Trump’s Muddled Signals on Ukraine
Trump’s Muddled Signals on Ukraine
Good luck making sense of his clashing nominations and conflicting statements.
WHAT NEXT FOR UKRAINE? The question loomed over the 2024 campaign, but answers remain elusive even after Donald Trump’s victory. It’s not that the Biden administration has been such a great partner; from the start, its Ukraine policy has been frustratingly hobbled by timidity and half-measures. But what’s replacing it is a foreboding unknown.
During the campaign, Trump repeatedly mocked Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky as a “salesman” cleverly extracting cash from the United States and suggested that Ukraine’s self-defense was pointless because Russia was unbeatable anyway. He also repeatedly promised to end the war on Day One of his presidency by getting both sides to talk—while his aides floated “peace proposals” that would let Russia keep the land it had grabbed and cut off Ukraine’s path to NATO membership. On occasion, however, Trump also highlighted his good relationship with Zelensky (as well as with Vladimir Putin) and made noises about the importance of Ukraine’s survival. Some pro-Ukraine, pro-Trump Republicans even insisted that his victory would actually be good for Ukraine.
So, what do Trump’s first dozen days as president-elect tell us about the prospects for Ukraine in his second presidency?
The day after the election, Trump had a call with Zelensky via Elon Musk’s Starlink service, with Musk briefly joining in the conversation; the next day, Trump reportedly called Putin and warned him against escalation. Then, another Trump peace proposal got floated—still calling for current front lines to be frozen and NATO membership to be shelved for the foreseeable future, but also offering Ukraine the protection of a demilitarized zone patrolled by soldiers from European armies as well as ample supplies of weapons. Such a plan would, at least, give Ukraine some genuine security guarantees, which means that Putin would be extremely unlikely to accept it without further concessions. Could that mean Putin will reject Trump’s deal and Trump will be sufficiently pissed off to give Zelensky everything he wants? Could it mean Trump will modify the proposal in a way that throws Ukraine under the bus and cut Zelensky loose when he says no? The second scenario seems far more likely than the first; but either way, it’s all pure speculation for now, especially since no peace proposal has been formally unveiled.
Last week, many Ukraine supporters felt cautious optimism when Trump picked Florida congressman Mike Waltz to be his national security advisor and Florida senator Marco Rubio to be secretary of state. Both men are internationalists and relative Russia hawks; after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, both strongly backed military assistance to Kyiv and sanctions against Moscow. True, when Trump strong-armed Republicans into rejecting the Ukraine aid package in late 2023 and early 2024, both Rubio and Waltz went along, offering convoluted excuses for their votes; but both, at least, went out of their way to stress that they still saw Ukraine’s defense as vital to U.S. interests and to international security. Hardly a profile in courage, but not nothing. Shortly before the election, Waltz co-wrote an article arguing for a peace-through-strength agreement that would leave Ukraine “independent and more firmly anchored in the West” while dealing Putin “a strategic defeat”; he also advocated tougher sanctions as well as “more weapons to Ukraine with fewer restrictions on their use” if Putin proved uncooperative.
Needless to say, any optimism friends of Ukraine might have felt at those two cabinet selections was dashed as Trump’s other nominees were announced. Prospective Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, an Army veteran and Fox News host, hasn’t talked much about Ukraine, but he has tended to downplay the danger of Putin’s aggression; in his opinion, wokeness in America is a far greater menace. Attorney general pick Matt Gaetz, aside from his sexual misconduct troubles and the vendetta he will bring to his post, has been one of the most militant Ukraine haters in Congress, consistently opposing pro-Ukraine legislation even when most Republicans still backed it and bashing Ukraine on Twitter as a hotbed of corruption. (By the way, guess who enforces economic sanctions against Russia—or chooses not to enforce them? That’s right: the Justice Department, which Gaetz would head.)
And then there’s Tulsi Gabbard, nominated for director of national intelligence—a post the former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii could only get in the bizarro world we’re cursed to inhabit. “Russian asset” or no, Gabbard seems to have never met a Kremlin propaganda trope she didn’t like, be it Putin’s “legitimate security concerns” about Ukraine in NATO, the United States using the war to destroy Russia, or Ukraine harboring sinister U.S.-funded “biolabs.” Kremlin propaganda loves her in turn: One of the official Russian media’s top hacks, TV host Vladimir Solovyov, calls her “our girlfriend Tulsi.”
A national security team that includes Waltz and Gabbard seems fundamentally schizophrenic. But maybe the crazy is the point. We could tell ourselves that Waltz and Rubio qualify as “adults in the room” in a second Trump administration; but how willing would they be to push back against Trump if he were determined to bully Ukraine into de facto capitulation? (Not very, if their record in the past year is any indication.) How long would they last if they did push back? And do we have any reason to believe that Trump’s Ukraine policy will be shaped by Rubio or Waltz more than by JD Vance, whose anti-Ukraine animus appears to be real and not opportunistic? Or by Tucker Carlson? Or by Catturd or some other far-right troll? What conclusions can we make when, shortly after reports of Trump’s “positive” call with Zelensky, Don Jr.— a key member of his father’s inner circle—posts an Instagram meme taunting Zelensky about “losing [his] allowance”?
The Biden administration’s curtain-call scramble to strengthen Ukraine—sending more weapons using funds already authorized but not yet spent, allowing the use of long-range missiles to strike military targets deep inside Russia—may be at least somewhat helpful if Ukraine can score enough battlefield gains to get more leverage heading into the talks that are likely to happen next year. Europe may try to step up to the plate. But as January 20—Inauguration Day—crawls nearer, conjectures about what comes next for America’s Ukraine policy are about as reliable as ancient Roman-style divination using chicken entrails.