As he promised throughout his campaign, one of President-elect Donald Trump’s top priorities is to end the war in Ukraine. For 33 months now, the Biden administration has refused to give Ukraine in timely fashion enough of the long-range capabilities and air defenses it needs to win decisively. As a result, the conflict has become a stalemated war of attrition.
Ukrainian losses now exceed 80,000 killed soldiers and 5,000 dead civilians. Under the surface of the Ukrainians’ extraordinary resilience, determination and sheer courage, a palpable sense of war weariness has begun to spread.
In some ways, Trump faces a predicament not unlike that of President Richard Nixon, who inherited from his Democratic predecessor in 1969 a war that President Lyndon Johnson could neither win nor end. The good news is that, unlike our South Vietnamese allies, Ukraine has shown that it can emerge from the war as a self-sustaining, prosperous and independent country. In a call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky following his election, Trump reassured the Ukrainian leader that the endgame would be one that Ukraine would be able to live with, even if it has to make some major concessions. A day later, Trump called Russian President Vladimir Putin and told him he does not want to see the war escalate, while pointedly reminding him of the United States’ sizeable military presence in Europe.
Already the outlines of a Trump “deal” have begun to emerge. Russia would keep the territories it currently occupies. There would be a “buffer area” or “demilitarized zone” patrolled by European forces. Ukraine would not join NATO for a long period of time, perhaps another quarter century. Various key sanctions on Russia would be lifted. As in all such deals, there would be some bitter pills both parties would have to swallow. Ukraine would have to accept, a least for the foreseeable future, the de facto loss of Crimea, the Zaporizhian corridor, and much of the Donetsk Basin. For his part, Putin would fail to achieve his larger twin strategic goals of breaking up NATO and turning Ukraine into a Russian satellite. Given his increasingly narrowing options, it is likely that Zelensky would accept such a deal. A much bigger question is whether Putin would do so.
The Trump plan entails the use of American leverage over both sides to get them to agree. If Ukraine goes along with the American peace plan, it will continue to receive U.S. military aid for its defensive needs. If Russia refuses to go along, aid to Ukraine will increase substantially beyond defensive needs to allow it to hit Russia much harder. The key factor will be whether Putin takes seriously the American threat to ramp up military support for Ukraine if Russia stays in the fight. Trump’s reputation for unpredictability and toughness could be helpful in persuading Putin to take his winnings and agree to the deal.
In the remaining two months left to him in office, President Joe Biden has an opportunity to help his successor, and further the American national interest, by ramping up to the maximum U.S. military deliveries already approved by Congress, leaving Ukraine in the best possible position to resist Russia’s continuing onslaught. Such a move would strengthen Trump’s hand with Putin, while raising further the cost to Russia of continuing its war.
There should be no illusions that this would be a permanent peace. Instead, a “cold truce” akin to what has prevailed on the Korean peninsula over the past 70 years may be a better analogy. Despite its obvious drawbacks, there are major long-term advantages for Ukraine. As the late Henry Kissinger never tired of pointing out, wise statecraft is about choosing attainable realistic outcomes over unachievable maximum goals. The possibility of a true victory disappeared by 2023 when, as a consequence of the West’s unwillingness to give Ukraine more offensive capabilities, Russian forces entrenched themselves along an 800-mile front, making extremely costly the prospects of dislodging them. At this point neither the European or American publics, nor their elites on the right or the left, seem willing to go as far as would be required to help Ukraine achieve an outright victory.
Although under the Trump plan Ukraine would not formally join NATO for many years, individual countries, including the United States, would provide it with the security guarantees and hardware necessary for it to become a “porcupine state” that Russia would find exceedingly unappealing to invade again. Ukraine’s own innovative arms industry and technical elite, which have performed so impressively during the war, would make a key contribution to this end.
Borrowing a page from the Israeli strategic model, Ukraine could flourish even with a hostile Russia on its doorstep, while integrating its economy with that of the European Union and beyond. As the current war of attrition continues its grinding course, time may not be on Ukraine’s side. But under the long-term truce contemplated by Trump, time would be on Ukraine’s side economically, politically and strategically. As the West ponders the alternatives before it, including those hard policy choices it has been unwilling to make, giving Trump a chance on Ukraine makes considerable strategic sense.
Alberto Coll is professor of law and U.S. foreign relations at DePaul University and a former principal deputy assistant secretary of defense.
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