President Donald Trump‘s peace plan for Ukraine is music to Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s ears. Trump may be sincere in his desire to end the bloodshed, but how wars end matters a great deal. By rewarding Putin’s aggression, Trump does two things that make peace far less likely in the future.
First, he rewards aggression. Putin cares little about the human cost of the war since he himself does not have to pay the price. Russia is not a true democracy, and so the plight of ordinary Russian people does not matter. Second, Trump renders future diplomacy meaningless. Russia agreed to Ukraine’s borders in the 1991 Almaty Declaration. Three years later, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States committed to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty in the Budapest Memorandum in exchange for Kyiv’s forfeiture of its legacy Soviet nuclear weapons. By refusing Ukraine American support for its defense in its time of greatest need, Trump is showing that America’s word is meaningless.
Under such circumstances, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is correct to reject Trump’s peace plan. There is no guarantee that Putin will abide by any concessions or that a year or five down the line, Trump or his successor will abide by U.S. commitments. Nobel Peace Prize-winning treaties are irreversible, not optional.
Trump may have three years left in his second term, but he will be a lame duck within months as possible successors line up to challenge them. The 2025 national security strategy might envision an order in which Russia, China, and the U.S. maintain separate spheres of influence, but recent history shows each president can enter office and reset strategy from scratch. Indeed, before Trump’s 2025 strategy defaulted to a Russian sphere of influence, his 2017 strategy labeled Russia a revisionist power to counter.
With peace unlikely to hold, possible future presidential candidates such as Govs. Gavin Newsom, Andy Beshear, and Josh Shapiro on the Democratic side and Govs. Brian Kemp and Ron DeSantis on the Republican side should outline their vision of a Ukraine peace. Vice President JD Vance may be muzzled by his office, and so too Secretary of State Marco Rubio. But when Rubio resigns to run, he should be clear where a Rubio presidency would differ from the Trump administration he serves in on questions of freedom, appeasement, and peace.
Too many politicians obfuscate rather than enunciate a vision, but the Russia-Ukraine conflict— the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II — does not lend itself to such word play. Signaling where the next U.S. administration will impact both Russian and Ukrainian morale, one for the good and the other for the bad.
More than morale is at stake. Trump’s first-term decision to negotiate with the Taliban arguably snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by convincing the Taliban that it needed not to win every fight on the battlefield but only to outlast the U.S. Declaration by Newsom, DeSantis, or even in the future, Rubio, could signal Ukraine need only survive to rebound; such statements would also signal to Russian generals that their dream of a glorious retirement are fantasy.
SENATE DEMOCRATS SETTLE ON THREE-YEAR OBAMACARE SUBSIDY BILL, DRAWING GOP JEERS
Trump’s team will cry about violations of the 1799 Logan Act that prohibits private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments on behalf of the U.S. or seeking to influence policy without authorization, but Trump will be hard-pressed to make that case with a straight face, given his own record of ignoring laws and precedent he deems inconvenient.
The war in Ukraine preceded Trump’s second term, and it will likely outlast it as well. It is not too soon for aspirants to succeed Trump to state their opinion. Indeed, doing so could be the first test of leadership for the 2028 campaign.
Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is director of analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
