Trump’s Endgame for the War in Ukraine

Donald Trump’s election as 47th president of the United States brings the endgame for the war in Ukraine into sharper focus. Based on comments since his first term, Trump’s mindset remains highly transactional on foreign policy in general and on the Russia-Ukraine conflict in particular. This is a war he pledged to end quickly, prompting Ukraine’s president Volodymir Zelenskyy to acknowledge that it will conclude in 2025. Trump’s modus operandi has been to deal with the other “strongest” person in the room and often ignore other stakeholders. This means any peace negotiation is likely to jump the tracks and occur bilaterally between Trump and Vladimir Putin, a dynamic Putin has endorsed. While his recent meetings with Zelenskyy in New York and Paris might suggest the possibility of daylight between himself and Putin on Ukraine, Trump may simply be pre-negotiation positioning. Nevertheless, this bit of the shifting landscape bears watching.

Taking these bargaining dynamics into account, broad outlines emerge of what Trump needs in order to declare victory⎯always of paramount importance to him. In this article we plot how such bargains might play out, how they could provide Trump and Putin with significant political gains, but also how they could leave very much impoverished the vital interests of Ukraine, the strength of America’s alliances, and the international rule of law itself. While not an exhaustive list, key leverage points in the negotiations can be delineated as follows:

U.S. Control over Aid to Ukraine and Russian Sanctions

By turning off the spigot of U.S.military and financial aid to Ukraine, denying Kyiv NATO membership, recognizing Russian sovereignty over captured Ukrainian territories, and getting Israel to back off Iran, Trump could demonstrate his power both at home and abroad. Relying on his exclusive constitutional power to conduct foreign relations, including the authority to recognize the claims of foreign states, he can deliver on all of these items with little likelihood of being checked by the courts or Congress.

It is possible that he could of course threaten to do the exact opposite, in a manner that could perhaps demonstrate his power even more. GOP control of the House and Senate means Trump could boost weapons shipments and money to Ukraine. Moreover, he could lean on Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Hungary’s Viktor Orban, to allow Ukraine into NATO, deny Russian sovereignty over captured Ukrainian territory, and goad Israel’s Bibi Netanyahu into a more blistering assault on Iran⎯potentially causing Tehran to withhold drones and arms for its own protection that otherwise would’ve gone to help Russia in Ukraine. On balance, however, we think that the former scenario is much more in keeping with Trump’s pro-Putin posture during his first administration, and consistent with the stance many in his orbit have taken regarding the Ukraine war.

President Joe Biden was reluctant until this month to allow Ukrainian strikes into Russia with U.S. supplied weaponry for fear of provoking a more extreme response⎯a fear Putin continually stoked by invoking the possibility of introducing tactical nuclear weapons onto the battlefield. Now, with the U.S. election in the rearview mirror and Ukraine bracing for an assault by Russian and North Korean troops on its positions in the Kursk region inside Russia, Biden has relented on this prohibition.

Trump could continue the new Biden policy of allowing Ukraine’s U.S. supplied F-16s and missiles to strike deep into Russia, perhaps even threatening Moscow. But he now has a negotiating chip he did not have before: the ability to put the prohibition back in place. And given his pro-Russian stance, restoring the prohibition is far more likely to be offered at the outset of negotiations as an opening bid for peace.

Trump could also pressure allies to scale back the Western sanctions regime against Russia and its oligarchs, and unfreeze Russian assets, both sovereign and non-sovereign. Not only would this assist Russia directly, but it would hamper Ukraine’s war effort, as billions from the interest on Russian Central Bank frozen assets is currently being routed to Kyiv to fund reconstruction and rearmament.

With respect to oil, President Biden banned direct import of Russian petroleum in 2022, but there was a refined products loophole which effectively allows the United States to continue importing refined Russian petroleum indirectly after it is mixed with oil from other sources. India is key to how this works. Once Western sanctions on Russian oil went into effect, India, Turkey, and China began picking up the slack, with India increasing its imports 111%, Turkey 75%, and China 21% by 2024. Formerly Russian petroleum products, which become Indian petroleum products, find their way to the U.S. via industrial installations such as the sprawling Jamnagar complex ⎯the world’s largest oil refinery.

With a businessman’s approach, Trump could seek to cut out India as the middleman and lift petroleum sanctions on Russia in exchange for Russia locking in a 4-year flow of discounted oil – this could help offset the projected $78 billion annual cost of the widespread tariffs that Trump has threatened to impose immediately upon taking office (forecast to come in at 20% universally and 60% against Chinese goods). Because the revenue generated by the tariffs won’t cover their cost, he must find other ways to achieve an economic wash that would help dampen the inflation likely to result from the tariffs.

The Russian discount on its oil due to the sanctions regime is just under $20/barrel. This is the price-point Trump would want to lock in for the United States over an agreed period, and it’s something Putin can deliver on if he gets enough of what he wants in return, such as recognition of Russian sovereignty over currently Russian-held Ukrainian territory, and an end to the war with no prospect of Ukraine joining NATO. If Trump strikes a deal with Putin that includes securing a supply of cheap Russian petroleum to offset the cost of his tariffs, he can walk away with a win that ends the war in Ukraine while putting the United States ahead financially.

Using Russia to Shake Down Allies

Another transparent, and key, aspect of Trump’s playbook is to get others to pay for what he needs. One of the things he may think he needs is to modernize all three legs of America’s aging nuclear deterrence triad. With only 20 B-2 bombers on hand from the 1990s, 75% of America’s nuclear bombers are B-52s from the 1960s. America’s 14 Trident-bearing submarines date from the 1980s and early 90s, and its ICBMs were installed in the 1970s. Many national security hawks, argue that it is crucial to modernize this force, but the CBO estimates it will cost $756 billion over 10 years to update the nuclear arsenal. Offering both tax cuts and tariffs, President Trump will not be able to pay for the upgrade that some think is necessary to keep the U.S. deterrent threat credible.

Once again, Putin has something to offer Trump that would help achieve this objective. In a variety of ways, Moscow can tacitly agree to keep threatening Europe well beyond a settlement of the war in Ukraine, and encourage Putin’s new friend in North Korea to do the same with respect to Japan and South Korea. In this threat environment, where America’s allies are both afraid of these nuclear powers and simultaneously unsure of Washington’s commitment to defend them, Trump may seek to devise ways to have America’s allies help finance the U.S. nuclear modernization—and they may well be inclined to pay to remain protected under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. This may sound as outlandish as Trump’s claim that he would force Mexico to pay for building a border wall between the two countries, and perhaps no more likely to be realized, but it is entirely in keeping with his methods to make this an objective.

Although demanding protection money may sound both somewhat bizarre and extreme, it is only an extension of what President-electTrump already implemented as official policy on NATO defense spending during his first term, demanding all NATO members meet their defense spending targets of 2% of GDP. He recently recounted this during a campaign rally in South Carolina, in which he “described a conversation with a fellow head of state at an unspecified NATO meeting: ‘One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay, and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’ I said, ‘You didn’t pay, you’re delinquent? No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.’”

Shaking down America’s allies to pay for their protection, and to thereby fund the upgrades which provide that protection, fits squarely into Trump’s transactional approach to foreign policy, his “America First” vision, and his consistently reductionist view of the strategic challenges the U.S. faces. This is also something that can be bargained for in the looming multi-tiered negotiation between Washington and Moscow that will likely sideline Kyiv to a role of picking up the pieces of whatever it can manage.

Russian Assistance on North Korea and the Middle East

Putin can also commit to withholding a portion of the Russian missile technology Kim Jung Un wanted when he sent North Korean troops and weapons to fight in Ukraine. The technology Russia has that North Korea wants would add accuracy to the range they’ve already achieved with their Taepodong 2 missile⎯which could theoretically reach California, but without reliable accuracy could also simply dive into the Pacific. Even North Korea’s smaller missiles are wildly inaccurate. Russia discovered this firsthand in February, 2024, when it hit only two military targets after firing 24 North Korean KN23/24 missiles into Ukraine “casting doubt on the reliability of Pyongyang’s much-feared, but little known weaponry.” Another report noted that “around 80 percent of the North Korean missiles failed to hit their target, with half of them exploding in mid-air.” Thus, gaining Russian assurances that it will do nothing to help North Korea improve this arsenal, would be yet another attractive foreign policy “win” for Trump to claim, and is yet another chip to be bargained for at the expense of Ukraine.

The final derivative element Trump and Putin could potentially strike a deal on concerns tensions between Israel and Iran. Israel and Iran may be viewed as having some features of being a client state of the United States and Russia, respectively. If Trump were able to rein in Israel’s military action against Iran and even possibly against Lebanese Hezbollah, and Putin was able to encourage Iran to refrain from further military action against Israel and to abandon Hamas, then Trump could claim to have resolved two conflicts in the same negotiation. If this seems far fetched given how little influence the Biden administration had with the Israeli government, we may, ironically, expect a Trump administration to have somewhat more influence with Netanyahu, having previously demonstrated more tangible allegiance to Netanyahu’s goals by moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, for example.

Similarly, such a derivative deal means Putin would likely come back with more Iranian drones and arms for the Russian military. While this resembles a classic geopolitical win-win from the Cold War days, it is of course far more complicated, because neither Israel nor Iran are client states in the true sense, and they each have goals of their own. Thus, for instance, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s desire to annex the West Bank and Iran’s nuclear program, are objectives that will continue to exacerbate tensions and won’t be resolved by these talks.

At the end of the day, a Trump-Putin dialogue outlining the endgame of Russia’s war in Ukraine won’t be as much about Ukraine as President Zelenskyy would have liked. It will be about Trump getting his second term off on what he perceives to be a strong start⎯settling the Ukraine war as promised, locking in cheap oil to offset the cost of his tariffs, securing foreign funding for our national security upgrades, and dampening the conflict in the Middle East. Four quick wins for “America First” right out of the gates that cost him next to nothing. Where does this leave Russian responsibility to pay for Ukraine’s nearly $500 billion reconstruction? Likely nowhere Trump is interested in going. Zelenskyy will need to muster all of his considerable political and diplomatic skills to achieve a financial reckoning for Russia to rebuild his shattered country. Many of Russia’s frozen sovereign assets are located in Europe, and rather novel arguments have recently been made suggesting that those assets could be claimed by Ukraine as part of the reparations for Russian aggression. Zelenskyy could maneuver between Trump and Putin directly with the Europeans to claim those assets for the rebuilding of Ukraine. Depending on what the relationship between Brussels and Washington under Trump begins to look like, this might be possible.

Implications for International Law 

All of these potential bargains between Trump and Putin not only sideline Ukrainian interests, but they are largely inimical to them. They are also arguably highly prejudicial to the traditionally understood security interests of the United States and its allies, particularly the NATO alliance, and more generally the post-World War II structure of international relations. The trust of America’s allies in its security assurances will be profoundly shaken. Most importantly, however, the bargaining away of Ukrainian territory and the recognition of Russian sovereignty over territory seized by force, would be a devastating blow to an international legal system which is already under great strain.

It is widely recognized that Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014, and further invasion of Ukraine in 2022, constituted an act of aggression and a violation of the prohibition on the use of force in Art. 2(4) of the U.N. Charter. Russia’s attempt to seize and claim sovereignty over territory is a further violation of the fundamental and arguably distinct prohibition against the forcible annexation of territory. The International Court of Justice has just this year, in its Advisory Opinion on the Legal Consequences Arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Including East Jerusalem, reiterated the fundamental and peremptory nature of these principles (e.g., at paras 174-79), and noted the obligation of states to not recognize in any way such annexations (paras.273-79). For the United States to not only condone Russia’s aggression and acquiesce to the seizure of territory, but to formally recognize such annexations as valid and lawful, would dramatically undermine the normative power of these fundamental prohibitions , and set dangerous precedents for other states to follow. It would ultimately do violence to the international rule of law more generally.

This of course would be only one of the many vicious cuts that international law is likely to suffer from a Trump administration. Even some of the other elements and assumptions of the bargains mentioned here are arguably inconsistent with discrete areas of international law, such as the comprehensive tariff regime, and the modernizing and expanding of the American nuclear weapons arsenal. Trump’s first administration also took an early cut at the prohibition against annexation by recognizing Israel’s sovereign right to the Golan Heights in 2019. But a recognition of Russia’s sovereign right to all the seized territory of Ukraine, and resulting implicit condoning of Russia’s acts of aggression, as well as the arguable war crimes and crimes against humanity that accompanied it, would be to do far greater damage to the most fundamental framework of the contemporary international law system. And all for some easy foreign policy “wins” to parade before domestic audiences.

Conclusion

The forgoing exploration of possible bargaining scenarios, in which the Trump administration trades away not only Ukrainian territory and interests but also the security and trust of U.S. allies, and the foundations of the international law system itself, is inherently speculative. And given Trump’s notoriously unpredictable and capricious nature, it is a precarious business trying to predict how he will conduct policy making of any kind. Indeed, the impression of distance between himself and Putin reflected in his recent meetings with Zelenskyy could be nothing more than an attempt to to put him into a better negotiating space, or it could be designed to reflect a more fundamental power shift, with the United States in the ascendance following his election and Russia’s defeat in Syria.

Nonetheless, we have explored some of the bargaining chips that may look appealing to Trump, the ways in which he might be disposed to play them, based on his past record and proclamations, and some of the very negative consequences that would flow from such bargains—not only for Ukraine and other American allies, but for international law itself. It is important, before they are at the bargaining table, for everyone to look past the easy “wins” that will be touted, and soberly appreciate the profound costs such wins would impose.

IMAGE: U.S. President Donald Trump (R) greets Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) during their bilateral meeting at the G20 Osaka Summit in Osaka, Japan on June 28, 2019. (Photo by Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images)