Lindsey Graham died with two of the world’s most consequential pieces of unfinished business on his desk. One was Ukraine’s survival as a sovereign, independent democracy, and the other was Saudi-Israeli diplomatic normalization. Either accomplishment would redraw the global map for the better while advancing US interests.
That says more about the South Carolina senator than much of what I have read following his death this past weekend. The commentary seems split between hagiography written by admirers of the happy warrior of American internationalism and indictments of an opportunist who transformed himself from a Never Trumper into a Trump sycophant.
But to assess Graham’s impact, one also must take into account his work with the Trump administration and other partners on some of the defining issues of our time.
I knew Graham for almost thirty years, first meeting him when I was a reporter at The Wall Street Journal and he was in the House of Representatives. On several occasions, I joined him and Senator John McCain on plane rides to the Munich Security Conference, where they argued with evangelical fervor on behalf of international engagement by the United States. They were determined to sustain US global strategic purpose, driven by principle and always alongside allies.
For years, Graham hitched his wagon to McCain in no small part because McCain was the most compelling representative in the Republican Party for Graham’s deepest conviction: that American withdrawal from international engagement creates vacuums, and those vacuums are filled by dictators, terrorists, and other assorted adversaries.
That view put both men at odds with Donald Trump. But Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election and McCain’s death in 2018 left Graham with a dilemma. He could choose opposition to Trump and risk irrelevance or even his political survival. Or he could grow as close as possible to Trump and try to bend the president toward Graham’s quite different understanding of American interests.
Graham himself once described his relationship with Trump in remarkably candid terms. In a 2019 New York Times profile written by Mark Leibovich, under the headline “How Lindsey Graham Went From Trump Skeptic to Trump Sidekick,” Graham said, “I’ve got an opportunity up here working with the president to get some really good outcomes for this country.” The senator described the relationship as reciprocal: Trump asks him to do things, and Graham asks Trump to do things in return. “I have never been called this much by a president in my life,” he told Leibovich. “It’s weird, and it’s flattering, and it creates some opportunity. It also creates some pressure.”
In that interview, Graham made clear that he was fighting for relevance. “That was John McCain’s word,” he said, explaining, “I never met anyone in my whole life that could hold a grudge and move on at the same time.” We’ll never know whether McCain would have abandoned his animosity toward Trump, but his closest friends doubt it.
Graham’s critics argue that his hunger for relevance was about self-aggrandizement or self-preservation. A more charitable conclusion is that Graham’s final efforts to advance Ukraine’s sovereignty and Saudi-Israeli normalization demonstrate that he was accumulating political capital to spend it on the geopolitical causes he cared about most.
Washington’s often-binary verdicts on politicians’ motivations frequently fail to capture the fullness of human complexity. Access to power can be intoxicating, but it also can be an instrument for positive influence. Graham’s embrace of Trump was inconsistent with his earlier judgment of his character, but his actions were entirely consistent with his lifelong worldview regarding the primacy of American international leadership.
Writing in The New York Times today, columnist Bret Stephens put it this way:
- “He wanted power and influence and was willing to abase himself publicly before Trump (and endure the scorn of his former friends) to do it. But he didn’t abandon his core belief in the unity of interests of democratic nations against tyrannical foes, or in the need for American power to serve just causes beyond our borders.”
Hours before his death, feeling unwell, Graham reportedly joked to a friend: “I can’t die now. I still have to impose sanctions on Russia, deal with Iran, and help normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.”
Graham became a critical and, I would argue, perhaps irreplaceable bridge between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and a US president deeply skeptical of Ukraine, championing US sanctions on Russia and pressing for greater Ukrainian military capacity. Graham also saw the possibility of turning all the trauma that the Middle East has recently experienced into a new regional architecture. Bringing Israel and the Arab world’s most consequential power together would help to constrain Iran and create an enduring strategic alignment.
In what would be the last stages of his life, Graham focused on the two issues that offered the greatest chance to change Europe and the Middle East for the better—with global implications in the contest between the United States and its foes over what countries and which set of principles will shape the future. He also understood how the Trump administration worked. His calculation appeared to be that another eloquent Senate speech might not save Ukraine, but trusted access to Trump just might do the job.
What I admired in Graham wasn’t just his passion for great causes, but also his deft and creative ability to bring the people together who could make them happen. I witnessed one such moment myself at the 2025 Munich Security Conference, where he put Trump on the phone with Finnish President Alexander Stubb, one of Europe’s most compelling Atlanticists and advocates for Ukraine. What captured Trump’s interest, however, was that Stubb had played US collegiate golf on scholarship at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, Graham’s home state. Graham arranged for Stubb to play as a foursome that also included Graham and the golf legend Gary Player at a the Men’s Spring Member-Guest Tournament at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida. That ensured Stubb’s skill would be applied to Trump’s advantage. They won. The two men have been talking golf and geopolitics ever since.
The Wall Street Journal provides a rich narrative of Graham’s “final days in the role of a U.S. power broker” while celebrating his seventy-first birthday and hobnobbing at the NATO Summit in Ankara, then flying from there to Poland where he took an overnight train to Kyiv to meet with Zelenskyy, then racing home to be on Sunday morning news shows. He was on a high. Trump had embraced his allies in Turkey and—after long months of Graham’s lobbying—he was ready to support the Russia sanctions bill Graham had so relentlessly championed. “I have never been more optimistic than I am today,” Graham told reporters in Kyiv on Friday in his last public appearance. “We have a magic moment in time here.”
Turning this tragic moment into that magic moment will require all those who believe in the causes of Ukraine’s survival and the Middle East’s realignment to finish the job.