has become the international reserve currency, and why English has become the global language of business and diplomacy.

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan announced he was launching a Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as “Star Wars,” with the goal of rendering nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete.” He imagined lasers in space shooting down Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles, effectively creating a space shield to save America from nuclear Armageddon.