Land for Peace? Ending the war Russia-Ukraine (WP)

The Washington Post, August 25. 2025

By Siobhán O’Grady, David L. Stern, Serhii Korolchuk and Anastacia Galouchka with Sammy Westfall

Land for peace? Ukrainians weigh frozen front line to placate Russia. Svitlana Batiukh sits with her grandchildren, Herman, 8, and Miroslava, 4, and two neighbors in the village of Petrivka Druha in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. She said they would probably stay even if the area was ceded to Russia. (Ed Ram/For The Washington Post) DONETSK REGION, Ukraine — Svitlana Batiukh and Alla Khoruzha have lived on opposite sides of the same street in this small village in Donetsk region for years — neighbors through peace and war. But as Russian troops draw closer and hammer areas just down the road, their views on how the war should end, and whether President Volodymyr Zelensky should forfeit Ukrainian territory, have diverged — an indication of how a possible peace deal with Moscow could strain Ukrainian society. Batiukh, 51, says she has too much to lose. If Russia took her village by force or through some peace deal, she would not give up her property and start anew. There is electricity and water. Their cattle still have room to roam. She wants Donetsk to stay in Ukraine but has little faith that will happen. Her family moved once before, then returned. This time they plan to stay put. “This is our land,” she said. “I just want this to be over with, so we won’t get bombed.” Across the street, Khoruzha, 72, said she would not accept any end to the war that resulted in Russia claiming even the parts of the eastern Donetsk region it currently controls. She remembers voting for Ukrainian independence from this village in 1991. She said she believes in Zelensky. But she would not support him if he moved toward freezing the lines where they are now. Her son, Valentin, was recently wounded fighting near Pokrovsk and will soon return to the front. “I want all of Donetsk to be Ukraine,” she said. Ukrainians are waking up to the likelihood that large portions of the country will be handed over to Russia under any scenario if a peace deal is reached. The only question is how much territory they will lose, and whether Moscow will receive additional land that it does not currently control. Based on what has come out of discussions so far, even in the best-case scenario, Ukraine is expected to lose the part of the country that Russia occupies at the moment — Crimea, two-thirds of Donetsk, portions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, and practically all of Luhansk. It is a jarring prospect for many. Until just recently, Ukrainian officials guaranteed that they would retake the occupied territories. But now they must face the probability that about 20 percent of the country will be locked behind the front line and ceded to Moscow for the foreseeable future, if not forever. “Emotionally, it’s a tragedy,” said Anton Grushetskyi, executive director of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), which has been tracking Ukrainian attitudes toward various peace plans that have been floated. Advertisement   About 80 percent of Ukrainians when polled by KIIS last September said that they could drive Russian forces from the country if the West supported with sufficient weapons. Grushetskyi said that number has not moved significantly from last year. But Ukrainians have realized that they will not receive the weapons they need. Under the Biden administration, Ukraine’s army received expansive support, although Kyiv needed to lobby heavily to receive key weapons systems like F-16 fighter jets, which only arrived in small numbers after long delays. The Trump administration has reduced and at times frozen military aid to Ukraine, and sent signals that the days of generous assistance are over. “We see that it’s not possible to receive all needed support, especially with the current U.S. administration and certain states in Europe,” Grushetskyi said. “Ukrainians understand that we need to be much more pragmatic.” This pragmatism involves accepting that “we will not return the territories that are already occupied in the near future,” saidlawmaker Yehor Cherniev, who chairs Ukraine’s delegation to NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly. But Ukraine would never formally cede the territories, Cherniev said. “We are ready to wait, but we will never legally recognize them as Russian,” he said. “These territories will remain in the status of being occupied.” Not recognizing the territories as legally part of Russia allows the Ukrainian leadership to sidestep tricky legal questions, like holding a national referendum to approve changes to the country’s borders, as the constitution requires. According to Grushetskyi, the majority of Ukrainians share this view — that admitting Russia de facto controls the territories does not mean that they are lost forever. This allows them to swallow the bitter pill of permitting Russia to continue its occupation of millions of Ukrainian citizens. But Putin is insisting that Ukraine officially relinquish this territory as well as the remaining third of Donetsk that Russia has failed to take. This, Ukrainian officials say, will not happen. Zelensky said that he told President Donald Trump and European leaders in a meeting earlier this week in the Oval Office that “legally, we do not recognize the occupation.” Moreover, if Ukrainian troops withdraw from the remaining portion of Donetsk, “it would then open the path to Kharkiv” and other industrial centers in eastern Ukraine. “This is not only a constitutional issue — it is a matter of our country’s survival, involving the strongest defensive lines and distances to industrial centers,” Zelensky said in Washington, according to his account to journalists on Wednesday. “If Putin gains this territory, he will try to advance further, regardless of whether he signs anything or not.” Zelensky now must persuade Trump to back Ukraine’s position. Although the Ukrainian leader’s popularity at the moment remains high — a 58 percent trust rating, according to KIIS — his political survival is very likely to depend on being able to resist Russia’s demands. “The situation is difficult for him, because from what I know, he’s being put under a lot of pressure and he’s being threatened that there will no longer be financial support, intelligence,” said Tymofiy Mylovanov, director of the Kyiv School of Economics and an adviser to the presidential administration. “There are people who might use it against him. Very few will defend him,” Mylovanov said. “So he’s very much limited politically. Just like in any democracy.” How the Ukrainian public would react to a peace deal remains to be seen. Grushetskyi says it is unlikely there will be mass protests if Ukraine consents to Russia’s de facto control of what it already occupies. But this must also be accompanied by firm security guarantees by the West, as well as rejecting other Kremlin demands, such as reducing Ukraine’s military and allowing the Kremlin to dictate internal Ukrainian politics. In the end, many Ukrainians are simply exhausted by the war and will welcome a stop to the fighting, even if in a few years Russia violates the terms of the agreement. Oleksandr Kaluhin, 43, a former border guard, fled his home in Donetsk city with his wife, who was then pregnant, in 2014 when it was first stormed by Russian-backed forces. He signed up to fight in Donetsk in 2016, when Russia waged an undeclared war in the Donbas region, and then again in 2022, a week after the full-scale invasion. His wife fled with their son Heorhii to Poland in 2022, and he has not seen them since. Ideally, Kaluhin would like to return to a Ukrainian-controlled Donetsk city — even if just to visit. But after 11 years, he holds no illusions about showing his son the city he has never seen. “People can be realistic about this, or they can fantasize about what’s going to happen,” he said. “Soldiers, especially those who fought since 2014, are exhausted.” When the war ends, he said, he will probably move to Poland to live with his family — and adapt to the life they have built in his absence. His wife works in a poultry plant, and his son is enrolled in Polish school. “I want a better life for my kid,” he said. “I don’t want to just see him, I want to raise him.” Anastasiia, also from Donetsk city, disagrees. She lived there for eight years under the control of Russian-backed forces until the full-scale war started. “I believe that any territorial agreement with the aggressor is unacceptable,” said Anastasiia, who spoke on the condition that only her first name be used because her parents still live there. “Giving Russia any Ukrainian territory would be a betrayal — betrayal of the Ukrainians for whom these lands are home, and of those who have already given their lives to liberate them.” Anastasiia does not believe Russia will adhere to the terms of any agreement. “My parents still live under occupation. Donetsk is my home. Many of my friends’ parents are also living in the occupied cities of Donetsk and Luhansk regions,” she said. “Accepting this cynical deal would probably extinguish the hope of ever seeing them again.” Stern and Galouchka reported from Kyiv.

A Trump-Putin alliance, for all to see - Vladimir Kara-Murza The Washington Post

 A Trump-Putin alliance, for all to see

This is the first U.S. administration in modern times to openly side with dictatorship over democracy.
Vladimir Kara-Murza
The Washington Post, April 2, 2025

        Vladimir Putin once admitted that his favorite part of his job in the KGB was recruiting undercover agents and informants. “It was a colossal experience for me,” he told journalists at a summit in Germany in 2017.
        Since coming to the Kremlin a quarter-century ago, Putin has used this experience to his advantage — including vis-à-vis American presidents. A successful recruiter must be able to win the trust and affection of his interlocutors — however different they may be. To George W. Bush, a devout Christian, Putin told the story of a cross that his mother had given him and that survived a massive fire at his dacha — an act of God, he said. After that meeting, Bush famously declared that he “looked the man in the eye” and “was able to get a sense of his soul.” To Barack Obama, who won the presidency on a promise of change, Putin offered an agreeable counterpart in the form of puppet “President” Dmitry Medvedev — who had no real power but gave pleasant speeches about freedom and modernization, and once took an iPhone selfie with Steve Jobs. During his first term, Obama pursued an ill-fated “reset” with the Kremlin.
        The approach to Donald Trump, in Putin’s estimation, was personal flattery and caressing his ego. So, he told visiting White House envoy Steve Witkoff how he had prayed for Trump — “his friend” — after the attempt on his life, and commissioned a painting of Trump that Witkoff duly delivered to the Oval Office, leaving the U.S. president “clearly touched.”
        Not that such gestures were much needed. Already, in his first term, Trump demonstrated a deference to and admiration for Putin that puzzled not only European leaders but also members of his own administration. His meeting with Putin in Helsinki in July 2018 led Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) — the most principled voice in American politics when it came to confronting dictators — to the harsh conclusion that “no prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant.”
        But anything Trump did during his first term pales in comparison with what has been happening over the past two months. Since returning to the White House, he has blamed Ukraine for Putin’s full-scale invasion of that country in February 2022; denounced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a “dictator without elections” (a description that would fit Putin perfectly) and treated him to a public showdown in February in the Oval Office; invited Putin to rejoin the Group of Eight, from which Russia was expelled after the 2014 annexation of Crimea; and directed the United States to side with Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Equatorial Guinea and other dictatorships in opposing a United Nations resolution condemning Putin’s attack on Ukraine.
        And it wasn’t just words. After his shouting match with Zelensky, Trump paused U.S. military assistance to Ukraine, including intelligence-sharing — leaving the country vulnerable to intensified Russian air and missile strikes and causing hundreds of Ukrainian casualties, including among civilians.
Finally, last week, at the U.S.-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia, the Trump administration promised to “help restore Russia’s access to the world market for agricultural and fertilizer exports, lower maritime insurance costs, and enhance access to ports and payment systems” after the Kremlin, in a vague and meaningless statement, “agreed to develop measures for implementing” Trump’s proposed partial ceasefire involving energy infrastructure.
        Trump’s overtures to Putin go well beyond the war in Ukraine. Days after his inauguration, the president ended most programs led by the U.S. Agency for International Development — including all projects aimed at supporting civil society and promoting democracy in authoritarian countries such as Russia. As Pete Marocco, the official tasked with dismantling USAID, stated in a court affidavit, these programs were “terminated for national interest.” I do not remember a time in modern history when an American administration deemed — and publicly said — that supporting democratic movements against dictatorships runs counter to U.S. national interests.
        Last month, Trump moved to dismantle the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees international broadcasting in 63 languages and reaches an estimated 420 million people in more than 100 countries. For citizens of authoritarian states such as Russia, where independent media have long been silenced, U.S.-funded news outlets were a vital source of truthful information about their own countries and the world.         And though this is a gift not just to Putin but to dictators all around the world, from Cuban communists to Iranian mullahs, it was Moscow in particular that couldn’t hide its delight.
        “This is an awesome decision by Trump,” said Margarita Simonyan, head of the Russian state propaganda network RT. “We couldn’t shut them down, unfortunately, but America did so itself.”
        Soviet apologists such as Putin often claim that the U.S.S.R. was destroyed by covert schemes designed in the West. This is obviously false; political change in any country can only come from within. What is true is that Western solidarity with those struggling for democracy behind the Iron Curtain — be it through radio broadcasts that countered state propaganda or gestures such as President Ronald Reagan’s meeting with dissidents during his visit to Moscow in 1988 — played a crucial role in supporting and strengthening public desire for change.
        Under Trump, dissidents fighting autocracy in Russia and elsewhere must adjust to a new reality in which the United States is not only not helping them in their fight but is actually siding with their oppressors. This makes our struggle more difficult — but it won’t change the outcome. The vacated leadership of the free world will be filled by others. But most important, the impetus for change will once again come from within — because, for all the current setbacks, the future belongs to democracy, not dictatorship. Even if Vladimir Putin — and Donald Trump — like to think otherwise.

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O que nenhum ditador comunista conseguiu fazer, foi feito por Trump: silenciar a Voice of America - Dana Milbank The Washington Post

From the Washington Post, March 18, 2025 

From Dana Milbank’s column on Trump’s silencing of the government-funded broadcaster, which had been a continuous “voice of freedom” since it first went on the air eight weeks after Pearl Harbor. The president this week put virtually all VOA staff on administrative leave. As Dana points out, Hitler never managed to silence VOA. Neither did Stalin, Putin or anyone in between. Mao or the ayatollahs, neither. And they all certainly tried. It is unconscionable that America’s own leader is the one to silence the country’s message abroad. Of course, Dana writes, “the world’s autocrats are doing somersaults.” ADVERTISEMENT   That’s because, as the Editorial Board points out, no one is going to suffer more than those autocrats’ subjects. So much of VOA’s audience came from within closed societies, and for many of those people, VOA was the only source of non-propagandized truth that could reach them.

Under Trump, a U.S. that once united Europe now divides it - Michael Birnbaum, Sammy Westfall (The Washington Post)

 Under Trump, a U.S. that once united Europe now divides it

Michael Birnbaum with Sammy Westfall 

The Washington Post, Feb 17, 2025

 

MUNICH — When Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago, the United States helped whip Europe into a staunchly unified response. Now, U.S. leaders may be splitting Europe into pieces as President Donald Trump seeks to end the war, European leaders and policymakers say.

Vice President JD Vance and other top administration officials made their European debut last week, slashing their way through a continent of allies as they embraced far-right leaders, demanded access to mineral wealth and offered sympathy to the views of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

By the end of the week, European leaders found themselves potentially cut out of peace talks with Russia, facing down a trade warwith Washington and scrambling to answer U.S. requests about how many troops they can marshal to Ukraine to guarantee a truce negotiated without their input.

Europeans already had four years of a Trump presidency. But many policymakers say that this time feels different, with four head-snapping weeks of Trump already recasting the attitudes of leaders who had vowed to make the best of his new term in office.

“The view was a little bit more optimistic” just four weeks ago as Trump entered office, Finnish President Alexander Stubb told reporters Saturday.

“Of course, the developments that we’ve seen in the past few days give us a little bit more pause for pessimism. But as I’ve always said, pessimism is usually inaction. Optimism is action, and realism is a solution,” he continued. “So let’s be realistic and try to look at a good pathway forward.”

Many Europeans are looking at the situation “with nervousness, frustration and even alarm,” said Jeffrey Rathke, the president of the American-German Institute at Johns Hopkins University and a former U.S. diplomat.

European foreign ministers who were in Munich this weekend for an annual gathering of the transatlantic security elite sat for an impromptu breakfast on Sunday to discuss what to do. French President Emmanuel Macron invited some of Europe’s leaders to Paris on Monday to discuss European security and Ukraine.

Advocates of Washington’s generations-long partnership with European democracies say that Trump’s team has quickly become a force for chaos. The United States helped rebuild Europe after World War II and fostered the economic cooperation of the European Union to try to put an end to nationalist clashes on the continent. Critics say Trump is trying to pull Europe apart, emboldening the Kremlin and raising the risk of borders being redrawn again by force.

“We had a century of American leadership where we’ve been able to be seen as a force toward stability. And that is not just vanishing, but it’s actually moving in the opposite direction,” said Sen. Andy Kim (D-New Jersey), who worked for the State Department before going into politics and spent the weekend talking to European policymakers in Munich.

“We are becoming a source of instability and a source of concern, even among our own allies,” he said. “What’s the value of the American handshake? And right now here in Munich, it doesn’t have value. People don’t think they can count on it, even if they get an agreement.”

‘Whiplash’

Europeans have been shocked by the speed at which Trump and his lieutenants have taken aim at pillars of their continent’s security and moved to cut a deal with Russia. Many NATO allies left a meeting of defense ministers last week convinced that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth planned to pull tens of thousands of troops from Europe in the coming years, three officials said, though they cautioned that the effort still appears nascent.

Trump also spoke for nearly 90 minutes on Wednesday to Putin without consulting with Ukraine or Europeans beforehand, then emerged from the conversation appearing to embrace the Kremlin’s viewpoint that NATO expansion justified Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Until now, it has been a tenet of U.S. policy that European countries have the right to seek their own alliances free from Russian military pushback.

Some on Trump’s team dismiss the idea that he is trying to sow divisions inside Europe. Tough, frank talk between friends is the best way to spark European defense spending and rebuild a partnership, they say.

“You look at triage as a medic, what’s the first thing you do? Stop the bleeding, then you treat for shock. And what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to stop the bleeding,” said Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia.

“You cannot restrict this conflict intellectually to just Europe,” he said. “This is a global fight. And if you don’t think it’s a global fight, you’re wrong.”

But Europeans say that Trump’s policies are unraveling efforts to cooperate against common foes. Even good-faith attempts to build ties to his administration have been undercut by his shifting decisions, some of them said, noting that they were told to talk to Kellogg about Ukraine and Russia when he was appointed the envoy and have invested months in the relationship.

Trump last week appeared to cut Kellogg out of the key dialogue with Russia, announcing that his Mideast envoy and personal friend, Steve Witkoff, would handle talks with the Kremlin instead. Kellogg won’t be in Saudi Arabia this week when the Trump administration sits down with Russian counterparts for the highest-level dialogue since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

“We need to work together against dictators and not fight among each other about democracy,” Dutch Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans said in an interview. “And we should project unity and strength.”

One former U.S. official in Munich summed up attitudes succinctly: “Whiplash,” the person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

 

‘The old days are over’

Many policymakers were especially taken aback by Vance’s Friday speech in Munich, where he blasted “fire walls” that Germany’s centrist parties have built against including the anti-immigrant, nationalist Alternative for Germany party in coalitions. Some of the party’s leaders have embraced Nazi-era slogans and declared that new generations should be freed from apologizing for the sins of their grandparents. Vance also met party leader Alice Weidel, becoming the highest-ranking U.S. official to do so.

Vance was trying “to pick a fight with us, and we don’t want to a pick a fight with our friends,” E.U. foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Friday after the speech.

Some leaders noted that Vance delivered the speech a day after laying a wreath for the victims of the Dachau concentration camp — a physical embodiment of what can happen when nationalism steers toward extremes.

The threat is not just theoretical, they said: Russia has designs on full control of Ukraine and potentially biting into other neighbors too.

“I’m not saying that we are at war, but we cannot claim that we are in peacetime anymore, and a hybrid car is still a car, right? Hybrid war,” said Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who has already clashed with Trump over his demands to take over Greenland.

“For me, I mean, there is a big risk that something that will look nice on the paper will give Russia the possibility to mobilize, to rearm and to continue, maybe in Ukraine or somewhere else,” she said.

Ukraine’s leader also noted the new attitude from Trump, pushing Europe to unite in the face of the challenge and build the strongest possible relationship with Washington.

“A few days ago, President Trump told me about his conversation with Putin. Not once did he mention that America needs Europe at the table,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday. “That says a lot. The old days are over when America supported Europe just because it always had.”

Elements of the common U.S. and European effort to help Ukraine have fallen victim to Trump’s targeting of the U.S. Agency for International Development and freeze on foreign aid. Key parts of the challenging work to keep Ukraine’s lights on were paid by USAID, with the aid halt freezing the production of key replacement parts for the power grid and generation, one Ukrainian energy official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive security topic.

With no clarity about when or if U.S. funding might be restored, Ukrainians likely will shiver in the dark this winter for more hours every day than if USAID were paying the contracts it signed, the official said.

“If there’s not any kind of underlying trust and alliance, and everything is [a] jump ball because it’s a negotiating tactic,” said Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Virginia), “will people then rightfully feel everything with America is now transactional, rather than based upon the normal rule of shared values and shared history, shared defense against authoritarians in the past?”

Ellen Francis contributed to this report

 

 

Trump sabotages his own idea for lasting peace in Ukraine - Lee Hockstader (The Washington Post)

Trump sabotages his own idea for lasting peace in Ukraine

If this is the president’s art of the deal, it’s artless — and extremely unlikely to work.
Lee Hockstader
The Washington Post, January 30, 2025
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/01/30/trump-ukraine-europe-musk-troops-war/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=wp_opinions

BERLIN — Winston Churchill is said to have quipped that all he needed to ensure Europe’s defense was one American soldier, “preferably dead.”
Donald Trump would be unpersuaded.
The president is reluctant to send more aid to Ukraine, let alone U.S. troops; nor does he want Ukraine admitted to NATO. As for overseeing an eventual ceasefire and guaranteeing Ukraine’s security — without which an armistice would be meaningless, given Moscow’s neo-imperialist ambitions — he sees that as Europe’s problem.
Fair enough: Many Europeans regard Russia’s war in Ukraine as an existential threat; far fewer Americans do. So it made sense when, according to the Wall Street Journal, Trump suggested European boots on the ground in Ukraine, once a ceasefire is agreed upon, to protect Ukrainian sovereignty by deterring future Russian attacks.
But Trump might be sabotaging his own goal of ending a cataclysmal war now nearing its third anniversary: “He doesn’t connect the dots,” Jan Techau, a German security analyst, told me.
Trump is rightly pushing Europeans to boost spending on their militaries and take far more responsibility for their own security. But what he’s demanding now goes much further. Persuading Europeans to risk direct confrontation with Russian forces would be the biggest ask a U.S. president has made of America’s allies in living memory.
How big? Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says at least 200,000 European soldiers, in addition to Kyiv’s own forces, would be necessary to deter future Russian attacks. That would be almost an impossibly large force for Europe to muster, at least now. Even low-end estimates — 40,000 to 50,000 European ground troops — would severely strain countries, including Britain, whose forces have dwindled to or near historic lows.
Many Europeans would be reluctant to send troops into Ukrainian territory. But what’s the choice if the goal is to deter further Russian attacks?
Washington and key allies, including Germany, oppose granting Ukraine NATO membership. U.N. peacekeepers could be deployed only with the agreement of Russia, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, and no one seriously expects President Vladimir Putin to sign off on blue helmets in Ukraine that would face down his own forces. Besides, U.N. forces elsewhere have a long track record of failing to keep peace (see: Lebanon).
European officials have started talks on mustering a force to protect Ukraine. It could involve some combination of British, French, Dutch, Nordic and Baltic troops, among others.
A crucial precondition would be muscular U.S. backup, perhaps based in Poland, providing what military types call “C4ISR” — command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
Put simply, Europe cannot halt the war in Ukraine on its own. And the United States can’t successfully end it without European troops. Cooperation and codependence are the key — if or when a negotiated ceasefire is achieved.
Plenty of obstacles to a European force would present themselves, not least the certainty that Putin would vehemently object, painting it as an advance of NATO troops toward Russia’s borders.
But instead of encouraging European allies and signaling that Washington will have their back, Trump is targeting them with aggression and abuse. That has left Europe reeling just days into his presidency.
If that’s the art of the deal, it’s artless. And it’s extremely unlikely to work.
The issue is not just the threat of tariffs on European goods, though those would sap nations already struggling with anemic economies (Britain) and unsustainable debt (France) even as they would struggle to afford a hugely expensive deployment.
Nor is it only Trump’s snarling over Greenland, which he wants to wrest away from Denmark, although his bullying has shaken NATO allies.
It’s also the brazen interference and contempt for key allies by Elon Musk, who is understandably regarded by European officials as a Trump proxy.
Musk has been loudly promoting radical European political parties that would be most opposed to any force that would safeguard a ceasefire and protect Ukraine. In both Britain and Germany, he has thrown his support behind Russia-sympathizer parties — Reform UK and Alternative for Germany.
Would anyone blame French officials for concluding that Musk would also back France’s populist party National Rally, which, with its own history of swooning over Putin, would be very unlikely to back a European force to deter Russian aggression?
Of course, Trump does have another option. Instead of seeking a negotiated ceasefire safeguarded by European forces, he could simply abandon Ukraine by cutting off military aid.
But that could make Ukraine Trump’s Afghanistan, multiplying the carnage, chaos and refugees. It would signal to China and other adversaries that Washington is weak. It could even prompt U.S. allies, fearing Washington has washed its hands of Europe’s security, to develop their own nuclear arms programs. If you think Europe is unstable now, think of Poland or Turkey with nukes — or Germany.
Trump was smart to push Europe to step up. We’ll see if he’s smart enough to stop undercutting his own idea.

Foreign Policy of Donald Trump: comments of a connoisseur: David Kramer - By Meryl Kornfield and Patrick Svitek (The Washington Post)

 

Foreign Policy of Donald Trump: comments of a connoisseur, David Kramer By Meryl Kornfield and Patrick Svitek The Washington Post Early Brief, Jan 17, 2025 Six questions for … David Kramer, executive director of the George W. Bush Institute. You may not think of “Bush” when you think of President-elect Donald Trump — especially when it comes to foreign policy — but Kramer sees some common ground with the incoming administration. He’s encouraged in particular by some of Trump’s planned nominees, such as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) for secretary of state. We spoke with Kramer twice, including after Wednesday’s announcement of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. There has since been a partisan debate over who deserves credit for the breakthrough, but Kramer told us the deal was more broadly a reminder of the vital role the United States can play on the world stage. It’s a role that Trump has put up for debate as he prepares to take office Monday, vowing to put “America first” in foreign policy. The Bush Institute has released a range of policy recommendations for the next administration and the new Congress, in an effort to “stake out what is the right way” on the most pressing issues, as Kramer put it. Here’s what he had to say about other foreign policy issues awaiting Trump. This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity. Your policy recommendations for the Russia-Ukraine war, which include NATO membership for Ukraine, are more friendly to Ukraine than at least Trump’s campaign rhetoric would suggest he supports. What gives you hope he’ll see things differently in office? I think one of the realities that will hit the new administration is [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s lack of interest in a negotiated settlement. You just had … the former minister of Russia reiterating opposition to the initial positions that they think the Trump team will be staking out. And basically what Putin wants is Ukraine’s surrender. He wants a change in government, he wants Ukraine to remain permanently neutral and he wants recognition of Russian territories, including land that Russia doesn’t even currently occupy. And so I think this reality … will hit the new administration and might well lead them to recognizing the importance of continuing to support Ukraine militarily as well as politically. I think [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelensky has been rather skillful in his approach indicating a readiness to negotiate, but based on a just outcome … an outcome that does not consign in a permanent way — not just Ukrainian land, but millions of Ukrainians who live on that land. And of course NATO has become a central issue in President Zelensky’s willingness to talk about an end to the war. He feels that solid security guarantees are critical to any Ukrainian effort in ending this war, and for the Ukrainians, the best guarantees come from NATO membership. How do you evaluate Trump’s appointments so far? Some are more conventional GOP voices on foreign policy — such as Rubio — some less so — such as Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence. The secretary of state and the national security adviser [Michael Waltz], you have two figures with significant experience in foreign policy, people who I think have a good understanding of present challenges that are posed from our adversaries, stressing the importance of U.S. leadership in many ways. I think John Ratcliffealso falls into this category based on his experience not just on the Hill but his previous role as the [director of national intelligence]. The other ones are a little harder to judge because there’s not a lot of background on what their positions are, and I think that will come out through their confirmation hearings. On countering China, Trump seems to be entering office sending mixed signals — perhaps most notably by trying to save TikTok. What can he do to signal seriousness about the threat of China? [Rubio and Waltz] are two individuals who do have a track record of recognizing the challenge and threat that China poses under the Communist Party leadership. I think with the two of them there, we’re likely to see a push for a harder line, but also a recognition that trade with China is also important. The big question mark … will be the issue of tariffs. But we also … want to emphasize more the importance of human rights when it comes to China, and this gets at, I think, a common thread in what we call CRINK, the China-Russia-Iran-North Korea alliance, which are authoritarian regimes that are trying to undermine the West and the United States. And at the root of their commonality are gross abuses of human rights. When we tie these threats together, how we respond to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I think, will have an impact on the Chinese Communist Party’s thinking toward Taiwan. If we stand firm, if we maintain support for Ukraine, I think that we could get the Chinese leadership to think twice before they might move against Taiwan. How confident are you that Trump and his GOP allies understand this interconnectedness? I think increasingly [they do], and I think when you look at the early stages of the full-scale invasion by Russia of Ukraine, we saw the Iranians provide critical support in the form of the Shahed drones. I think what’s also highlighted this connection is the decision by North Korea to send 12,000 or so of its troops to join Russian forces in its fight against Ukraine. So we are seeing quite explicitly and openly these regimes helping each other out … and in the process, they pose a great threat. On an issue closer to home, your immigration policy briefsays Congress should “lift or eliminate caps on temporary worker visa programs like the H-2B and H-1B.” Have you been pleasantly surprised that Trump has been recently sticking up for H-1B visas amid some in his party bashing them? We think those are important, and it’s important that we recognize that if there is a roundup and deportation of a number of people who are here illegally, that will have an impact on the labor force … on companies’ ability to produce what they have been so far with those laborers. And so we certainly support an improvement and reform of the legal immigration system here to ensure that our economy can continue to grow, and we think that H-2B and the H-1B are important parts of that. On the ceasefire deal, how does this tee up Trump’s policy toward Israel going forward? There’ll be a lot of work for the United States to do with the various phases of this deal to ensure that it moves forward and that Hamas in particular lives up to what it has agreed to. And so, I think, while hopefully the fighting has ended, there’ll still be a lot of work to do. We all have to remember this would not have happened if Hamas did not launch the worst attack against Israel and Jews since the Holocaust.