Can Donald Trump bring peace to Ukraine in a day as he asserted during the presidential campaign even before he enters the White House?
The short answer is: no.
To be sure, his election has helped change the tone of the protagonists.
Ukrainian President Wolodymir Zelensky says he is ready to work for peace in 2025.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, too, has readmitted the word “peace” into his vocabulary. The trouble is that both leaders have also attached modifiers that cast a long shadow of doubt in the noble word. Zelensky’s modifier is “just” when in reality there has never been and will never be a peace that is accepted as just by both sides of a war. Peace will be possible only if it is considered or imposed on its own, naked and free of adjectival ornaments.
There are, as yet, no signs that either Zelensky or Putin is prepared to drop the conditions they attach to any movement towards peace.
Next question: Can Trump end the war without a formal peace? Again the short answer must be: no. Both sides still have enough weapons, money, hate-fueled energy and foreign support to keep the killing machine in motion. Neither can afford to emerge as the loser because in Zelensky’s case that could cost him his life while in the case of Putin the end of a political career to say the least.
Attempts to end this war and move towards peace started from the first day of the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022. Two days after the invasion, French President Emmanuel Macron phoned Putin to present himself as peacemaker. He continued his peacemaking by phone for several months until he realized that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the Elysees Palace.
However, Macron wasn’t alone to succumb to the temptation of casting oneself as peacemaker. Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski says only Putin can end this war in 15 minutes, presumably by ordering a ceasefire and declaring victory. American columnist Anne Applebaum believes that the war will end when Putin’s career ends.
British pundit Niall Fergusson suggests that to end the war, Putin must be roundly defeated in the battleground. Others speculate that Putin will end the war after invading Moldova and annexing Transnistria which, when added to his annexation of Crimea, South Ossetia and Abkhazia would secure him a placed in the gallery of Russian military heroes from Peter the Great to Josef Stalin.
Anti-American figures cynically advise Europeans to learn to fight their own wars, forgetting about “Big Brother America”, thus encouraging Putin’s dream of de-coupling Europe and the United States.
Ever since the war started no one expected it to last so long.
After a few months, however, it was absorbed into the organized chaos of human existence as “one of those things”.
NATO powers led by the United States have found the cost affordable with the added advantage of giving their arm industries a fantastic boost while, in the case of Europeans, almost doubling expenditure on defense without their bleeding-heart constituencies murmuring a complaint.
China may also be happy to see the war go on a bit longer.
It has punctured Russia’s superpower balloon and made it dependent on China for political support and as a market for Russian oil and gas. That in turn forces Iran to offer even larger discounts for oil sold to China. Europe has a long history of long wars such as the 100-Years and the 30-Years War, a history forgotten with the two short world wars of the 20th century.
So, what can Trump do? He can’t bring peace if neither side is ready for it. He can’t end the war as long as it has not crossed the threshold of pain not only in Ukraine and Russia but globally.
What he can do is to pause the war and a suggested timeframe to consider other options including an interim status quo. In his best-seller book “The Art of the Deal” Trump insists on never regarding a deal as impossible. He then suggests not to try for a deal without having leverage.
Whether anyone likes it or not, the United States under a serious administration that knows what it wants has that leverage. That in the case of Ukraine needs no elaboration. In the case of Russia that leverage is the promise to help the former superpower a pathway to inclusion in the global system with a status commensurate with its history, geopolitical importance and legitimate ambitions.
The challenge that Trump faces is much bigger than ending the war in Ukraine which can be ended through tested diplomatic methods used in a number of similar cases after World War II.
The big enchilada is to bring Russia in from the cold, something that successive US administrations took seriously enough.
Can Trump do it? When in his first presidential term he launched his Peace of Abraham plan, I was among those who doubted his success. So this time I keep my fingers crossed.
In is “The Art of the Deal” Trump writes “I like thinking big. I always have. To me it’s very simple: If you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big.”
