Let us assume that President Donald Trump is correct and that the war, killing and carnage arising from the war in Ukraine must be stopped. The question is, at what cost and to whom?
Russia occupied Crimea in 2014 and controls about 20 percent of Ukraine covering Donbass and Donetsk. These three regions have substantial Russian-leaning populations.
The hard fact is that Russia is the clear aggressor. It and President Vladimir Putin could argue that Ukraine’s entry into the European Union and especially NATO was a direct threat to Russia. Putin made his complaints about NATO’s threat to Russia and its ignoring of Moscow’s interests known in his 2007 Munich Security Conference remarks.
Yet, Putin’s arguments rest in the notion that Russia is Ukraine and Ukraine is Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia will never be whole. Trump recognizes this view. In October, he said Ukraine was always “the apple” in Putin’s eye.
Sometimes the human element is never understood despite facts and reality. Putin may reflect this vis a vis Ukraine. Trump too has idiosyncratic views that clash with reality. His obsession with tariffs to cope with the deficits in the U.S. trade balance is one. Trump believes that tariffs will build down debt and deficits. Reality defies that.
Trump also ignores that accounting has two balances: the trade and capital accounts. Trade is the balance of all goods and services consumed by a country. Here the U.S. has large deficits. However, in the capital account, the U.S. has over $1 trillion surplus. That is financing U.S. debt and deficits. But Trump does not seem to recognize this.
Trump asserts, some would say hyperbolically, that had he been president in 2022, Russia would not have invaded Ukraine. This is unprovable. But assuming Trump is correct, he has a clear hold over Putin.
Is this because both are like-minded and Putin will accept Trump’s arguments? Does Trump have special leverage over Putin either in terms of willpower or perhaps sufficiently damning intelligence no one else does?
But to be objective, this war must end. The damage being done to both sides is absurd in a rational world. Trump is right.
So how does this war end? Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth tipped the administration’s negotiating hand at the Munich Defense Conference in Germany. Ukraine will not join NATO. And there will be no territorial concessions. The White House tried to soften those comments and merely added to the confusion.
Those are not unrealistic terms. The question is what are the quid pro quos to provide to Ukraine if not? As Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky asserted, he and Ukraine will not accept dictated terms for peace.
Neville Chamberlain and Munich’s peace in our time are applied to Trump. If peace is so important, will it come at Ukraine’s expense? Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), John McCain’s wingman, is taking a tough stand on not abandoning Ukraine. Winston Churchill, he is not. But will he have any influence?
Trump’s response is that Europe must assume the responsibility and burden for Ukraine’s security and support, not the United States. At face value, this is not unreasonable. However, there is no Europe. There are states in Europe.
France and Germany are in political difficulty without strong leadership. How much money could Europe raise for Ukraine — the hundreds of billions to sustain the military and rebuild a devastated country? The United Kingdom is not part of the European Union. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has inferred Britain could deploy troops to Ukraine.
But he has a problem. The U.K. musters an army of 74,000 with cuts possible. Press reports show how the force has been “hollowed out” and lacks capability to fight effectively. Whether correct or not, at most the U.K. could deploy a force of thousands, at best, which will be insufficient.
And there is a larger and possibly untenable matter of NATO and its Article 5 in which “an attack against one Ally is considered as an attack against all Allies.”
Would that apply if war broke out between European NATO states in Ukraine and Russia? That of course raises the question of escalation even if Trump prevails and the agreement makes no concessions on territory or NATO membership. And suppose Europe is not keen to take on this responsibility it cannot afford or risk expanding the conflict?
If he is to succeed, the great dealmaker better have many aces up his sleeve.
Harlan Ullman Ph.D. is United Press International’s Arnaud deBorchgrave Distinguished Columnist, senior advisor at Washington D.C.’s Atlantic Council, chairman of two private companies and principal author of the shock and awe military doctrine. His next book, due in 2025, is “The Great Paradox: Strategic Thinking in an Unstrategic World.”
