The outspoken former British prime minister Boris Johnson knows a thing or two about power politics, and when he says that President Trump’s willingness to use force and his sheer unpredictability can act as a deterrent, serious Americans should listen. Johnson wrote that a world that’s felt shaky under timorous leadership might well be steadied by a U.S. president who is prepared to negotiate from strength, not from timidity. That endorsement from a seasoned global hand undercuts the endless media narrative that toughness is somehow reckless.
Even Trump critics inside the Washington establishment have admitted something blunt: boldness gets results. Retired national security officials told Newsmax that Trump’s “sheer dint of personality” jump-started talks with adversaries that had been frozen for years, proving again that strength in the Oval Office forces engagement where appeasement yields silence. This is not bravado; it is basic diplomacy 101 — show you have the stomach to walk away from a bad deal, and the other side comes to the table.
Americans who work for a living understand leverage. You don’t win a negotiation by offering everything and asking for nothing in return — you win it by having the credibility to stand firm and the clarity to demand outcomes that protect our interests. President Trump’s approach shakes loose conversations where gentle prodding and virtue-signaling failed, and that’s precisely why blue-collar patriots and small-business owners across this country cheer decisive leadership.
Yes, critics have been quick to pounce when they disagree with particulars of any proposed peace plan, and even Johnson has warned that certain proposals for Ukraine risk giving the aggressor too much while offering Kyiv too little. Fine — the conservative case is not for blind cheerleading but for backing a strategy that negotiates from strength and prioritizes Western security and our allies’ sovereignty. When elites lecture from their leather sofas about purity, ordinary Americans who pay taxes and send sons and daughters into harm’s way want outcomes that preserve peace by deterrence, not by surrender.
Ask yourself who reopened stalled talks with Moscow and put negotiations back on the table: the simple answer is the United States under leadership that refuses to be shoved around. Even adversaries reacted — the Kremlin publicly acknowledged a new readiness to engage after firm U.S. pressure, demonstrating that strength changes calculations. That is the hard reality of geopolitics: peace is won by those who can enforce the terms that make it stick.
So to the hardworking Americans who worry about endless wars and empty platitudes, take heart: leadership that projects resolve and negotiates from a position of strength is not a gamble, it’s protection. We should applaud allies like Boris Johnson when they recognize that firmness can prevent violence, and we should demand that our leaders never forget that American power and American will are the final guarantors of global stability. Support for tough, smart diplomacy is not partisan fantasy; it’s common-sense patriotism.
