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How Trump Can End the War in Ukraine
Convince Kyiv to Trade Land for NATO Membership
Michael McFaul
December 12, 2024
A Ukrainian soldier firing a howitzer near Chasiv Yar, Ukraine, November 2024 Oleg Petrasiuk / Press Service of the 24th King Danylo Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces / Reuters
Michael McFaul is Professor of Political Science, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He served as U.S. Ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014. He is the author of
From Cold War to Hot Peace: A U.S. Ambassador in Putin’s Russia.
At a CNN town hall in May 2023, Donald Trump promised that if elected, he would end the war in Ukraine in a single day. That bullish pledge has now become a familiar refrain, with the president-elect insisting that he uniquely has the nous to bring Russia and Ukraine to the table and force a truce. His imminent return to the White House has stirred a great deal of speculation on both sides of the Atlantic about the prospects for a peace deal. Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, Kyiv and its backers have been wary of signaling an interest in negotiations, fearful that doing so would be seen as weakness. Trump’s reelection now gives Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky greater freedom to engage in talks: he can argue that he has no choice. In late November, in an interview with Sky News, he suggested that he was indeed ready to negotiate.
Conditions on the ground, however, are not conducive to a deal. Wars usually end in two ways: one side wins, or there is a stalemate. In
Ukraine, neither side seems near victory, but the war has not yet ground to a standstill. Russian President Vladimir Putin thinks he is winning. If Trump threatens to cut aid to Ukraine, Putin will be even more emboldened to keep fighting, not end his invasion; advancing armies rarely stop fighting when their opponent is about to become weaker. If Putin senses that Trump and his new team are trying to appease the Kremlin, he will become more aggressive, not less.
The lessons from U.S. negotiations with the Taliban during Trump’s first term should inform the president-elect’s thinking about dealing with
Putin. The Taliban and the Trump administration negotiated a deal that was highly favorable to the militant group but that the Biden administration nevertheless honored. Its terms included a cease-fire, a timeline for the departure of American forces, and the promise of a future political settlement between the Afghan government and the Taliban. The Taliban, however, did not commit to the agreement; instead, they used that peace plan as a way station on their path to total victory. Appeasement of the Taliban did not create peace. Appeasement of Putin won’t either. Instead of just giving Putin everything he wants—hardly an example of the president-elect’s much-vaunted prowess in dealmaking—Trump should devise a more sophisticated plan, encouraging Ukraine to nominally relinquish some territory to Russia in exchange for the security that would come with joining NATO. Only such a compromise will produce a permanent peace.
THE TRUMP CARD
In their rhetoric,
Trump and many of his allies have long expressed skepticism about U.S. support for Ukraine. They claim that backing Kyiv is a drain on American finances and has done little to end the war. But to abruptly cut funding for Ukraine now would not bring about peace; it would only spur further Russian aggression. To work toward a peace deal, Trump should first accelerate the delivery of military aid to Ukraine that has already been approved and then signal his intention to provide more weapons to stop Russia’s current offensive in the Donbas, the much-contested eastern region of Ukraine, and thereby create a stalemate on the battlefield. Putin will only negotiate seriously when Russian armed forces no longer have the capacity to seize more Ukrainian territory—or better yet, although less probable, when Russian soldiers begin losing ground. For serious negotiations to begin, Putin must first believe that the United States will not abandon Ukraine.
