I Told You So

Trump's Ukraine peace offensive goes up in smoke

He’s stuck in the middle between Volod and Vlad

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In an article published on Substack last March, I had this to say about Donald Trump’s Ukrainian peace offensive:

[Trump’s] ideas about international diplomacy, such as they are, rest on a belief that he can talk anybody around. Hey, who doesn’t want to make a deal? There’s a touch of Neville Chamberlain in this, but the operative driver is Trump’s belief that diplomacy is akin to a business transaction. Sometimes, of course, it is—and if the point at issue were a fisheries dispute between the US and Canada, the President’s dealmaking expertise might be relevant. But when one country aspires to conquer another country and extinguish its independence, there’s no splitting of the difference, no deal to be made.

What I said then stands now, I believe, as an accurate summary explanation of what is now so obvious: that the President’s efforts to broker a deal between Ukraine and Russia have come to nothing. The emptiness of Trump’s hubristic self-confidence, the hollowness of his bombastic assurances, have been ruthlessly exposed.

That hubris and bombast was amplified by the President’s natcon supporters, who poured scorn on anybody who dared to question the advisability of treating V. Putin as an honest negotiating partner or suggested that preventing Russia from turning Ukraine into a vassal state is in America’s interests. As I noted in March, the natcons cobbled together an alternate reality, with Ukraine, the United States and NATO as the villains of the piece. Putin, on the other hand, was lauded as a selfless Russian patriot, defending his country from Ukrainian Nazis and NATO aggression.

All of this played straight into the Russian despot’s hands. He saw at once that Trump, the supposed master of the Art of the Deal, would be desperate to make good on his earlier boasts. Putin knew also that there was no need for him to make concessions: If the negotiations stalled, Trump would put pressure on President Zelensky of Ukraine—as happened in the aftermath of the disgraceful Oval Office scene on February 28, which I wrote about here. As I noted:

The President’s tirade against Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky wasn’t just a demonstration of bad manners. It was triggered, I believe, by a belated realization that V. Putin is not to be talked around. The Trump Administration has found out—but will never admit—that Russia is unwilling to make any concessions at all for the sake of peace. Putin is sticking with his previous demands: a ceasefire with no verification mechanism, no third-party peacekeeping force, no security guarantees for Ukraine—no nothing. He even had the temerity to demand immediate elections in Ukraine, a demand that Trump was quick to echo. The Russian despot has calculated, correctly, that he need not make the slightest concession because Trump, desperate to make good on his promise to end the war, will try to browbeat the Ukrainians into accepting a ceasefire that locks in all of Russia’s gains to date.

The mess that Trump and his foreign policy team have made of American policy on Ukraine and wider security issues is, to be sure, no anomaly. It’s the latest episode in a long-running tale of muddle and magical thinking, punctuated by avoidable setbacks and disasters. To put it shortly, American strategic thinking has fallen into a black hole. The idea that wars are fought to be won has been jettisoned in favor of technology, metrics, this week’s trendy management theory, and the art of the deal. Trump’s mercurial personality, his carelessness and frivolity, add a touch of lowbrow melodrama to the story, but he is no outlier. As I noted in this article, America’s strategy of illusion was already well established when he burst onto the political scene.

Only by reversing course, supporting Ukraine while squeezing Putin’s shoes, might Trump turn things around. I doubt that he’d do that, though. The development most likely to end the war on terms favorable to Ukraine and European peace would be a Ukrainian military victory decisive enough to make Putin cut his losses. Joe Biden was handed a golden opportunity to make that happen—and he botched it. Writing in August 2023, I put it this way:

Right from the beginning, the Administration has been fearful that military aid supplied to Ukraine would cause “escalation.” Time and again, weapons thought to be “provocative,” e.g. long-range missiles and artillery systems capable of hitting targets on Russian soil, were withheld, only to be supplied tardily after lengthy debates between the Administration and, seemingly, itself. When one recalls that the war opened with a massive invasion of Ukraine accompanied by indiscriminate air and ground bombardment, and that Russia has been attacking targets, military and civilian, throughout Ukraine ever since, this handwringing over escalation is little short of ludicrous.

One principle of the art of war is that in delay there lies no plenty. What can be done today with X amount of resources may require X x 2 resources the day after tomorrow, and X x 10 resources by the middle of next week. The Biden Administration seems blind to this principle. Rhetorically, it supports a Ukrainian victory: the expulsion of Russian forces from Ukrainian territory. Materially, however, it facilitates stalemate. And stalemate would be a disaster, institutionalizing the mutual animosities that this war has stoked, leading that most futile of diplomatic activities, a “peace process.”

This was the mess that Biden bequeathed to Trump. And the fact that Trump too made a mess doesn’t exonerate his predecessor.

I hesitate to compromise my well-earned reputation for prescience by making a further prediction about Ukraine. But here goes: With no deal to be had, President Trump will simply get up from the negotiating table and walk away, leaving Ukraine and its European allies to deal with Russia. And that will probably cement the current stalemate in place, with neither side able to win nor willing to call it quits. The war will go on at a lower level of intensity, perhaps for years. That’s the Obama/Biden/Trump bequest to the world. Thanks for nothing, gentlemen.