It would have been interesting to have been a fly on the wall in Volodymyr Zelensky’s office on the morning of November 6 when it became clear that Donald Trump had won the US election. You can’t imagine it would have been an upbeat gathering. A lot will hang on how the 47th US president approaches his foreign policy, and Trump made plenty of noise during the campaign about how he would bring the conflict to an end and force the two sides to sit down and talk “within 24 hours” of taking office. But the devil will be in the detail when it comes to forging a peace deal.
You’d have to imagine that Zelensky and his inner circle would have gamed a Trump victory, just as they would have worked out a plan to keep a Harris administration four-square behind their war effort. It has become clear in recent weeks that Russia now has the upper hand on the battlefield. And without vast new supplies of military aid and a free hand to use that aid effectively, most analysts believe Ukraine is likely to lose. Or at least be vulnerable to pressure to sign up to a peace deal that means giving up a great deal of territory as well as the freedom to make independent decisions about its security.
The Kremlin has wasted little time in ratcheting up the pressure, saying it won’t even consider peace talks until all western aid to Ukraine is halted. Trump, for his part, has reportedly signalled his intention to start peace talks before he is even sworn in. A peace plan being reportedly considered by Trump and his advisers would include an 800-mile buffer zone policed by troops from Europe and the UK as well as a commitment from UKraine not to join Nato for at least two decades.
It’s very much an “America first” plan, writes Robert Dover, an intelligence and national security expert at the University of Hull. For those who believe, as Trump does, that the US bears too much of the financial burden for Nato, particularly in Europe, it has the bonus that Nato’s European members would bar much of the cost of any peace deal.
Zelensky, meanwhile, is offering to contribute Ukrainian troops to help in the defence of Europe, perhaps to replace US troops now stationed there. He has also pledged to open up some of Ukraine’s considerable natural resources to the US and other allies. Dover believes Zelensky is being astute in trying to to relate to Trump, the transactional dealmaker. One can see the logic in Zelensky’s thinking: for Trump, a deal he could trumpet as a major foreign policy success so early on in his presidency may be something he would find irresistible.
Europe, meanwhile, continues to pledge “unwavering support” for Ukraine. But how long this will endure without the considerable US commitment remains to be seen.
Read more: Ukraine war: following Donald Trump's re-election, four likely scenarios are becoming clear
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Foreign policy hawks
We’re getting an idea of what Trunp’s cabinet may look like and, on foreign policy at least, you’d be forgiven for thinking things looks pretty bleak for Ukraine – if not also for Nato itself. Trump has surrounded himself with foreign policy hawks. Many of these have China as their main focus. Trump’s vice-presidential running mate J.D. Vance famously said: “I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.” And Trump’s picks for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and secretary of defense, Peter Hegseth, are on the record as wanting to settle the war in Ukraine as quickly as possible. The signal seems fairly clear. European entanglements must not be allowed to hinder a US focus on China as the most important adversary.
Natasha Lindstaedt has been looking in detail at Rubio’s foreign policy positions and says that while he has in the past signalled his support for Nato, co-authoring a law which would make it impossible for a president to pull the US out of Nato without congressional approval, he has also voted against bills to supply military aid to Ukraine. It’s reasonable to assume that as part of Trump’s vetting for the job of secretary of state, Rubio would have indicated his support for Trump’s plan.
So, little comfort for Kyiv there.
Read more: Marco Rubio: Trump's foreign policy pick might be a hopeful sign for Nato
You can read about the rest of Trump’s cabinet here (or at least, those who have been identified thus far). Chris Featherstone, who teaches US politics at York University, says they have appear very much to have been chosen more for their loyalty to Trump than anything else.
That said, there are some notable China hawks among them, which again signals that a second Trump administration might have a different foreign policy focus which would turn Washington’s attention away from conflict in Europe.
Read more: Loyalty trumps everything – what we know about the 47th president-elect's cabinet
‘Love triangle’
The shifting dynamic between the US, Russia and China will be interesting to watch over the next four years. Trump told former Fox News host (turned campaign surrogate) Tucker Carlson during a campaign event that he would aim to “un-unite” China and Russia, adding that the two powers were “natural enemies” because of longstanding territorial disputes.
Trump’s not wrong about these and the two countries have come to blows in the past over disputed land in Siberia. But Putin and Xi have spent the past few years talking about their “no-limits friendship”, so it’s a matter for conjecture whether Trump can drive a wedge between the two of them, particularly given their close political alignment.
Xi and Putin also share a belief in America’s inevitable decline, writes Stefan Wolff, an expert in international security at the University of Birmingham. Meanwhile China will want to keep the US from being able to pivot towards Asia in Trump’s second term and enjoys plenty of leverage over Russia.
Read more: Trump, Xi and Putin: a dysfunctional love triangle with stakes of global significance
European boots on the ground?
So where does this all leave Europe? It faces the unwelcome prospect of an incoming US administration that wants to focus more on the perceived threat from China and is ambivalent about the future of the main alliance that provides for its defence. European economies are already stretched to the limit in supplying what aid they can to Kyiv and the possibility of US assistance to Ukraine drying up would only mean that they would have to shoulder more of the burden.
Meanwhile, Ukraine appears to be losing the war, and that won’t change without a rapid and considerable injection of military aid. But far from having plenty more to give, European countries have struggled to supply the military supplies they have already committed.
But a deal with Putin that handed Russia territory is the very last thing that European leaders want. The argument they (and outgoing US president Joe Biden) have been making all along is that Russia must not be rewarded for its aggression. Europe has been down that path before, remember, and it ended badly.
So now the time may be coming for European countries to consider sending troops to Ukraine, argues Viktoriia Lapa, a national security expert at Bocconi University. She notes that the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said as much in May this year. In answer to a question over whether France and its European allies should put boots on the ground in Ukraine if Russia were to break through Ukrainian lines, he said: “I’m not ruling anything out, because we are facing someone who is not ruling anything out.”
Last month, Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis recalled Macron’s statement in a message on X (formerly Twitter): “At the beginning of the year @EmmanuelMacron hinted at putting boots on the ground. At the end of the year North Korea actually did it. We are still on the back foot, reacting to escalation instead of reversing it. Macron’s ideas should now be revisited, better late than never.”
Read more: Why Europe should consider putting boots on the ground in Ukraine
There is clearly mounting concern in Europe. Elections in former Soviet republics, Georgia and Moldova, were both marred by Russian interference. Amy Eaglestone, a political scientist based at Leiden University, believes that Moscow is clearly pulling out all the stops to realise Putin’s imperialist dreams in eastern Europe. She says they will do so by stealth if not on the battlefield, “regaining control over currently free nations that used to be Russia’s obedient satellites”.
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This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
