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In Donald Trump’s recent attempt to shift his campaign to politically oriented attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris, he fell into the familiar pattern of making concessions to Vladimir Putin and Russia and portraying Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the ones pushing America into World War III.

The former president, speaking to members of the United States National Guard Association in Detroit, appeared to take a stand against the recent Ukrainian incursion into Russian territory near Kursk.

The gains in ground by Ukrainian troops, which analysts say are intended to ease pressure on Ukrainian troops elsewhere in the war zone, are in fact another sign that World War III is closer than ever, Trump argued.

“Look at what is happening in Ukraine. They are advancing into Russia. This will be a third world war,” he said.

Trump made the remarks just hours after attending a memorial service at Arlington National Cemetery for 13 U.S. soldiers killed in a suicide bombing during the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2021.

There, the former president attributed Biden’s management of the withdrawal – which Trump himself had initiated on a significantly accelerated schedule – to the ongoing instability around the world.

He had previously made this argument in a less succinct form, but on Monday he explained it again to the members of the Guard.

Trump further argued that the chaotic Afghan withdrawal from Kabul and the attack on Abbey Gate “gave us Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It gave us the October 7 attack in Israel.”

The former president’s comments targeted his opponent and Joe Biden in the context of ongoing conflicts in the world and also led him to boast about not having triggered any new major conflicts during his presidency.

He did not mention his provocative threat to bring “fire and fury” to North Korea in a Twitter post, nor the fact that his government was involved in direct conflict with Iran (including the targeted assassination of a leader of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard).

Monday’s event, which aimed to portray Trump as a peace-loving candidate, was supported by an appearance by Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii and 2020 presidential candidate.

Gabbard, who has made a career as a critic of Democrats since leaving Congress and regularly appears on Fox News and other right-wing media, clashed with Kamala Harris onstage in 2020 during a debate over Harris’ record as a prosecutor.

The former congresswoman, who serves as a National Guard officer, took the stage to declare that she would support Trump before November, adding that she would “do everything in my power to bring President Trump back to the White House.”

Democrats have seen Gabbard’s departure coming for some time, but the Trump campaign’s sudden focus on portraying their candidate as the only one who will end global conflict comes at a time when the Harris campaign is facing new criticism from the left following the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

The DNC’s list of speakers for the multi-day event included families of hostages held by Hamas militias in Gaza, but no Palestinian-American speakers were included – including several nominated by the Uncommitted movement before and during the convention. Delegates and supporters of that movement held a protest outside the convention hall last week, and a number of Democratic lawmakers issued statements supporting their bid to speak on the convention’s main stage.

Elsewhere on Monday, other members of the former president’s campaign team tried to make the same argument, portraying Biden and Harris as incapable of leading the American armed forces responsibly.

In a press conference with Trump’s campaign team, JD Vance accused Harris and her White House boss of committing “treason” because they had failed to demand accountability or initiate change after the withdrawal from Kabul and the attack on Abbey Gate.

“Why was no one fired?” Vance asked on the phone. “Why did no one face consequences for what happened, and why was our most precious resource in this country wasted, the lives of people who are willing to give everything for public service?”

“The fact that the Harris administration has stonewalled every step of the way and no one has been fired suggests that we have a real crisis of leadership in this country,” the Ohio senator continued.

There are many factors in the Afghanistan withdrawal that have come under criticism since the Taliban seized power in the country. Gruesome scenes played out on the runway at Hamid Karzai International Airport when US forces failed to secure the runway and terrified Afghans tried to cling to huge cargo planes as they took off. Several died in the attempt.

The attack on Abbey Gate was one of the largest casualties of US troops in Afghanistan in years. It also resulted in the deaths and injuries of dozens of Afghan civilians trying to get onto the planes’ runway. A US strike in response, intended to hit an IS-aligned terror target, instead resulted in the deaths of an Afghan aid worker and nine members of his family, including seven children.

“As Vice President Harris said, ending America’s longest war and bringing our brave soldiers home was the bold and right decision. The Biden-Harris administration inherited a mess from Donald Trump. Trump wants America to forget that he had four years to withdraw from Afghanistan but failed to do so. All he did was continue our longest war,” said Harris campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa. The Independent on Monday when asked about recent criticisms from their rivals. “Trump cannot be trusted to keep us safe, but Vice President Harris is a proven leader on the world stage and will use her expertise to keep America safe, defeat our adversaries and stand with our allies around the world.”

Ryan Zinke, the former Secretary of the Interior in the Trump administration, was another figure from the Trump world who linked the mismanagement in Afghanistan to the Biden administration’s broader foreign policy at this press conference on Monday.

“You know, our country is facing a very clear change or just a clear choice, and that choice is weak leadership, globalist leadership like we saw in Afghanistan and Ukraine, that led to the Pacific, that led to Venezuela. We are facing four major regional conflicts because of the Harris-Biden administration,” Zinke argued.

Trump himself repeated a familiar claim at his event on Monday: he could end the war between Russia and Ukraine within months of being elected president. His Democratic opponents accused the Republican candidate of wanting to force Ukraine to give up territory to achieve this goal. He himself has not presented a concrete plan to end the war or prevent it from spreading to NATO countries in Eastern Europe.

During his presidency, Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2018 at a major summit between the two world powers. That summit ended with Trump publicly taking a stand against his own country’s intelligence agencies, which complained about Russian hacking and interference in the 2016 presidential election, while the Russian president stood by his side.