What Trump 2.0 Means for Ukraine and the World

Donald Trump assumed office on Monday with the stated intention of ending the war in Ukraine. A longtime critic of NATO—an alliance that Ukraine hopes to join—and an admirer of Vladimir Putin, Trump has worried supporters of Ukraine who think he may force the country to make severe territorial concessions. (Many of Trump’s allies in Congress have already tried to end the military aid that the Biden Administration consistently offered Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in 2022.) More broadly, Trump spent much of the transition period alternately mocking and threatening U.S. allies such as Canada and Panama, including refusing to rule out militarily occupying the Panama Canal. He also speculated about annexing Greenland.
I recently spoke by phone with Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, about what Trump’s foreign policy might mean for Ukraine, and for the world. Wertheim is no fan of Trump, though he is a so-called realist in matters of foreign policy: he is skeptical of American military action abroad and a critic of what he considers the open-ended commitment that the Biden Administration offered Ukraine. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed why Trump’s approach to foreign policy may be different than it was in his first term, whether the West is in part to blame for Putin’s attack on Ukraine, and whether the U.S. can ever really offer Ukraine sufficient security guarantees.
For people like you who have had concerns about the shape of the American commitment to Ukraine, what is your hope about what a new Presidency could usher in?
This is not a prediction, but it’s an opportunity to lift the taboo that unfortunately arose quickly after Russia’s full-scale invasion, on seeking a diplomatic settlement to the war, and hopefully to resolve the conflict within a short amount of time. This is especially appealing at this point, given that it’s hard to argue that Ukraine is in an advantageous position. For people like me, who have been supportive of aiding Ukraine but critical of the relatively unconditional way in which the Biden Administration went about it, the opportunity now is to find a way to end the conflict that ends up being in the United States’ best interest and hopefully Ukraine’s best interest, too, given the realities that Ukraine faces.
I never thought that this conflict was going to end in a complete Ukrainian territorial victory—in other words, in Ukraine being able to retake all the territory that Russia seized from it, whether that’s going back to the pre-February, 2022, lines or to 2014 [when Russia took Crimea and areas of eastern Ukraine]. And, in fact, neither did many officials in the Biden Administration. So I think already, with the victory of Trump in the election, this political taboo on a discussion about how, realistically, this devastating conflict could come to an end has been lifted. That said, I am quite concerned that it’s going to be very hard to find a durable settlement.
You mentioned the somewhat “unconditional” support that Biden offered Ukraine. But many Ukrainians and some critics of the White House would say that Biden’s support didn’t go far enough: he ruled out deploying American troops or making any direct attacks on Russia. Many times in the past two years, the White House has taken a long time to authorize certain things, such as the transfer of fighter jets or whether Ukraine can use U.S. weapons to strike inside Russia. On both of those things, and on many others, the White House has eventually gone along. But is it fair to say “unconditional”?
The better word, I think, at least publicly, is “deferential.” The Biden Administration has had a publicly deferential approach to Ukraine when it comes to matters of war aims and war termination. So you’re absolutely right that when it comes to specific requests that Ukraine has made, like setting up a no-fly zone early in the conflict or requests for any number of weapons systems, the Administration has clearly said no to some of those, or it said, “Not now; maybe later.”
But the Administration has also not pressured Ukraine into seeking negotiations, and in fact has maintained that really it would somehow be illegitimate for the United States to pressure Ukraine into a negotiation, that this is really Ukraine’s fight. And it has avoided contradicting Volodymyr Zelensky’s maximalist war aims, which have included taking back all Ukrainian territory lost to Russia. To be perfectly clear, that is a completely fair and just goal. It’s just one that seems unachievable, at least without direct NATO military involvement in the conflict, which is not in the offing.
You recently wrote, “Trump’s outlook has an inviting quality. It indicates that although he may have important ideas and instincts about international relations, he has few set plans and abides by few orthodoxies.” What did you mean?
I was referring to what I called Donald Trump’s philosophy of history, which is “We’ll see what happens.” This is his answer to Barack Obama’s long arc of history that bends toward justice.
Trump’s not a big M.L.K. guy.
No, he’s not. But I was trying to give advice to foreign governments. There’s going to be a particularly wide set of possible policies that this Administration could adopt. If you look at some of the personnel that have been appointed so far, some seem like fairly traditional advocates of American global military primacy. Secretary of State designee Marco Rubio, for example, seemed like a pretty straightforward neoconservative figure when he ran for President against Trump, in 2016. On the other hand, you have the Vice-President, J. D. Vance, and some of the appointees for the Defense Department, who seem more interested in completing the so-called pivot to Asia and drawing down U.S. military commitments in Europe, and possibly in the Middle East, but, in any case, in trying to focus the United States more rigorously on the challenge from China.
I wanted to tell allies in East Asia that perhaps their interests would be better realized if the United States intervenes less militarily around the world and adopts more of a focus on Asia. It’s clear that Trump has many different personas when it comes to foreign policy, and they contradict each other, right? One of them is Trump the China hawk, the guy who likes “peace through strength.” But then there’s Trump the aggrieved nationalist, who seems to want to get into conflicts with just about anybody, including allies. But Trump does have another persona in there, which is Trump the dealmaker and the peacemaker, and we saw an expression of that persona—we didn’t see much of it, frankly—in his first term. And I was quite critical of Trump’s foreign policy in his first term, but we might see more of it in the second term.
He may not have a clear vision, but I can’t imagine him ever saying that he really likes his Western European allies. I can’t imagine him ever speaking well of NATO. I do wonder about the strength of any peace deal in which the U.S. President making it has no credibility. Ukraine is going to need a security guarantee, but we know there’s no way Trump wants to offer security guarantees, nor would he be fully trustworthy on any security guarantees that were on offer. Trump’s attitude, which has been consistent, toward this area of the world would seem like a problem for any peace deal.