“After a long illness, the world as we know it has passed away,” a European friend recently said. A slightly premature obituary, perhaps, but not by much. The world has changed in fundamental ways, of which the Trump administration is both symptom and cause. There is no greater evidence than its emerging policy of imposing a cease-fire, which it incorrectly believes will bring peace, on Ukraine.
To a degree surprising for those who think of the Trump administration as a mere composite of malice, nihilism, and chaos, its Ukraine policy seems orchestrated, with three big pieces dropping yesterday alone.
The first was a speech from Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth at the 50-nation meeting of the Ukraine-defense-support group. Uncharacteristically, perhaps, his words deserve careful parsing, particularly because they have caused spasms of despair—some justified, most not—among supporters of Ukraine.
He began by uttering the uncomfortable truth that it is unrealistic to expect a return to Ukraine’s 2014 borders. That is unfortunate but ineluctable, given the balance on the battlefield and the unwillingness of both the Biden administration and the current one to pour in the military resources that would give Ukraine a chance of defeating Russia. Unfair, tragically unnecessary, but true.
Hegseth ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine as part of a negotiated settlement—also unfair, but also inevitable. Ascension to NATO membership is a long process, and in any case, Russia’s surrogates in NATO—Hungary and now Slovakia—would almost certainly block Ukraine. Hegseth’s statement matters less than many suppose, however, because a new administration could just as easily reverse this policy.
The peace deal—which he insisted would be brokered by the United States but not, apparently, with Europeans as part of the negotiation—would have to be guaranteed by “European and non-European” military forces in Ukraine; U.S. forces, he emphasized, would not be stationed there. Left unsaid was whether, say, American combat aircraft and missiles might be permanently based in neighboring countries.
In one of the more interesting sections, he said:
To further enable effective diplomacy and drive down energy prices that fund the Russian war machine, President Trump is unleashing American energy production and encouraging other nations to do the same. Lower energy prices coupled with more effective enforcement of energy sanctions will help bring Russia to the table.
To European ears, it was probably blotted out by what came soon after:
Safeguarding European security must be an imperative for European members of NATO. As part of this, Europe must provide the overwhelming share of future lethal and nonlethal aid to Ukraine.
Not unreasonable, although, in fact, Europe has provided almost as much military aid to Ukraine as has the United States, and more humanitarian aid.
This was not a speech about abandoning Europe or, for that matter, Ukraine. Rather, Hegseth insisted that the United States has to focus on securing its own border and meeting the challenge posed by “Communist China”:
Our transatlantic alliance has endured for decades. And we fully expect that it will be sustained for generations to come. But this won’t just happen.
It will require our European allies to step into the arena and take ownership of conventional security on the continent.
The United States remains committed to the NATO alliance and to the defense partnership with Europe. Full stop.
The bottom line is that the administration will broker, and possibly coerce, a deal that is bad for Ukraine: a cease-fire along current lines, the deployment of European and other forces, and no chance of NATO membership in the near future. There was, however, talk of economic pressure on Russia, of security arrangements for Ukraine, and of an American interest in seeing the war end permanently. What was not mentioned, however, is also important. There was no talk of regime change in Ukraine or of limiting Ukraine’s armed forces and their development. There was no talk of abandoning or fundamentally restructuring NATO and the European security system. All of these contradict Vladimir Putin’s stated war aims.
None of this will assuage the fears of those who believe that Donald Trump is eager to sell Ukraine to Russia, bend to Putin’s every whim, and destroy NATO. But that view disregards some important evidence.
The second big piece of the Trump peace initiative was the president’s statement—a blurt rather than a formal release—on Truth Social declaring that he had had a long conversation with Putin and that they would at some point meet with each other. Reading it, one is reminded, once again, that Trump is a politician who is cunning but semiliterate and ignorant. The statement, unfortunately, assumes a commonality of interests and experiences that simply does not exist between Russia and the United States.
In a meeting, one has to expect that Putin, a former KGB case officer, will be far better at manipulating the vain and erratic Trump than the other way around. Moreover, when Trump said that he was just about to call Volodymyr Zelensky to brief him on the conversation, he revealed that he had already violated what should be a cardinal principle: no attempt to make a deal on Ukraine without Ukraine. His mistake is dangerous, possibly disastrously so. That said, however, it is clear from other statements (including Hegseth’s) that Trump believes that he is the one with economic leverage (true), that the war is stupid (true), and that Russia is in substantial difficulty (true).
The third initiative—curiously missed by much of the American press—was the first visit of a Cabinet-level official to Kyiv. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent presented a deal, the outlines of which are unclear, to give the United States access to Ukrainian minerals, and the Ukrainian government, unsurprisingly, responded positively. Crass and unworthy, no doubt, but a good thing. The United States has strong interests in securing a supply of rare earths from a friendly, aligned country rather than from China. If a deal goes ahead, the U.S. will have large security as well as economic interests in an independent Ukraine. And the mood music was good: “By increasing our economic commitment through a partnership with the government and people of Ukraine, that will provide—once this conflict is over—it will provide a long-term security shield for all Ukrainians,” Bessent said.
There were always two possible Trump Ukraine policies: the bad and the catastrophic. At the moment, this seems bad—but not yet catastrophic. A peace deal that leaves Ukraine with 80 percent of its territory and its independence, economic stability, and military potential unimpaired, and that stations European troops inside its territory while giving the U.S. a large economic interest in its future, is an acceptable if unfortunate and avoidable outcome.
Responsibility for this war arriving at a bad outcome rests with the Trump administration, which is nakedly transactional and, worse, either does not understand or does not care that this war is about a Russian bid to restore its imperial status. But others are to blame as well.
The Biden administration warned of the war but botched the provision of aid to Ukraine. It held back the quality and quantity of weapons needed for victory, decided to have no strategy for success other than “standing by Ukraine,” and inexcusably failed to explain to the American people why this war was, and is, central to American security interests. The Biden administration set the conditions for the current situation.
The other players responsible for this situation are America’s European allies. Not all of them, to be sure—the Nordic and Baltic states and Poland have stepped up, as Hegseth openly acknowledged. For more than a generation now, American leaders have insisted to Europe as a whole that Americans will not indefinitely bear the burden of Europe’s security. By and large, their European counterparts have smiled politely and ignored them. No wonder then, that the secretary of defense said:
The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress—and in the American body politic writ large—to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense—nations apparently willing and eager for American taxpayers to assume the growing security burden left by reductions in European defense budgets.
Indeed, if current trends in the decline of European defense capabilities are not halted and reversed, future U.S. political leaders … may not consider the return on America’s investment in NATO worth the cost.
Pete Hegseth? No, Robert Gates—who served as secretary of defense more than 14 years ago in the Obama administration—diagnosing the illness that has brought about this crisis. The good news, such as it is, is that the patient needed, and may yet respond to, the blunt truths about its condition that Secretary Hegseth expressed. Sometimes shock therapy, however inexpertly administered, can be part of the cure.
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