The Trumpists’ Dangerous "Peace" Plan for Ukraine

 

    

NO ONE IN THE UNITED STATES OR UKRAINE imagines that a re-elected President Donald Trump would be much of a friend to Kyiv. But the so-called “peace” proposal leaked last week by two former national security staffers from the Trump administration, now at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute, is even more toxic than many expected.

Predictably enough, the plan stipulates an immediate ceasefire, obligatory negotiations with Russia and a temporary—in truth, likely to be permanent—abandonment of Ukrainian claims to the 20 percent of Ukrainian territory currently occupied by Moscow. The poison pill was less predictable: Under the plan, the United States would strong-arm Kyiv to defer membership in NATO “for an extended period”—again, in the real world, most likely forever.

Trump hasn’t yet endorsed the plan, but his comments on a podcast last month suggest he is open to a NATO ban. “If Ukraine goes into NATO, it’s a real problem for Russia,” the former president told a trio of sympathetic Silicon Valley investors. Echoing a claim that Moscow and its proxies have been peddling for years, Trump argued that it was President Joe Biden’s support for Ukrainian membership in the alliance that provoked Vladimir Putin to invade in February 2022.

Trump’s interpretation of Russia’s aims isn’t wrong. Putin’s principal goal for the war is a neutral, nonaligned Ukraine. He signaled this first in the brief peace talks held in Istanbul in March 2022, where his paramount demand was a Ukrainian renunciation of any desire for NATO membership. He gave up long ago—if he ever cared—on winning Ukrainian love or loyalty for the Russian Federation.

Nor, apparently, is Putin interested in harnessing Ukraine’s considerable economic potential. If he were, why would he wage the war as he has waged it, destroying factories, mining farmland, obliterating infrastructure and terrorizing civilians? What he wants is a gray zone—a neutral buffer between Russia and Europe.

Trump doesn’t care what Ukrainians want, and the proposed peace plan openly dismisses their deep-seated unwillingness to trade land for peace. But neither the candidate nor his minions seem to recognize just how important NATO has become for Ukrainians or how unlikely it is that a neutral state would last very long between Russia and the West.

Joining Europe is at the heart of Ukraine’s national aspirations. For more than a decade after independence in 1991, Kyiv remained closely tied to Moscow, dependent economically and loyally subservient. Politically and culturally, Ukrainian habits and attitudes still mirrored Russia’s, and as late as 2012, only 17 percent of the population was in favor of joining NATO, with a plurality convinced that nonaligned status was the best way to guarantee their security.

The 2014 Maidan Revolution changed everything. A million Ukrainians took to the streets to protest pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to back away from an agreement that would have put Ukraine on a path to joining the European Union. “Ukraine is Europe,” the huge crowds chanted, and after Yanukovych fled to Russia, the new government began working in earnest to build an independent, democratic nation modeled on its neighbors in the West.

In 2014, support for joining NATO still lagged well behind support for joining the EU. But then Moscow annexed Crimea and launched a proxy war in eastern Ukraine, spurring sharply increased interest in NATO membership. Support climbed steadily over the years that followed as the conflict with Russia intensified. By April 2022, in the wake of the latest invasion, 59 percent of Ukrainians told pollsters they wanted to join the alliance.

Today, a survey by the same organization finds that support has risen to 77 percent—on par with support for EU accession. Another recent sounding found that 86 percent of Ukrainians want to join NATO and 80 percent expect to join by 2030.

History has a way of trampling on the wishes of ordinary people, and a Trump administration would no doubt argue that American interests far outweigh the preferences of Ukrainian voters. But colluding with Russia to create a gray zone in Ukraine is all but sure to backfire in a way deeply inimical to U.S. interests.

Who would invest in a neutral state unable to defend itself against a rapacious and expansionist Russian neighbor? How many of the 6 million Ukrainians who fled their country since 2022 would be likely to return? (In fact, polls show that NATO membership is one of the conditions that matter most when Ukrainian refugees consider going home.)

Ukrainian voters will feel that they have been abandoned by the West, betrayed again as they were betrayed in 1994 when they agreed to give up their nuclear weapons and in 2014 after the Minsk Accords that purported to end the fighting in eastern Ukraine. The backlash this time would likely be even fiercer, perhaps irreparable.

But even if Ukraine didn’t drift voluntarily back into the Russian orbit, almost no one but Trump takes Putin at his word that he will be satisfied with just one-fifth of Ukrainian territory. Moscow’s avowed goal when it invaded in 2022 wasn’t just absorbing the eastern part of Ukraine it has now claimed as its own, but decapitating the central government in Kyiv.

Anyone who believes that Ukrainian territorial concessions to Putin will lead to lasting peace in Europe “watches a lot of [the propaganda TV channel] Russia Today,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said wryly last week in a speech to the Bundestag. The Trump team’s proposal is “a joke, not a plan,” one user wrote on the Telegram channel Trukha Ukrayina. “An ideal plan for Russia,” another echoed. “With the sanctions lifted, she quickly assembles a new army and recovers financially and takes over the rest of Ukraine, which does not have any guarantees.”

Finland, Sweden, Austria, and Switzerland survived the Cold War as neutral states. But that’s unlikely to be an option for Ukrainians. They and most European leaders understand that as long as Putin remains president, there can be no gray zone on the border between Russia and Europe. Of course, Trump probably knows that too—that’s what makes the proposed peace plan so sinister. 

-Tamar Jacoby, The Bulwark