Reacting to Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Scranton, Pennsylvania, earlier this week, Donald Trump reiterated his long-standing ambition to bring Russia’s war in Ukraine to a quick negotiated settlement instead of continuing with open-ended military support to Kyiv. If he wins the election, Trump said, ‘the first thing I’m gonna do is call up Zelensky and call up President Putin and I’m gonna say, “You gotta make a deal, this is crazy”.’
Trump is often seen as mercurial and unpredictable – an impression he revels in – but his desire to solve conflicts with real estate-like deals forms a consistent pattern of his foreign policy. In the context of Ukraine, that framing stands in irreconcilable tension with another one of Trump’s key foreign policy intuitions: his disdain for Nato.
If there is any chance of bringing the war in Ukraine to a negotiated end – and not just to a pause that will enable Russia to regroup and rearm before launching another attack – it will involve extending Nato’s Article 5 guarantees to Ukraine or coming up with a similar arrangement.
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