Behind Trump's pursuit of ending Ukraine war

Hindustan Times

2 hours ago

The spree of diplomacy initiated by President Donald Trump to try and bring the Russia-Ukraine war to a close has unveiled a complex dynamic wherein structural factors outweigh individual leaders and the personal chemistry among them. It would be wishful thinking that, if only Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin could conjure up some magic through their uncanny mutual admiration, and then draw Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and regional bigwigs into a charmed circle, the worst war in Europe since 1945 might be halted. It must be acknowledged that Trump's heterodox methods do hold potential to break the mould and get out of the present morass. (AFP)
The ugly reality is that Russian bombs and missiles are continuing to rain down on Ukraine even as Trump, Putin, Zelensky and European heads of government embarked on an extended exercise of in-person meetings and consultations to find a resolution. The aftermath of the high-profile Trump-Putin summit in Alaska and the subsequent US-Ukraine-Europe gathering in Washington proves that wars reflect competing structural interests and these interests prevent easy and instantaneous fairytale endings.
Readers may recall the three unprecedented meetings between Trump and the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in 2018 and 2019, which eventually yielded no deal on denuclearisation due to dissonance of interests. Both at the Alaska summit, and subsequently the large group meetings in Washington among the US, Ukraine and the Europeans, effusive praise, positive body language and expressions of sincere intent to turn a page could not mask the underlying mismatch in the goals of the principal parties.
For Trump, apart from self-glorification and an obsessive claim to the Nobel Peace Prize, the main motivations for a direct one-on-one with Putin and the consensus-building exercises with allies of the US are to reset Russia-US relations after decades of hostility, offload the burden of the US having to primarily aid Ukraine's resistance, and potentially script a 'reverse Nixon' manoeuvre of befriending Russia to counterbalance China. For Putin, the objectives of entering into talks are to dangle economic opportunities and 'pragmatic relations' with the US in return for recognition of Russia's permanent takeover of occupied Ukrainian territory, and to dispel the shadow of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) on Ukraine and other former Soviet spaces.
The fact that Trump and Putin used identical language and called for a 'peace agreement' or a 'lasting long-term settlement' rather than just a ceasefire, which Ukraine and the Europeans have been demanding, has been interpreted by critics as American appeasement of Russia as the latter keeps attacking and swallowing more Ukrainian territory. But there are contradictory moves too and the devil lies in the details.
The diplomatic pow-wows among the trans-Atlantic allies demonstrated that Trump is not fully deferring to Putin. Despite his personal preference to transfer responsibilities for Ukraine's security to the Europeans, Trump has come around to accept that the US cannot wash its hands off the business of sustaining the independence of Ukraine. His assurance to European counterparts that the US will commit to 'coordination' of security guarantees for Ukraine so that it remains sovereign and free from future Russian expansionism is most consequential.
Continued American weapons supplies (Zelensky said it would involve purchases worth a whopping $90 billion), American air power, military intelligence and logistics, and American strategic posturing in parts of Ukraine that remain outside Russian control would imply that Nato's de facto presence and pressure on Russia's doorstep and the further integration of Ukraine into the western camp will intensify in the future.
Putin's insistence that the 'root causes' of the war must be addressed and his demands that Ukraine should be politically neutral, collide head-on with the drive to deepen Ukraine's western orientation and nest its security within Nato-like arrangements. Notwithstanding the massive losses Russia has sustained in this war, Putin still seeks a final settlement in which he will be left alone to carve out a Russian sphere of influence in the regions under the former Soviet Union and the Czarist empire. The security guarantees likely to be worked out for Ukraine are the crux of the matter, and they will be of greater consequence for Europe's stability than the nitty-gritty haggling over what specific territories Ukraine will keep and concede to Russia.
In spite of the lack of convergence of interests over the ultimate post-war security architecture, it must be acknowledged that Trump's heterodox methods do hold potential to break the mould and get out of the present morass. Since 2022, the US and its European allies tried the combination of sanctioning Russia and arming and financing Ukraine's resistance with the assumption that this would wear down Putin and bring him to heel. But the western military and economic pushback was half-baked and it did not open doors for a ceasefire, not to mention a full peace.
Trump overestimates his own deal-making genius, but at least he does not treat Putin with liberal ideological contempt. By throwing the mainstream western liberal foreign policy playbook out of the window and directly engaging with Russia and even persuading the Europeans to soften their hardline positions, Trump is finally giving the respect that Putin craved for. Liberals have slammed Trump for rehabilitating Putin despite the latter's war crimes in Ukraine. But carrying on with the old ways was leading nowhere even as mass casualties and destruction of infrastructure kept mounting.
The way forward is to stick to diplomacy and narrow the differences. If all relevant stakeholders, including the Europeans, are roped in to sort out the structural divergences and a grand bargain is struck, everyone will be better off. Trump's quest for a Nobel prize may sound quixotic, but the peace process he has initiated should be given a chance because there is no Plan B whatsoever.
Sreeram Chaulia is professor and dean at the Jindal School of International Affairs. The views expressed are personal