The risks of a Trumpian bargain on Ukraine
A deal now will be more on Russia's than Ukraine's terms, mean more intense fighting in the short term, and risk Russian defection in the long run.
The war in Ukraine is among the key issues that Trump will likely tackle early on in his second term, possibly even before he takes office, as he claimed he would in the June debate against then candidate Joe Biden.
A Trump deal will most likely mean pushing Kyiv and Moscow to agree on a ceasefire along the current frontlines and then start negotiations on a permanent settlement. This cannot be welcome news for Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, or any of his European allies.
Ukraine’s biggest military backer to date will now be led by someone who has repeatedly threatened to withdraw support, called Zelenskyy “the greatest salesman” for securing billions in aid from Washington, and claimed he would quickly end the war – “in 24 hours” even – without explaining what peace would look like.
In all probability, any peace agreement would be more on Russia’s terms than Ukraine’s: Ukrainian acceptance of Russia’s territorial gains, including the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the territories occupied since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Trump is also likely to accept demands by Russian President Vladimir Putin to prevent a future Ukrainian membership to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Given Trump’s well-known animosity to NATO, this would also put pressure on Kyiv’s European allies: Trump could, once again, threaten to abandon the alliance in order to get Europeans to sign up to a deal with Putin.
But for a deal to work, even in the short term, Trump will also need Putin to sign it.
Putin is not under any particular pressure right now to accept just any deal. Russia is still making gains in Donbas, at a slow pace and high cost, but every village captured now will simply add to presumed Russian gains in a Trump-style settlement. Russia has also been pushing back Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region with the deployment of North Korean troops. This reduces whatever bargaining chip Ukraine might hold to trade in during negotiations for territory currently occupied by Russia.
As long as Putin has the momentum on the battlefield behind him, he is unlikely to just fall over when Trump calls. This means Trump will potentially need to put pressure on Putin as well to get him to accept his terms. In the same way in which he will likely threaten to cut all support from Kyiv to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to come onboard, Trump could force Moscow to comply by warning Putin that he might authorise more military support for Ukraine and remove all constraints on the use of US and allied weapons, including against targets deep inside Russia.
This would not necessarily lead to an immediate Ukrainian victory, but it would make a Russian one impossible for the foreseeable future and might reverse some of Moscow’s recent gains in eastern Ukraine. Given Trump’s unpredictability, this may not be a bluff that Putin would dare to call.
Yet, even if Trump were to make his calls to Putin and Zelenskyy almost immediately, the expectation of him pushing for an end to the war is likely going to lead to an intensification of the fighting. Moscow and Kyiv would both be keen to achieve a better bargaining position ahead of any negotiations.
This would mean another strong push by Russia in eastern Ukraine, increasing attacks on Ukrainian critical infrastructure, and potentially more North Korean soldiers involved in the fighting in Russia’s Kursk region. None of this bodes well for the humanitarian crisis already brewing in Ukraine.
Ukraine, by contrast, would likely mobilise whatever resources it has left to try to hold on to territory inside Russia as a bargaining chip in future negotiations and push back, or at least hold, the current front lines. More US support announced by the Biden administration to the tune of a further $9 billion will provide some assistance in this, but with just over two months to go until Trump’s inauguration, Ukraine is clearly on borrowed time.
A ratcheting-up of the fighting in Ukraine is also likely to strain relations between the US and its allies in Europe. Here, the fear is that Trump will likely make deals with Russia over the head of American EU and NATO allies and threaten them with abandonment. Some in Europe are likely to welcome such a move by Trump, notably Hungary and Slovakia, as well as resurgent populists on both he extreme right and extreme left.
Add to this the political crises in France and now Germany, and strong European leadership on Ukraine will be missing in action. Likely early elections in Germany in spring will put the country’s support for Ukraine on the campaign agenda in Europe’s biggest financial supporter of Ukraine, where populists have made large gains in regional elections in recent months with a pledge to end the war in Ukraine at the negotiation table.
Taken together, the broader implications of Trump’s return to the White House now create a very real prospect of European unity over support to Ukraine finally fracturing beyond repair.
The flipside of a Trump-brokered deal in such circumstances is that it would undermine the longevity of any agreement with Moscow from the start. Russia has no track record to stick to any brokered peace terms in Ukraine. Nor is Ukraine the first Russian violation of core principles of international law – Moscow illegally recognised two break-away regions in Georgia in 2008 after a brief war with that country. Hopes for a reset with Moscow were betrayed in 2014 when the Kremlin illegally annexed Crimea and supported separatists in Donbas.
Hence, there is nothing to point to in recent history to suggest that Putin would abide by a deal he makes with Trump. Moreover, the still relatively dismal state of European defence capabilities and the diminishing credibility of the US nuclear umbrella under a Trump administration put few obstacles in the way Russian imperial ambitions regardless of a deal with Trump.
If, or perhaps rather when, the US completes the strategic withdrawal from Europe that Trump envisages in order to focus more on competition with China, an unconstrained Putin might take his gamble beyond Ukraine and threaten NATO and the EU directly.
If it came to that, Trump could find his actions described once again as “historic” - as the US president who repeated the mistake of former British prime minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938 who thought he could make a deal with Hitler that would bring “peace in our time”.
This is an expanded and updated version of a commentary published by Channel News Asia on November 6, 2024.
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