The Long and the Short of Donald Trump's Dumb Foreign Policy

Let's talk about Trump's peace in our time for Ukraine!

Photo by Tina Hartung on Unsplash

As the 2024 general election campaign heats up, there is a lot of loose talk about how Donald Trump is less coherent now than he was back in 2016. The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World is not super-keen on that premise, since:

1. Trump was not exactly coherent or knowledgeable back in 2016. I recall an entire discourse about whether Trump was literate back when he was president;

2. Despite Trump’s infantile understanding of policy, there are a few throughlines that enable up to think about what his second term would look like. He will want to fulfill his campaign promises, so stuff he says on the campaign trail merits a listen. Similarly, Trump is a big fan of revenge, so expect retribution in domestic foreign policy if he’s elected.

It is in that latter spirit that one can read the Washington Post’s latest by Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, and Michael Birnbaum about Trump’s plan to achieve peace in the Russo-Ukrainian War next year:

Former president Donald Trump has privately said he could end Russia’s war in Ukraine by pressuring Ukraine to give up some territory, according to people familiar with the plan. Some foreign policy experts said Trump’s idea would reward Russian President Vladimir Putin and condone the violation of internationally recognized borders by force.

Trump’s proposal consists of pushing Ukraine to cede Crimea and the Donbas border region to Russia, according to people who discussed it with Trump or his advisers and spoke on the condition of anonymity because those conversations were confidential. That approach, which has not been previously reported, would dramatically reverse President Biden’s policy, which has emphasized curtailing Russian aggression and providing military aid to Ukraine.

As he seeks a return to power, the presumptive Republican nominee has frequently boasted that he could negotiate a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine within 24 hours if elected, even before taking office. But he has repeatedly declined to specify publicly how he would quickly settle a war that has raged for more than two years and killed tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians.

Trump-aligned foreign-policy thinkers have emphasized addressing threats to U.S. interests from China and seeking ways to reverse Russia’s increasing dependence on China for military, industrial and economic assistance. They have also embraced limiting NATO expansion.

Okay, so there’s a lot going on in those paragraphs.

First, is the reporting accurate? Seems like it to me! This is entirely in line with how Trump has talked about Russia and Ukraine in the past. He respects Putin and desires revenge on Zelenskyy, and this kind of deal would serve his preferences to butter up Russia and stick it to Ukraine.

So let’s assume it reflects the thinking of Trump and his foreign policy advisors. What does it say about the Trump team’s immediate and the long-term foreign policy thinking? It says that their immediate policy calculations are comically inept. And their long-term calculations are a bigoted person’s impersonation of what they think smart people would say about geopolitics.

How do I know that the short-term thinking is stupid? Well, for one thing, there’s the experts quoted in WaPo saying that it’s a dumbass idea. While it would be easy to say that those experts are just part of the Blob, in this case they include the Stimson' Center’s Emma Ashford saying “that is a terrible deal” and the Heritage Foundation’s James Jay Carafano saying, “that is stupid idea 101.” Ashford is about as anti-Blob as one can get while still residing inside the Beltway, and Carafano was one of Trump’s biggest foreign policy defenders during his first term. If the likes of Ashford and Carafano are saying that this is a bad idea, you can only imagine what everyone else who knows something about foreign policy is saying.

Another tell on the stupidity of Trump’s short-term thinking comes from this other paragraph from the WaPo story: “Privately, Trump has said that he thinks both Russia and Ukraine ‘want to save face, they want a way out,’ and that people in parts of Ukraine would be okay with being part of Russia, according to a person who has discussed the matter directly with Trump.”

This sounds like someone who has paid very little attention, if any, to either the roots of the conflict or the demands made by both sides.¹ Fortunately, Branislav Slantchev and Hein Goemans know an awful damn lot about war termination, and as they pointed out earlier this month in Foreign Affairs, neither side is likely to take the deal that Trump is proffering:

This war has not reached a stage where a negotiated termination is possible, even in principle. To make peace in a conflict, both parties have to be willing to accept each other’s minimum demands. And despite the mutual lack of progress, neither Russia nor Ukraine can swallow each other’s requirements. Kyiv, for instance, cannot accept Russia’s demand for new leadership. Moscow cannot accede to Ukraine’s demand for reparations. Both sides will not give up land.

No amount of creative diplomacy can alter these facts. For both countries, fighting on remains preferable to making a settlement. And unless there is a drastic change on the battlefield or in one of the state’s governments, it is highly unlikely that the two sides will revise their requirements in the long term, either. The Russians appear incapable of conquering the lands they have laid claim to, but the Kremlin is dug in, and it is insulated from the kinds of political pressure a costly war would normally produce. The Ukrainians cannot simply give up millions of their citizens to Russian subjugation (one of Moscow’s central demands) while they can still defend them by fighting. When this war ends, it is unlikely to be with a compromise agreement that grants Russia many of its demands. Instead, it will either be because Ukraine grows strong enough to wrest control of newly conquered lands and has the capability to deter Russia from attempting to regain them or after the Kremlin prevails more on the battlefield—and Ukraine’s resources are only enough to defend what independent land remains.

Ukraine is currently facing some desperate moments and taking some desperate measures. If, however, another tranche of U.S. aid comes through — which now seems likely — then Trump’s theory of the case is flat-out wrong. And even if Trump can coerce Ukraine, he will find Putin highly unlikely to compromise on territory that, in Russia’s eyes, has now been legally annexed.

It is Trump’s longer-term thinking that is worth discussing further, however.