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Can Trump End Russia’s War Against Ukraine?

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Returning from the War, Ilya Repin, 1877

Donald Trump promised that he would end Russia’s war against Ukraine before he was even in office. That didn’t happen, and recently his envoy on the war, Keith Kellog, extended that deadline to 100 days.

This is a status report, based mostly on three large articles that are worth reading in full. Trump may still admire Vladimir Putin, but he will find dealing with him quite different from his first term.

Robert Kagan gives an overview of what the war means for Ukraine, the US, and the rest of the world. Kadri Liik reviews what we know about Vladimir Putin’s thinking. Both are long articles and draw on many sources. A third, which is somewhat shorter but still substantial, is from Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Michael Kofman in Foreign Affairs.

There is no way the war will end any time soon. Putin is determined to bring Ukraine under his will. Ukraine is determined that that should not happen.

A phonecall between Trump and Putin is said to be planned. A few days after his election, Trump claimed that he had talked to Putin and told him to cool it. Putin’s spokesperson cast doubt on that claim. What Putin wants to talk to Trump about is dividing the world into spheres of influence. He has no intention of talking to anyone from Ukraine about ending the war.

Although the conflict is first and foremost an imperial pursuit to end Ukraine’s independence, Putin’s ultimate objectives are to relitigate the post–Cold War order in Europe, weaken the United States, and usher in a new international system that affords Russia the status and influence Putin believes it deserves.

Putin has stated those objectives many times and has supported them on the basis of his tendentious reading of history. As the war has continued, he has seemed to become more invested in them. Ceding Ukrainian territory to Russia, a centerpiece of most recommendations for negotiations, slakes none of those desires and sets the stage for another war.

Trump’s position is less clear than Putin’s. He prides himself on keeping his intentions secret and operates on whim, believing that this strengthens his position. As Dan Drezner has pointed out, in international relations this unpredictability actually weakens one’s position and makes failure to achieve one’s goals more likely. Trump also likes to obfuscate his goals.

Ukraine was the object of his extortion the last time around and the immediate cause of one of Congress’s attempts to impeach him. He is attracted to Putin as a strongman and showed weakness in dealing with him. We still don’t know what happened in the Helsinki talks in 2018. Trump has seemed to be more conciliatory toward Ukraine since November.

Putin’s immediate goals are

a change of government in Kyiv in favor of a pro-Russian regime; “de-Nazification,” his favored euphemism for extinguishing Ukrainian nationalism; demilitarization, or leaving Ukraine without combat power sufficient to defend against another Russian attack; and “neutrality,” meaning no ties with Western organizations such as NATO or the EU, and no Western aid programs aimed at shoring up Ukrainian independence.

Putin’s behavior and words suggest that he is in no way worn down enough by the war to back off from these demands. His calculation seems to be that Ukraine will buckle under Russia’s attacks and that “the West” – the United States and Europe – are likely themselves to collapse.

That last is little noted in much of the discussion of the war, but the belief gives Russia the sense that time is on its side. In that scenario, Trump is an agent of collapse and should be supported for that reason, but it implies that Putin has no reason to concede Trump anything.

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, and Putin’s determination to achieve a win, are a much broader problem than the immediate war. Putin’s rhetoric implies that he wants a restoration of the Russian Empire – a danger to all the states on Russia’s periphery. Additionally, a war for territory breaches the expectations set after World War II and makes, for example, a Chinese attempt at forcible takeover of Taiwan more likely.

Only a massive cost for Russia seems likely to change its goals. The financial cost is already large, along with the hundreds of thousands of Russians killed. Russia has reoriented its economy around the war. Both of these factors suggest that time can be a problem for Russia as well. On the other hand, the reorientation toward war stabilizes Putin’s position against internal dissent. Militarily, Russia has improved its position since its early failures.

For Ukraine, giving up territory means giving up the people living in that territory to Russian mistreatment. Russia has already relocated people to remote internal areas and separated children to be brought up in Russian families as Russians. Torture is regularly applied. Further, giving up territory is no assurance against later Russian aggression to take more of the country, given Putin’s goals.

All the options for a peacekeeping force in Ukraine seem unworkable. NATO cannot make Ukraine a member as long as the war is ongoing, and ending the war will not allow for NATO membership unless Russia suffers a major internal breakdown. The presence of NATO forces is unlikely, and Russia would see an EU force as NATO by another name. The United Nations is unlikely to be able to mount a realistic force.

Trump’s blather about Greenland has also given Russia encouragement in its desire to take territory by force. Additionally, the possibility that the US might try to take Greenland, while advantageous to Russia in causing concern in NATO, begins to suggest that Russia might want to do that first. Trump’s dividing NATO also makes it less likely that an agreement can be reached to end the war.

The expected phonecall will do little to change things. What is needed is a continuing diplomatic effort to find ways to end the war. Russia has largely rejected such an effort. Trump has a hard, continuing task ahead of him, and he is not good at such things.

Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner

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