Trump’s goal to end Ukraine war makes moral sense

Friday’s heated exchange in the White House was surely a regrettable moment in American diplomatic history more akin to reality TV than serious statesmanship. But while President Trump blundered in his meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky, it is imperative for Washington to improve relations with Moscow and end the Ukraine war.

Many people find it unconscionable to negotiate with President Vladimir Putin and give up on Ukraine’s efforts to roll back Russia’s gains and restore its pre-war borders.

But this is the cold, hard reality: Russia controls about 20 per cent of Ukraine, which is outmanned and outgunned on the battlefield, and threatens to take even more Ukrainian territory. Moscow will not tolerate a Western bulwark on its borders, which means Ukraine joining NATO is impossible, and Washington won’t give Kyiv a security guarantee. US support for the Ukraine mission has withered away with the coming of the Trump administration.

Understanding this brutal fact of life eludes Zelensky and European leaders, who have virtually no leverage with Washington.

Trump’s proposal to end a war that Ukraine and the West cannot win is far from ideal: it would mean Russian annexation of at least four oblasts plus Crimea and no NATO membership for Ukraine.

But it’s in Kyiv’s best interests, because it’s the least-bad solution to a problem of catastrophic proportions. The alternative is to prolong the war, which would only cause more deaths and destruction, and lead to Ukraine losing even more territory to Russia.

According to the hawks — from left to right, Canberra to Canada and London to Lithuania — Trump’s bilateral overtures to Putin amount to another Munich, the purported 1938 peace agreement that fuelled Nazi expansionism and led to World War II.

Never mind that Republican presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan sought accommodation with a powerful Soviet Union a few years after it invaded Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979, respectively. Were these hard-nosed Cold Warriors appeasers?

Never mind, too, that today’s Russia lacks the economic and military capacity to conquer countries to its west and draw a new Iron Curtain across Europe. Not so long ago, Western hawks declared that Moscow was losing the war and was on the verge of disintegration. Putin’s fall was only a matter of time. Yet the same people now warn of the Russian army galloping across Eastern and Central Europe. Both positions can’t be correct.

But one thing is clear: Russia, like any great power, will protect its near abroad, and will mightily resist any encroachment on its borders that it sees as an existential threat. Of course, this is why Moscow is determined to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO.

There is another reason for Washington to settle this deadly conflict: the war — and the policy of NATO expansion that precipitated the West’s deteriorating relations with Moscow — has helped create a close strategic relationship between Russia and its old rival China, while at the same time making it difficult for the US to pivot fully to Asia to contain the communist state’s expansionism.  Neither of these developments serve US or, for that matter, Australian, interests.

Russia will play hardball to protect its vital interests on its borders, but it’s not the Soviet Union. China, on the other hand, is much more powerful and dangerous. It is bent on challenging US military power in the Asia Pacific and dominating that region if it can. As a result, China will continue to intimidate and harass long-time US allies, such as Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and Australia.

Western hawks still talk as if we live in the unipolar moment that existed after the Cold War, where the US could have a large military footprint in every region of the world. But the coming of multipolarity has changed all that and Washington must prioritise its commitments.

Many politicians and pundits don’t seem to understand that the global balance of power has profoundly changed in recent years, and Washington must carefully relate ends and means in this new world.

After all, America is overstretched, and there are limits to even US power, especially when Washington spends more servicing its debt than on defence.

The Pax Americana is gone, not just because of the re-emergence of old-style power politics in multipolarity, but also because of the many foolish policies that the hawks themselves advocated during unipolarity. Think of the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003, which violated the so-called rules-based international order, cost the US dearly in credibility, blood and treasure, and helped fuel Trump’s America First movement.

Today’s Republican party is no longer the party of George W. Bush and the neo-con hawks, but it is populated with China hawks who believe it’s imperative for the US to reorder its strategic priorities away from Europe and focus on containing the only great power capable of overturning the order in a geopolitically significant region. Remaining deeply engaged in the Ukraine war — even if US troops are not directly involved — only hinders US efforts to deter China.

All this is a reminder that the US and its allies should have supported the peace talks in Istanbul between Russia and Ukraine in March-April 2022. They stood a significant chance of succeeding, which would have ended the war quickly and prevented the US from getting bogged down in Ukraine.

But Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and Brussels undermined those negotiations, encouraging Kyiv to keep fighting because the West would support Ukraine “as long as it takes”. The West, as Professor John Mearsheimer warned at the time, has led Ukraine down the primrose path.

Whether Washington is successful in reaching a meaningful peace deal in Ukraine remains to be seen. But Trump’s goal to end the war and stop the slaughter on the battlefield makes strategic and moral sense.

Tom Switzer is executive director of the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney.