Trump gives up on fast peace process

Hello,

Over the last few weeks, there has been significant movement in the American position on the war in Ukraine, and it seems that Donald Trump has given up on the idea of a quick peace deal. That is good news because it opens the possibility of a more mature and realistic American policy. In this video, I discuss why Trump’s attempts at achieving a peace agreement failed and what we can expect going forward.

Watch the video on the website or read the transcript below.

Best,
Anders

Transcript:

It has been a while since I made a video about Trump's peace negotiations. The reason is that I think these negotiations have received a lot of attention in the media. And also, I think it's been quite clear from the start that they weren't actually going to lead to any meaningful results. So there were just other things that I could do that were more valuable. But now it does seem that there is development and that we are going to see a change in the American position. So let's talk about it.

Recently, there's been a shift in the tone about the war in Ukraine from the Trump administration. If we go back just a few weeks ago, they were very much talking about blaming Ukraine for the fact that the war was continuing. Trump called Zelensky all kinds of bad things. And the message was that the way to peace was to push Ukraine into accepting an American peace proposal that was very much a copy of Russian demands.

But over the last couple of weeks, this has changed. Trump is now saying fairly nice things about Ukraine and Zelensky. There's increasing rhetoric about how the Americans are frustrated with the Russians and the lack of Russian willingness to accept an unconditional ceasefire that might actually lead to productive peace negotiations. And Ukraine and the United States just signed a minerals deal that was actually a pretty good deal and didn't include all the problematic things that the first drafts of the agreement did. Both the Americans and the Ukrainians are saying nice things about each other in relations to this minerals deal. And also, we have people like J.D. Vance now suddenly talking about how the war isn't going to end anytime soon because it's a very complicated situation. And the American State Department is talking about how there will now be a new role for the United States in their future support for a peace process. They will be more focusing on trying to ensure a dialogue between Russia and Ukraine, and they will be less active pushing for a very quick solution.

I don't want to give the impression that all this means that Donald Trump is suddenly very good for Ukraine. We don't know what all this is going to lead to. And, well, the reality just is that Donald Trump can change his mind very quickly. So, just because he says nice things about Zelensky now, that doesn't mean that he won't change his mind and say something completely different in a couple of weeks. So, it's still too early to say what this means in practical terms for the future American support for Ukraine. So far, it's just words.

But with all those caveats, I do think it shows that there is progression in the American position and that the Trump administration is starting to get what we can call a more mature understanding of the conflict that they're dealing with. What they're saying now is very different from the totally unrealistic claims that they made in the beginning about how they would end the war in no time.

I said from the beginning that the interesting thing to follow in all these peace negotiations is not what Donald Trump initially said that he would do, but rather what he will do when that turns out not to work. And I also said that it might be more difficult for Donald Trump to abandon Ukraine than he imagined because there would be all kinds of pressures that would nudge him into one way or another continuing to support Ukraine.

And I think what we're seeing now is that we are approaching the point when this is becoming reality, that Donald Trump has realized that his initial plan isn't working and that he will have to come up with a plan B where they can continue working with Ukraine.

As I said, he might still change his mind. The American policy could suddenly go in a very different direction. But based on what we're seeing now, I want to give my rough interpretation of what has been happening over the last couple of months and why I think it might turn out all right for Ukraine in the end, given the circumstances.

When Donald Trump looks at the war between Russia and Ukraine, there are factors that push him to support either side. Ideologically, he appears much more aligned with the Russians than with the Ukrainians. He does not seem to have any particular values related to fighting for democracy or things like that. On the contrary, he seems to admire what Putin has done with Russia and he likes the political system that they have. So just based on gut feeling and personal preference, then Donald Trump would like to work with Russia and he would be happy to see an end to the war where Russia comes out of it with a good result.

So for Donald Trump, there is an instinctive drive towards wanting to work with the Russians and to cooperate with Putin and to normalize relations between the United States and Russia so that they can make big business deals together. But the thing is that there are also things that push Donald Trump in the opposite direction of continuing a closer relationship with Ukraine. Not everything is driven by his own personal preferences, even though he might like that. There will also be questions of what is actually possible and what is politically feasible at any given time.

The idea that he originally had was that he would achieve a closer relationship with Russia by pushing Ukraine into a deal on Russian terms. He genuinely believed that America was contributing much more to the war than everybody else was. And when he was yelling at Zelensky about not having any cards, then he really thought that without American support, Ukraine would collapse in a matter of days or weeks.

I've covered in other videos that this picture doesn't at all correspond to reality. Ukraine is much less dependent on American support than Donald Trump thought. And if European countries are willing to continue supporting Ukraine, which they are, then American withdrawal wouldn't necessarily mean that Ukraine is destined to lose the war. It's obviously much better for Ukraine to be fighting with access to American weapons than without it. But the threat of withdrawing American support was never going to be enough to push Ukraine into capitulating or giving in to Russian demands. So that's one aspect of it. Donald Trump wasn't actually able to deliver on the idea of pushing Ukraine into a bad peace deal on Russian terms.

Another aspect that I think has received less attention in the West is that the Russians are much less interested in normalizing relations with the United States than Trump is. In the West, there's been a lot of talk about how Donald Trump was trying to achieve a reverse Nixon, so he would manage to divide the Chinese-Russian alliance by building a strong relationship with Russia and then in that way isolating China. But from a Russian perspective, that's an absurd idea. Russia is much more dependent on China than it could ever be on the United States.

But even more importantly, Putin isn't actually personally interested in having a reset in U.S.-Russia relations where suddenly they're friends and they're no longer enemies. Because Putin depends on having this external enemy, the United States, for his own personal legitimacy as the ruler in Russia. So sure, Putin would like to win the war in Ukraine, but he doesn't want the bigger confrontation between Russia and the United States to end because that would be devastating for his own regime security.

So Donald Trump ran into the problem that when he was unable to pressure Ukraine into giving Russia everything it wanted, then he also couldn't persuade the Russians to make any kind of compromise because Putin didn't actually share his vision of a larger goal of a reset in US-Russia relations.

The last problem that Trump is facing is that the American population in general doesn't agree with him on this issue. Most Americans support Ukraine in this war against Russia. Trump depends on having strong personal approval ratings to push through his political agenda and his approval ratings are declining right now. That creates an incentive for him to do something that might improve them or at least stop doing things that make it worse.

In the big picture, for Trump, the Ukraine question isn't the most important thing that he's facing right now and it's an easy way to change his position a little bit and then try to do something that can improve his standing in the eyes of the American population.

So that's my reading of the situation, that based purely on personal preference, Trump would rather work with the Russians than with the Ukrainians, but there are important circumstances surrounding the situation that push him in the opposite direction.

I don't think anyone at this point expects the United States to suddenly be donating more weapons to Ukraine. We won't see new big aid packages in the forms of grants given to Ukraine. The discussion that is happening now is about how, when the United States is pulling back from this very active pursuit of a quick end to the war, then there are two questions that need to be decided that could swing in favor of either Ukraine or Russia.

The first one is about whether Ukraine or Ukraine's European allies will be allowed to purchase weapons in the United States that can then be used in the war. The United States obviously has a very big defense industry and it will be a big help for Ukraine if they can count on that industry to deliver the supplies they need. Even if this means they will have to pay for it and buy it with their own money, then that is obviously much better than not having access to American weapons at all.

The other question is about the normalization of relations with Russia and the future of sanctions. And obviously, Ukraine would want the economic pressure on Russia to remain in place. Russia would want sanctions relief.

These are the two big questions that need to be decided. It's access to purchasing weapons in the United States for Ukraine, and it's the question of sanctions on Russia. And as I said, it's uncertain where the United States will ultimately come down on these questions. We just don't know that yet. But the indications over the last couple of weeks suggest that things might be coming out in a way that looks good for Ukraine.

For example, if we look at the minerals deal, then one very important thing is that it opens up for the possibility that instead of injecting money into this new fund that Ukraine and the United States will be making together, then the United States can make those contributions in terms of weapons to Ukraine, and then Ukraine will contribute money into the fund. This essentially creates a mechanism by which the United States can sell weapons to Ukraine. And this would be attractive for the Americans because if they don't send weapons, then they will have to send cash. So they can take some older weapons from stockpiles and then they can send those, or they can use that money to create jobs in the United States and then be compensated by Ukraine. That is obviously a better deal than having to send cash.

So it's these kinds of things that I think show how Ukraine is trying to work on those questions by coming up with an agreement that will both give them the weapons they need to fight the war, but also will make it attractive for the United States to do so.

So I would say that even though Trump personally probably likes Russia more than Ukraine – and he can also change his mind very quickly and suddenly go in the opposite direction – I do think that overall it does look like things are working out for Ukraine on these questions. It does look like Ukrainian diplomacy is doing a pretty good job of getting the best possible outcome of the situation.

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