A Trump Presidency Is the Best Chance for Peace in Ukraine | Opinion

Last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky publicly challenged 2024 presidential candidate Donald J. Trump to outline his plan for bringing peace to Europe. "If Trump knows how to finish this war, he should tell us today," President Zelensky insisted on Bloomberg Television. In response, former president Trump recently called the Ukrainian president, agreeing to hold a personal meeting after the election to discuss concrete steps toward peace.

The prospect of peace under a second Trump administration is an increasingly realistic one. The international community is recognizing that the Biden administration's policy of careless escalation has only resulted in more bloodshed.

But the past is the past. With Biden exiting the world stage, America and Ukraine, for better or worse, have an opportunity to end the conflict without further bloodshed or further unifying America's foreign adversaries.

Former president Trump has made clear that he would pursue a negotiated settlement to end the war—something the Biden administration has actively opposed. Indeed, President Biden sought escalation for its own sake, failing to articulate any clear objectives, with a reckless disregard for the threat of a nuclear exchange. Outright Ukrainian military victory has never been a realistic outcome, yet the Biden policy has been to deceive the Ukrainian people and American voters into believing total victory is just over the horizon. This message has resulted in increasing tensions between the United States and Russia, to the point that Russian nuclear-capable submarines were deployed in close proximity to America's shores in June.

Trump, cognizant of growing American war fatigue, has stated that further aid to Ukraine should come with the stipulation of repayment, as a loan. Billions of dollars should not be given away without a clearly defined American interest and proper oversight of how those taxpayer funds are spent. But what is America's clearly defined interest in this conflict? To "bleed" Russia without regard for the parallel "bleeding" in Ukraine? To completely sever Europe from Russia and drive Russia economically and militarily into the arms of the communist Chinese?

The last 25 years have seen many post-Soviet states replace pro-Russian regimes with pro-Western ones, and Russian allies in other regions overthrown, deposed, or confronting civil war. Russia's threat perception is informed by a worsening security environment and the belief (right or wrong) that the West is supporting often-violent realignments of its neighbors and allies. This context, coupled with inflammatory anti-Russian rhetoric in the West, has made Russian leaders believe they could be subject to a "regime change" like the ones they have seen next door. We should not act surprised if Russia behaves like a cornered animal, especially as NATO continues to expand. Russian aggression against their neighbors is wrong, but it is not evidence of any grand design to conquer Europe or reestablish the U.S.S.R.

This is why President Trump has maintained that the war in Ukraine is an unnecessary conflict that could have been averted through reasonable peace settlements and consistent power projection. The Biden administration chose the opposite approach—interfering in Ukraine's domestic politics, antagonizing Putin publicly, and crippling American energy production, all while failing what should have been its one job: deterrence. Now, the conflict has deteriorated into a brutal war of attrition along a mostly unchanging front. It has resulted in hundreds of thousands of young men dead or maimed, and an entire generation who once constituted Ukraine's future fleeing abroad.

Was the Biden policy of prolonging the war worth this horrific price?

History looks poorly on French Marshall Ferdinand Foch of the First World War, whose aggressive assaults on German positions, ostensibly to "pressure" his adversary even as it became clear they were already defeated, in practice wasted the lives of even more young men. How many Ukrainian lives must be spent charging a stalemated front line so that beltway "experts" in the United States can puff their feathers and "pressure" Putin?

Meanwhile, these same armchair generals advocate for Ukrainian membership in NATO—a world-historic blunder that has pushed Russia into the arms of the communist Chinese. The great achievement of Richard Nixon's realist foreign policy was to exploit division between Russia and China, laying the foundation for victory in the Cold War. Biden's legacy has now been to reverse this achievement. China now offers rhetorical and diplomatic support to Putin and helps Russia evade sanctions.

As Trump proposes a path to peace, Ukrainians should think about their national future and remain open to a negotiated settlement. Many express hope that their countrymen would use peace and reconstruction assistance to build a better life for what is left of Ukraine. Their loyalty must lie not with the D.C. beltway, but with their own children and grandchildren.

An incoming Trump administration dedicated to ending the bloodshed will bring hope for peace to the long-suffering Ukrainian people—and to the American people, who have generously underwritten the heavy costs of this prolonged an unnecessary war.

Troup Hemenway is the President of Personnel Policy Operations and Founder of the Association of Republican Presidential Appointees.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

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