Putin summit poses a tough test for the ‘endgame man'

Washington Post

4 days ago

As President Dwight D. Eisenhower waited to hear whether an armistice agreement had halted the Korean War in July 1953, he couldn't sleep. He stayed up into the night 'talking almost incessantly' about the horrors of battle, according to his aides — and how a Soviet general had once shocked him by saying he cleared minefields by marching his own troops over them.
What will President Donald Trump be thinking on the eve of his summit Friday in Alaska with Russian President Vladimir Putin? Perhaps he'll just have a Diet Coke and get a good night's rest. Certainly, the White House has been trimming expectations for any breakthrough, with Trump calling it 'really a feel-out meeting' and his press secretary saying it would be merely a 'listening exercise.'
But I would guess that Trump won't be quite as pliable or passive as some of the presummit commentary suggests. He has spoken for more than a year about his passion for ending what he calls a 'bloodbath.' He has become increasingly frustrated that Putin has been stringing him along and ignoring his requests for compromise. And in Trump's mind, at least, he has flipped the script: Compared with his last meeting with Putin, in 2019, he's far stronger and Putin is much weaker.
'It will not be a listening exercise; it will be a talking exercise,' predicted one knowledgeable official after a Trump call Wednesday with European leaders outlining plans for the summit. The official explained: 'Trump will tell Putin what the deal is and what he has to do: land for peace. On land, how much and what terms? On peace, how durable and how protected?'
And what if Putin refuses to accept Trump's peace framework? That will pose a test of Trump's ability to act with patience and resolve. Officials tell me Trump is ready to impose the sanctions he has threatened for months. 'It will be a humiliation for him' if Putin balks, argued the knowledgeable official. The Senate has already drafted a tough sanctions bill with strong bipartisan support. Trump will need to follow through and punish Moscow, something he has been reluctant to do.
If Putin is smart, he'll drag out the process. He won't say no, but he won't say yes, either. He'll agree to some terms but not others. And until a ceasefire takes hold, he will keep pounding at Ukraine's ever-weaker front lines.
Details are everything in peace negotiations, and Trump's approach is broad strokes. But the basic land-for-peace formula is sensible. Despite President Volodymyr Zelensky's insistence that Ukraine will never cede territory, 'everyone knows that land for peace is a reality,' argued the official. That's certainly my impression from talking with a range of Ukrainian leaders.
Zelensky wants a ceasefire first, but that might be the grand finale in this process. 'They will start with the outcome and then have the ceasefire when the deal is agreed,' predicted the knowledgeable official. 'The president is an endgame man who has completely lost patience with this.'
The crucial issue for Ukraine and other European countries is the security guarantees that would follow a peace deal. Europe will provide the necessary weapons and training for Ukraine's army. But several European officials tell me they expect the United States will have some 'skin in the game,' including satellite surveillance to monitor any Russian cheating.
Commentators have been searching for a historical analogy to the Anchorage meeting. Some who fear a Trump sellout of Ukraine have likened it to the 1938 Munich summit, where British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain allowed Adolf Hitler to absorb the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. Others have warned of a new Yalta-style division of Europe. Those dangers are certainly present.
An intriguing parallel is Eisenhower's successful effort to end the Korean conflict, which offers some notable similarities: a stalemated war, a recalcitrant ally, a menacing superpower foe, the risk of nuclear conflict.
Ike hated that war, calling it a 'tragedy,' and pledged to go to Korea to end it. He traveled there soon after his 1952 election victory to press for an armistice. South Korean President Syngman Rhee wanted to keep fighting, but Ike threatened to cut off fuel for his army and was even prepared to have Rhee arrested if he refused a truce.
Here's the lesson for Trump: Eisenhower didn't just pressure his defiant ally (much as Trump has done with Zelensky); he squeezed the other side, too. He warned North Korea and its Soviet and Chinese backers that if they didn't end the war, the United States might use nuclear weapons. To sustain the peace after the armistice, Eisenhower crafted a mutual defense treaty for South Korea, explains Harvard professor Graham Allison. Today, South Korea is an economic miracle.
Ukraine needs a settlement of this war now. After more than three years of brutal aggression, its people are 'war-weary,' says Kevin Ryan, a retired U.S. Army brigadier general who teaches at the Kyiv School of Economics. The front lines are so depleted that one retired four-star general estimates Ukraine has just a tenth of the people it needs at some key locations. A Gallup poll released this month found that the percentage of Ukrainians who want to keep fighting until victory has fallen from 73 percent in 2022 to 24 percent now. The proportion who favor a negotiated settlement has risen over that same period from 22 percent to 69 percent.
'Putin intends to propose that the war be brought to an end,' says Tatiana Stanovaya, a well-informed Kremlin analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 'My understanding is that Putin is prepared to exchange territory,' she adds, freezing front lines in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson and withdrawing from areas near Kharkiv and Dnipro if Ukraine cedes Donetsk and Luhansk.
But Stanovaya cautioned in a conversation Wednesday and a social media post that Putin still isn't ready to compromise on his 'core demand' of no NATO membership for Ukraine, along with limits on Ukraine's military. That's where this diplomacy will hit ground zero: on the question of Ukraine's sovereignty as a nation.
Trump ordinarily would never quote Gen. Mark A. Milley, who battled him as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But he might want to open the summit with this Milley comment from November 2022, hundreds of thousands of lives ago: 'There has to be a mutual recognition that military victory is … not achievable through military means. And therefore you need to turn to other means.'
Trump is right that it's time to end this war. Both sides have suffered shocking losses. As he enters the meeting room with Putin, Trump should remind himself that a bad deal — one that neuters Ukraine — won't work. As with every war, the only peace deal that lasts is a just one.