Let’s face it: President Donald Trump’s pending peace initiative between Russia and Ukraine has no chance to be accepted by Vladamir Putin of Russia and has mere lukewarm support from Volodymyr Zelinsky of Ukraine, the latter insisting on U.S. security guarantees (to which Trump has in turn not expressly agreed).
Trump’s assertion during the 2024 presidential campaign that he could settle the conflict in one day has turned out to be worse than an understatement. It was also an understatement for Trump to recently concede that the conflict is more complicated than a one day resolution.
As stated in recent coverage in The New York Times, Putin has made clear only what he is not willing to do. He refuses Zelensky’s plea for the presence of European troops in Ukraine to deter Russian aggression. For his own part, Trump shows progress in his policy to discontinue deadlines imposed on Zelensky. But that he had ever envisioned the conflict as easy to resolve is a matter of concern. And he is whistling dixie in his overtures to Putin agreeing to demilitarize the Ukrainian region of Zaporizhzhia, the location of the nuclear power plant seized by Russia (which Putin has no intention of giving up).
My point has been made before regarding Abba Eban, the late Israeli scholar and diplomat, stating in his 1983 book The New Diplomacy that expansionist policies of the now defunct Soviet Union were more Russian tendencies than communist. My point has also been made that Eban erred when he implied this reality was reassuring.
The Soviet Union is now gone. And Russia indeed survives aggressive as ever. Nor is it a source of comfort that Putin is a former agent of the Soviet era KGB and has cited Stalin as his favorite Russian leader. (Incidentally, though Stalin boasted a Russian background, he was actually Soviet Georgian and downplayed his real nationality.)
Putin has made clear his intention to not only retain the area seized from Ukraine since the Russian invasion of 2022 (and/or Crimea seized in 2014), but to garner more territory not yet under Russian control. The declaration of Trump and Zelensky that a peace agreement was at hand was an obvious fallacy.
We face in Europe the most dangerous situation since the Berlin Crisis in 1961 (when the U.S. Army under President John F. Kennedy faced down the assembled tanks of communist Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev). A military exchange with Russia isn’t desirable and must not be the first resort. But as Kennedy knew, it could also not be a last resort. The Soviet Union was a reality which lives on in Putin’s Russia. We can’t at every turn afford to boast peace when left in a more precarious position than before. The sobering reality is that an exchange with Russia is not unthinkable.
The good news is that NATO is behind Ukraine and the U.S. can count on European support in the event of conflict with Russia, if Trump would only embrace this advantage. In the meantime, with enough imagination, the conflict can be resolved absent ultimate confrontation if we were to employ imaginative strategy.
My suggestion is that Trump go above Putin’s head. Signal to the Russian bureaucracy an incentive to depose Putin. After all, there is no shortage of Russian officials and military personnel who don’t believe Ukraine is worth confrontation with the United States. Considering how the Russian economy is currently choked, offers to relax the pressure is a source of incentive to no marginal number of Russian functionaries.
It’s an idea which has not been explored by either the U.S. or Ukraine, much less our European allies. But bringing Putin down is within our reach. And who knows? It might just secure for Trump the Nobel Peace Prize he so covets.
John O’Neill is an Allen Park freelance writer and a graduate of Wayne State University.
