Is U.S. President-elect Donald Trump the accomplished dealmaker he boasts to be, with the Russia-Ukraine war about to come to a peaceful end? We should take him on his word when he says he’s not keen on starting any new wars—but that’s not at all the same as crafting a settlement in an ongoing conflict.
During his first term, Trump faced three situations that might offer some clues to his practical peacemaking skills.
Is U.S. President-elect Donald Trump the accomplished dealmaker he boasts to be, with the Russia-Ukraine war about to come to a peaceful end? We should take him on his word when he says he’s not keen on starting any new wars—but that’s not at all the same as crafting a settlement in an ongoing conflict.
During his first term, Trump faced three situations that might offer some clues to his practical peacemaking skills.
The first was his aim to strike a deal with “rocket man,” his moniker for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Trump first threatened to obliterate Kim and his country, then expressed love and respect for him in two highly publicized meetings, and finally just walked away from the entire issue after achieving nothing. Today, the North Korean nuclear program is far more advanced than when Trump made his effort to stop it.
The second case was the Middle East—notably, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for which Trump also promised a quick and easy resolution. It led, near the end of his term, to the historic Abraham Accords, but we should not forget that these did not come out of Trump’s diplomatic design studio. On the contrary, they were the result of an offer by the United Arab Emirates to recognize Israel in order to stop the latter’s announced plans to annex the occupied West Bank; indeed, it was those annexation plans, not the accords that much later followed, that stood at the core of the Trump team’s Middle East strategy. The purposeful neglect of the Palestinian issue, another core aspect of his efforts, was then continued by the Biden administration, paving the way for the war raging in the region today.
The third and perhaps most instructive conflict where Trump has a history of dealmaking was, of course, Afghanistan. Although outgoing President Joe Biden takes much of the blame for the painful disaster of the disorderly collapse of the Afghan state and the chaotic evacuation in August 2021, we should not overlook what came before. To a large degree, a disaster was preprogrammed with the shameful deal that Trump concluded with the Taliban the year before, in which the United States agreed to a total abandonment of Afghanistan in exchange for a few vague promises by the Islamist group.
You can call what there is in Afghanistan today peace, but it is very far from the outcome sought by the United States or the rest of the international community. That the Taliban now have a tighter, more brutal grip on Afghanistan than when the United States first intervened in 2001 is not a deal to be proud of.
What clues do these dealmaking attempts offer regarding Trump’s promise to fix peace between Ukraine and Russia within 24 hours? Unfortunately, the clues are not hopeful.
Trump clearly has no time for lengthy and complicated diplomatic processes. In his view, real dealmakers don’t waste their time. He has no patience with details; it has to be quick. Even adjusting for what we have learned is Trumpian bluster, part of him was probably serious when he talked about “24 hours.”
As we have also learned, Trump is not much concerned with the interests of U.S. allies and partners. In dealing with his friend Kim, he left long-standing U.S. allies—South Korea and Japan—entirely on the sidelines, relegated to staring in disbelief at the unfolding spectacle.
In the Middle East, Washington’s Arab partners were horrified by the annexation plan that Trump supported, jolting them into action to prevent the plan from being implemented.
But it is Afghanistan that offers the strongest clue to the possible outcome when a poor dealmaker promises a deal to make peace.
Let’s be clear: It was absolutely right for Trump to push for peace in Afghanistan. The goal of wanting to end the war is not the issue, not least because there was no stable military solution. But any peace settlement should, of course, have been struck between the different Afghan factions and interests. At its core, it was a civil war that had been raging for decades. We will never know whether a genuine peace was possible, but it would certainly not have been easy.
Trump, however, completely abandoned the effort and decided to sign a surrender to the Taliban—with a few cosmetic, unenforceable promises tacked on in a half-hearted attempt to save face. The Afghan government, along with all other nonfundamentalist forces and actors in the country, were abandoned to their fate. Trump even had the idea of celebrating the U.S. surrender by inviting Taliban leaders to Camp David.
The rest, of course, is history. Except for a slight adjustment of the timetable by a couple of months, Biden adhered to Trump’s agreement. The morale of the Afghans who had fought for a decent future for their country collapsed, and the unavoidable disaster ensued.
Today, the Kremlin’s soldiers, recently augmented by at least 10,000 North Korean troops, are advancing village by village as Russian missiles and drones rain down on Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure. Wherever the Russian war machine has gained control, surviving Ukrainians suffer a genocidal occupation. What could 24 hours of Trump-style peacemaking bring?
The assumption is that the Trump team will try to order the Kremlin and Ukraine to agree to a cease-fire, thereby freezing the conflict and hoping that it will go away. They will be in for a surprise when Russian President Vladimir Putin makes it clear, as he has consistently done since the start of the war, that he has no interest in any cease-fire that isn’t part of a Ukrainian capitulation to his main demands, including extensive limits to Ukraine’s security and sovereignty, as well as handing over even more of its territory to Russia.
What happens once it becomes clear to Trump and his team that Putin is not abandoning his goals in Ukraine? Will Trump then try the Afghanistan model and engineer a surrender to Putin over the heads of the Ukrainians and Europeans? Acceptance of the fruits of aggression, no prospect of NATO membership, no military to speak of, an end to Western sanctions, and de facto Russian control of the politics and future of Ukraine?
There is no doubt that this is what Putin is angling for. In his mind, it will then be up to the United States to force the Ukrainians and Europeans into compliance with the de facto surrender.
If the record of Trump’s first term is any guide, he could well be tempted to follow the Afghanistan model. That’s the only deal that could conceivably be done in 24 hours. It sidelines allies and partners. And his campaign financier Elon Musk would probably approve.
But that sort of deal would spell an even bigger disaster than U.S. capitulation in Afghanistan. Chinese President Xi Jinping would be a fool not to recognize it as a template for striking a deal to gain control of Taiwan. The regimes in Tehran and Pyongyang would consider themselves on the right side of history. Millions of Ukrainians would flee their country. Putin would be emboldened to advance further. Faith in the United States across Europe would collapse.
Everyone learns by experience. Trump and his team might well look back and conclude that the United States doesn’t need another debacle—and that he has the opportunity to start his new term by holding the line and demonstrating that he will not reward aggression.
The post Trump’s Dealmaking Record Could Be Bad News for Ukraine appeared first on Foreign Policy.
