Will Trump negotiate peace in Ukraine or see Putin neutralize him and Ukraine?

president-elect Donald Trump values ​​himself as a master of effective negotiations. Trump’s negotiations paid some dividends in his first term. The former president took US-North Korean relations from the brink of war to eccentric, but a welcome release. Trump negotiated a major trade deal between the United States, Canada and Mexico. Trump secured increased defense spending commitments from NATO allies and burden-sharing agreements from South Korea.

The problem is that the critical foreign policy negotiations Trump wants to negotiate in his second term will be much more difficult than those he faced in his first term. Namely, negotiations to resolve the war in Ukraine. A peaceful, negotiated resolution to this conflict will only be possible if Trump seeks an agreement on viable sustainability rather than social media sellout. To achieve such a world, Trump will need to do two things.

First, he will have to remove Viktor Orbán. Until now, Hungary’s prime minister had coaxed the former president with sweet whispers about Trump’s genius, claims about Putin’s easy pliability, and promises that Trump could end the war by cutting off Ukraine’s access to weapons. But what Trump has yet to realize is that Orban is an American enemy who is only very thinly disguised in the garb of an ally. Ultimately, Orbán political prostitute of Xi Jinping And useful idiot for Vladimir Putin. His advice is contrary to US interests and the survival of Ukraine as a democratic state.

This Ukrainian factor leads to the second and most common concern regarding future peace negotiations. Any viable peace will require Trump to do more than just oppose Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. more unrealistic expectations. It will also require him to exert functional pressure on Russia to enter into serious negotiations. If Putin believes that he can spin Trump with promises to freeze the conflict in exchange for a speedy lifting of sanctions, he will do so with a very negative effect. Putin will rest and rebuild his army, come up with a Ukrainian insult, and then repeat the invasion when the time is right. Perhaps in four years. Perhaps in six years. Or perhaps in two years.

However, if Trump insists on Western security commitments for Ukraine as part of any peace agreement, a lasting peace is possible. France, Britain and Poland have shown signs that they are ready to support such an arrangement. And such an agreement will be crucial, since Russia is not going to re-invade Ukraine if it knows that the West will join this future fight.

Of course, managing this process will not be easy. Such an arrangement would likely require at least stretching European forces on Ukrainian soil with a US promise to support reinforcements. It would also require continued sanctions on Russia to ensure it complies with the basic protocols of any deal. If Putin believes he has the leeway to secure a peace that is clearly in his favor, Ukraine will continue to fight. He will do this because his very existence will be at stake. Ukraine will do this for the same reason the Baltic states and Poland joined NATO: because it knows that the Russian security elite believes that Ukraine ultimately belongs to Russia.

In dealing with Putin, Trump will have to learn from complete failure of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel in its Minsk II peace agreement between Kyiv and Moscow. The lesson is that taking Putin at his word without mechanisms to keep his word is about as good as jumping into a blood-filled river infested with bull sharks. Fortunately, Trump has a successful example from his first term to guide him. He only needs to look at his departure, with NATO supportfrom the Intermediate Forces Nuclear Treaty in response to Russia’s persistent violations of the treaty.

This means Trump must use American leverage to secure a viable peace agreement. If Trump acts in the spirit of the sanctions he imposed in 2017 on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and threatens to impose sanctions on the main, as yet protected, backbone of the Russian economy (for example, sanctions to evade energy exports and access to global financial markets), Putin will take action. notification. If Putin continues to play negotiation games, and Trump responds by providing Ukraine with weapons systems that the Biden administration was unwilling to provide, Trump will allow Ukraine to impose costs on Putin that will force him to enter into more serious negotiations. Importantly, if Trump imposes sweeping sanctions on Chinese manufacturers and banking institutions, Xi Jinping will tell Putin to cut a deal or risk losing Beijing’s economic lifeline. Europe will have to at least match this American support if such a pressure campaign succeeds. But it can succeed.

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So the key question is whether Trump is serious about reaching an art of peace deal on the Ukrainian war worthy of a Nobel Prize. Or maybe he’s just interested in congratulating himself on X and Truth Social.

History will reward the first choice. The latter choice will turn Trump into Russia’s most valuable and useful idiot and help disintegrate the Western security structure.