Trump, Embracing Realpolitik, Sees a Path to Ending Ukraine War ‘Within Weeks’

As Ukraine begins its fourth year of resisting Russia’s invasion, President Trump is roiling Western Europe by crafting a face-saving endgame for Moscow. This embrace of realpolitik — the art of the practical — may prove the only effective strategy for achieving a peace.At Monday’s joint White House press conference with President Macron of France, Mr. Trump said the war could be ended “within weeks if we’re smart” or “it’ll keep going and we’ll keep losing young, beautiful people that shouldn’t be dying.” This staked out a position alongside anti-war groups. “Better red than dead,” as leftists in the 1960s said. Many opposed aid to those in places like Afghanistan, Angola, Nicaragua, and Vietnam who were resisting Soviet expansionism throughout the Cold War.“This could escalate into a third world war,” Mr. Trump said. This was the concern that President Eisenhower had about aiding Hungary’s uprising against communist rule in 1956. America could only listen as those cries for freedom were snuffed out behind the Iron Curtain or risk a nuclear holocaust.Mr. Macron laid out what an acceptable alternative would look like in Eastern Europe’s Bloodlands today. “This peace must not mean a surrender of Ukraine,” he said. Like Mr. Trump, he stripped the war of passions and posturing, right down to the facts.“Reality,” Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, wrote for his Washington Post in October, “is an undefeated champion.” Whatever falsehoods flow from the Kremlin, empty threats — like President Biden saying in 2022 that Mr. Putin “cannot remain in power” — have only redoubled their resolve.As Germans were tearing down the Berlin Wall in 1989, President George H. W. Bush said that he was not going to “dance” on it to taunt the Russians. He was mindful of the role that humiliating Germany after World War I had played in Hitler’s rise and resolved not to feed some future warmonger.Mr. Putin used NATO’s westward expansion in the years after Bush as that tool to stoke Russian resentment and as pretext for his “special military operation” into Ukraine. Invoking the 26.6 million people the USSR lost in World War II, he even cast the effort as “denazification.”Acknowledging these realities is not agreement with Mr. Putin. It’s a logical step to understanding how ending the war can be made preferable to keeping it going. Russia has already found capturing Ukraine far more costly that annexing Crimea in 2014. Build an offramp; they may take it.At the Yalta Conference in World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt faced a similar challenge: Persuading the Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin, to agree to America’s territorial priorities. He did so by flattering Stalin at the expense of Prime Minister Churchill, whose U.K. was smallest of the Big Three.Mr. Trump has said what his Russian counterpart wants to hear, too. He opposed Ukraine joining NATO, called Mr. Zelensky “a dictator” for canceling elections, and even accused Ukraine of starting the war. These statements cause cringing. But that’ll be seen as a small price to pay if it keeps Russian tanks from storming the gates of Kiev.“I think a lot of progress has been made,” Mr. Trump said alongside Mr. Macron. “We’ve had some very good talks with Russia.” He told a reporter that Mr. Putin had already accepted the idea of European peacemakers ensuring Ukrainian sovereignty.Russia agreeing to NATO troops on its borders is no small concession. Avoiding that prospect was a key reason Mr. Putin cited for his invasion. Deploying them would stop the bloodshed and save Ukraine from annihilation, giving them time to rise out of the rubble.Ukraine cannot win a war of attrition. Its population and economy are dwarfed by Russia’s. “They,” as Mr. Trump put it, “have the cards.” Fighting them to a stalemate and remaining a country is already an accomplishment. Mr. Zelensky acknowledged this by offering to concede some land for peace.“I may be wrong,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Putin, “but I believe he wants to make a deal.” That optimism may prove pollyannish. Each day the war drags on, though, Russia inches closer to gobbling up Ukraine. That’s the hard reality Mr. Trump inherited — and, as Mr. Bezos said, “Those who fight reality lose.”

Trump, Embracing Realpolitik, Sees a Path to Ending Ukraine War ‘Within Weeks’

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