Make the deal on Ukraine
The parameters are clear enough, if Trump doesn't waste this opportunity
Let’s start with some inevitabilities:
Russia is never going to take the whole of Ukraine militarily.
Ukraine is never going to get its lost territory back.
Putin won’t be around all that long, nor will Trump.
Now, some trends worth noting:
Putin’s economy continues to precipitously decline as he loots the nation’s sovereign wealth to pay for this stalemated war.
NATO countries (particularly the US public) tire of supporting Ukraine’s military effort.
The Russians are running out of bodies, as are the Ukrainians.
But Ukraine has innovatively pioneered the use of drones to the point where it can fight this fight for quite some time still — not winning but ratcheting up the cost for all involved.
Russia can do much the same, thanks to North Korea’s assistance.
Biden will shove as much military assistance as possible out the door to Ukraine between now and 20 January.
Finally, the potential pivot point created by the change of administrations in Washington:
Trump wants a “win” here — badly.
Ukraine knows its military effort cannot survive four years of Trump.
The Russian public wants a peace deal but no return of captured lands.
NATO Europe would be so happy to rid itself of this hot conflict that it will readily submit to the right deal as forged by Trump.
The successful deal, as a rule, has to disappoint everyone somewhat proportionally and burden everyone somewhat proportionally. Nobody can feel like they got ripped off but nobody can brag like they pulled out some magic win.
What the players want is fairly clear:
Putin desperately wants out of the West’s economic doghouse and restored relations with the US/Trump. Trump’s return is simply too big of a strategic opportunity for Putin, who’s smart enough to know that Trump gets rather lame rather quickly in this, his terminal, term.
Zelensky knows his fight is unpopular across the West. If Harris had won, he’d still have some leverage. Now, he faces a ticking clock. His deal goes from decent to worse so long as it is driven by America’s incremental withdrawal of support. The only leverage he has right now is Trump’s desire to end this quickly for the big splashy diplomatic win that allows him to start his overt campaign for a Nobel Peace Prize (which he will not be earning in the Middle East any time soon, thanks largely to Israel’s ongoing demolition and dissolution of Gaza).
Trump can stand any outcome so long as it comes quickly, and he knows the world will welcome any clear ending, giving him much of the credit. Trump and Co. will legitimately (enough) paint any outcome as a huge victory for peace and clear evidence of his diplomatic majesty. Any deal will also be very popular among his base and easily sold by the White House. Obama got a Nobel for nothing but simply ending the Bush era; Trump will get one for ending the worst land war in Europe since WWII.
In sum, then, the constraints are great on the two combatants and pretty much non-existent for the great arbitrating force here: the US/Trump.
That is a let’s-make-a-deal moment, and the deal — again — has to spread its gains and penalties somewhat equally.
Russia gets to keep the territories it “liberated.” The West should diplomatically recognize their previous annexation by Russia to end any ambiguity of their status. I don’t think these new “republics” need to be demilitarized — not worth the effort.
Ukraine gets immediate entry into NATO and is fast-tracked on an application to join the EU. It is not suffering any demilitarization — just the opposite. If Putin wants more of Ukraine, it can only come by taking on NATO forces that will be placed there. This long-in-the-making post-Cold War “custody” battle needs to be permanently ended.
All of Russia’s (and Putin’s) war crimes stuff goes away, but Russia returns the Ukrainian kids whom it kidnapped and moved east.
Russia does not pay for any Ukrainian economic recovery. That’s all Europe and the EU.
Normal US-Russian relations are restored. Same with Europe. The economic sanctions end.
The key loss/price for Kyiv is clear enough: one-fifth of its landmass is gone.
The key loss/price for Moscow is clear enough: NATO moves closer.
The key loss/price for Europe is clear enough: it pays for Ukraine’s recovery and absorption into the West.
There really is no key loss/price for the US here, and beaucoup upside for Trump personally, which he openly craves.
Some will argue that we “rewarded” Putin’s Nazi Germany-like aggression, but it’s made tolerable by the overall correlation of forces in this time period compared to that time period. This conflict has not empowered either Putin or Russia — just the opposite. This is more like Hitler going into Sudetenland and finding himself in this hugely costly and stalemated conflict over that grab alone. So, no, this is not a stepping stone to Czechoslovakia 1938 and beyond.
Better to view this as the last great custody battle between Russia and Europe. There is no other remaining ex-USSR republic that carries the same historical and ethnic and cultural meaning as Ukraine does for Russia. Their origin stories overlap in profound ways, so any breakup was doomed to be messy and cruel. The key is not to dwell on that but on the goal of permanently settling this custody battle.
Critics of any such comprehensive settlement will say that we’re simply postponing and/or guaranteeing WWIII. But I don’t buy that for a minute. Again, we are still working out the custody issues stemming from the collapse of the Soviet empire. All we need here is something that rewards all involved for the fight they’ve waged up to now.
Russia gets some portion of lost “sacred” lands. Ukraine gets to join the West. Russia and America get to go back to a more normal-if-still-highly-competitive relationship.
Will the other two superpowers of our age (China, India) have any problem with this outcome?
No, they won’t.
And yes, it will feed the narrative within Beijing that paying a similar price to grab Taiwan may well be worthwhile.
What would that price be? Probably that much-feared Asian NATO with nuclear-armed Japan and South Korea.
Would that constitute the inevitable march toward WWIII there?
No, it would not. Indeed, it would be very stabilizing over the long haul.
As in the case of Russia-Ukraine, it would simply put an end to yet another Cold War-created custody battle (where nationalistic emotions run VERY hot).
Ukraine retaining its post-WWII borders is not worth WWIII, and it never was.
The same is true of Taiwan’s continued independence from China. Beijing knows it. Washington, when objective, knows it. Everybody knows it.
But that’s another post and really another entirely complicated scenario when it comes to Trump’s determination to punish China for its economic rise at the perceived expense of America. That push may well drive Beijing to the point of thinking that we might as well do it if we’re going to pay this price anyway.
US hawks on both Russia and China will decry this sort of realism because it readily admits the limits of US military power and our nation’s inability to re-engage in some decades-long pre-WWIII-standoff with these two powers.
Simply put, America can no longer afford to be the ultimate guarantor of state sovereignty the world over. We sought multipolarity and we’ve got it now, and with it comes the reality that other superpowers are going to get what they want in certain situations while we superpowers collectively compete quite vigorously over the Global South.
That’s just where we are today.
Do the counterfactuals here:
What if Ukraine had decided on a Belarus-like “union state” with Russia — on its own? Would we have viewed that as some devastating, WWIII-triggering loss? No, we wouldn’t have.
What if Taiwan decided to cut some deal with Beijing over a special status relationship that the latter could trumpet as “reunification”? Would America necessarily have to view that outcome as some devastating, WWII-triggering affront? No, we wouldn’t.
In truth, the strategic standing of Russia and China in either case would not be significantly enhanced — at least not in any way damaging America’s strategic standing. Instead, we’d simply be accepting permanent outcomes to long-standing “tailbones” left over from the Cold War era (useless but painfully broken). In neither instance are these remnant issues ours and ours alone to consecrate with such strategic importance. America’s “interests” here are far more easily parsed if you stop thinking in zero-sum superpower terms when it comes to “defending state sovereignty” — America’s great strategic mantra coming out of the 20th century’s two world wars.
We no longer live in that world. Instead, we birthed another in its wake.
We need to make our own peace with that new world and its major players and stop viewing every possible “give” as either abject surrender or the start of WWIII.
The world order we built since WWII is stunningly stable, despite our inability to view it in those terms because our relative decline is so clear — i.e., we no longer outrank others as we once did.
Trump can do real good in his America First-ism if he disabuses us of our need to be in charge of the entire world all the time. Admittedly a bull in a china shop, we now must look for the strategic upside from the domestic tumult his administration will inflict on us all.
That is what strategists do: they make do with the situations history hands them, removing the ego and the emotion and objectively judging the parameters of any potential deal.
That deal is out there for Trump’s taking/forcing on Ukraine and Russia. His “mad-man theory” approach will rapidly wear thin if he blows this opportunity.
I would rather not see that happen, for America’s sake.
I have read much about the once and future Potus offering the Russians the bad bits for Ukraine, I have not anything about the same guy demanding the Russians accept the bad bits for Russia you mention in your grand deal.