Dem
47
GOP
53
Ukraine and Russia continue to dominate the headlines, with the result that the challenge facing Donald Trump is coming into focus more and more.
We have been very dismissive of Trump's efforts in Alaska, in items yesterday and the day before. Politico had a piece yesterday that had a bit more positivity than our two write-ups. It adds the following observations to the discussion: (1) the Trump-Volodymyr Zelenskyy relationship looks to be much improved, which improves the odds of progress in negotiations; (2) the involvement of the European leaders helps a lot in terms of keeping things civil and productive (and keeping J.D. Vance's yap shut) and (3) the Overton Window has moved at least a little, in that Vladimir Putin is at least talking about security guarantees for Ukraine.
Any progress, no matter how slight, is better than no progress, of course. That said, there remain a couple of very basic, but very difficult challenges. The first of those, which we also noted in yesterday's item, is that "security guarantees" is very broad, and potentially covers a lot of territory. Figuring out what those security guarantees might look like is no small task, especially since the two sides of the discussion actually want very different things. Zelenskyy wants something very strong, because he doesn't want his country to be invaded again. This is especially true if Ukraine is forced to yield some portion of Donbas, which is critical to their national defenses. The Europeans are with Zelenskyy here—philosophically, because they oppose imperialism, and pragmatically because if Ukraine falls, a NATO nation is likely to be next, drawing everyone into the war.
Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, may be "talking" about security guarantees, but only because, in chess, you sometimes have to sacrifice a pawn in order to put yourself in a position to take the other player's queen. If he even agrees to security guarantees, which is by no means a probable outcome, he is going to want the weakest options possible. In part, because any foreign troops or weapons in Ukraine are a threat to Russia. And in much larger part because Putin still wants to re-assemble the Soviet Empire. He may agree to stop the fighting for a while, so he can regroup and rebuild, but he will eventually attack Ukraine again (and, if not Ukraine, some other neighboring nation). The stronger the security guarantees for Ukraine, the harder Russia's next war will be for Putin.
The second challenge, very much related to the first, is that Putin and Zelenskyy are approaching this from very different vantage points. Putin is operating from the (dubious) position that he has won, and that it's in his power, and the United States' power, to impose terms on the defeated Ukrainian people. Zelenskyy doesn't see things that way, naturally, and is interested in talking about how the fighting can be ended as quickly as possible, and the prewar status quo restored.
In practical terms, the differing views of the two leaders imply very different approaches to the peace process. Putin thinks that all that is needed is for him and Trump to get together and hammer something out. Zelenskyy thinks that all three of them need to get into a room, perhaps accompanied by the other European leaders. Trump, at least at the moment, favors Zelenskyy's approach, and believed that he had made much progress toward setting up a trilateral discussion. Yesterday, however, Putin threw cold borscht all over that, suggesting that a face-to-face with Zelenskyy is far in the future, if it happens at all.
So, those are the two major diplomatic challenges for Trump. There's also a domestic political challenge on top of that. If Trump commits America to safeguarding Ukrainian security—and in particular, if he commits to sending U.S. troops there, even as a peacekeeping force—he will aggravate the "America First" isolationist wing of his base. If he throws Ukraine under the bus, or doesn't do enough to keep that nation secure, he will aggravate the internationalist wing of his base. Keeping the isolationists happy is presumably why Trump did a 180 yesterday and said he is not, in fact, considering the possibility of American boots on the ground in Ukraine.
Trump has had an almost unbroken record of success at bending the various Republican factions to his will. So, whatever comes to pass, the odds are good he will overcome the domestic political challenge, one way or another. On the other hand, we stand by yesterday's critical assessment of his skills as a diplomat. There may not be a path to resolving the disparate viewpoints of Zelenskyy/the European leaders on one hand, and Putin on the other. And if that path does exist, we are not sanguine that Trump is the man to find it. (Z)