How Trump Could End the War in Ukraine
NEWS | 22 December 2024
International affairs often present policy makers with a choice, not between good and bad options but between very bad and truly awful ones. The task of statesmanship is to recognize those alternatives, swallow hard, and go for the very bad. So it is in Ukraine. There was a time when it looked as though Ukraine could reclaim by force the territories Russia seized—and that might well have happened had the Biden administration exercised courage and foresight, and led a global coalition to arm Ukraine in quantity and quality, with urgency, and for the long term. Had Ukraine begun receiving advanced tanks, aircraft, and missiles in quantities an order of magnitude greater than what the U.S. and its allies actually provided, and soon after the war had begun, it would now be in a different position. That the Biden administration instead took counsel of its fears and failed to act decisively was a blunder of epic proportions for which Ukraine has paid a terrible price. But we are where we are. And in one school of thought, things will get worse. President-Elect Donald Trump, some believe, hates Ukraine and adores Russia’s Vladimir Putin; is by temperament an isolationist; despises America’s European allies; and neither understands nor cares about the strategic and humanitarian consequences of abandoning Kyiv to its fate. As evidence, members of this school point to Trump’s first term and the callous remarks of some of those around him, including his vice president–elect. Anne Applebaum: The only way the Ukraine war can end Perhaps. But just as likely not. A policy paper put out by a think tank closely affiliated with Trump, and co-authored by his designated envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, points in another direction. It describes a deal combining a cease-fire to freeze the conflict, security guarantees for Ukraine, reconstruction aid, and some (but not complete) sanctions relief for Russia. The disposition of the new national security adviser and secretary of state–designate are similar. Most important, though, is the psychology of Trump himself. The passage of four years has not turned him into an urbane internationalist or starry-eyed idealist, but he is not in the same place that he occupied in his surprising first term either. He is looking for his place in history now, and part of that—as evidenced by his speeches—is the desire to be a great peacemaker. He has made some sympathetic remarks about Ukraine, met with President Volodymyr Zelensky, and listens, occasionally, to one ardently pro-Ukraine British former prime minister, Boris Johnson. Above all, it seems likely that his erstwhile admiration for Putin may no longer be what it was. In 2017, the new president, startled by his own success, looked up to a Russian tough guy. That tough guy, though, is now the president who launched a war that was supposed to have lasted three weeks and instead has lasted almost three years, inflicted more than 600,000 casualties on his own barely competent military, debilitated his economy, expanded the opposing NATO alliance by pushing Sweden and Finland into the fold, was surprised by a coup attempt, needs North Korean troops and Iranian drones because he does not have enough of either of his own, and has set his nation on the path to becoming a vassal state of China. Read: The only realistic answer to Putin Judging by the contemptuous tone of Russian media and interviews of regime-connected figures, this is not Putin’s view of things. That may reflect more on the isolation and arrogance of an aging tsar, however, than reality. Trump, for his part, having escaped two assassination attempts, achieved a historic return from the political dead, and recorded a decisive electoral victory, probably believes that he should now be the dominant partner in this relationship. He is not given to sentimental connections, even with dictators, and the chances are considerable that Putin will find himself surprised by Trump’s handling of him. What might a deal look like? A modified version of the Kellogg plan is, given the circumstances, an acceptable if undesirable outcome: Deferring NATO membership is not a terrible sacrifice for Ukraine as long as it is not foreclosed. The fact is that a number of NATO states, particularly Hungary, would block the accession of Ukraine in the near term, and anyway, the membership process is a long and arduous one. Similarly, if Ukraine is not required to permanently abandon the territories that Russia has occupied, then it has hope for the future, as painful as the present may be. What matters most is Ukraine’s genuine independence, its security, and its reconstruction. Russia must have no influence, no reserved rights, no explicit or implied veto over any aspect of Ukrainian politics and society. Reconstruction aid can be supplied by European and other donors, possibly tapping frozen Russian assets. Security guarantees, however, will require an exceptionally bold stroke. For those security guarantees to mean something will require the presence of large numbers of troops, ready to fight, in Ukraine, and those forces will have to be overwhelmingly European. A small force intended to act as a tripwire will not suffice, but rather something considerably more substantive—say, a Polish division, a French-led and a British-led division, and possibly a Turkish or some other composite division. In all, not a force of a few thousand observers, but something on the order of 100,000 troops, with components led by Europe’s two nuclear powers. If the European states can summon up the nerve to raise and deploy those forces, they will have a much better chance of securing from the United States crucial enabling elements—ballistic missile defense, for example, or air power based in western Ukraine. It would amount to a near NATO-type guarantee, albeit of a less formal kind. The big questions are whether Europe can step up to such a requirement, and whether Russia can be brought to the table. For the former, now is a moment of truth, and meeting its demands would require countries such as Britain, France, and even Germany—whose foreign minister recently opened the door to deploying troops to Ukraine—to be willing to expand their militaries and put them in forward positions. Other countries, most notably Poland and the Baltic and Nordic states, are already in the midst of such expansions of their armed forces, and have committed to defending Ukraine. Read: Helping Ukraine is Europe’s job now As for Russia, the key will be shaking Putin’s confidence that Trump is psychologically subservient to him and politically uninterested in Ukraine. The United States may need to lift all restrictions on the use of American weapons in Ukraine (as suggested by the national security adviser–designate, Mike Waltz), lean on countries like Germany to do more by way of providing long-range systems like the Taurus missile, and, above all, drastically increase the scope of sanctions. That last measure is particularly important: Sanctions on the Russian giant Gazprom have had an effect on the Russian economy; a truly ferocious set of sanctions on all entities that do business with Russian companies would have more such. And while the Russian economy perseveres, a falling ruble, 21 percent interest rates, and rising inflation add to the internal woes of a country that cannot find enough of its own men to serve as soldiers, and whose industry cannot provide the military technology it needs. The strains in Russia are less visible to us than those in Ukraine and are, for now, suppressed by a near-totalitarian state, but that does not mean that they are not there. A regime terrified of any form of dissent, that is still unwilling to formally mobilize the young men of St. Petersburg and Moscow, is clearly fearful. The good news, such as it is, is that with control of the information space within Russia, Putin could paint such an outcome as a success—temporarily, at least. Speculation, all. But not impossible. Europe would have to rise to the challenge, Trump would have to take control of events, and Russia would have to be shocked. Such a course of events is conceivable. More important, it is to be hoped and worked for, and applauded if it takes place.
Author: Eliot A. Cohen.
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