This has obviously been a bad week for Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy and for his country. I fear, however, that it’s proving to be an equally bad week for Donald Trump and for U.S. national security policy. Someone should be taking the lead in seeking a negotiated solution to this years-long bloody stalemate, and, for good or ill, that someone necessarily has become Trump. (RELATED: President Trump and Peace in Ukraine)

No individual European leader has the essential stature, and, Macron’s recent emergency meeting only demonstrates that, even collectively, Europe lacks the heft to bring Putin and Zelenskyy to the negotiating table. It’s Trump or nobody — or a bloody stalemate with no obvious resolution. (RELATED: The Cold Goddess: Anne de Kyiv and Her Brigade)

Zelenskyy won many hearts in the early days of the invasion, surprising onlookers both in Ukraine and abroad with his “I don’t need a ride, I need ammo” line and other similarly Churchillian utterances. Friends who’ve spent time in Ukraine recently suggest that the erosion of support for Zelenskyy at home has been much exaggerated — he’s still a symbol of a resistance that remains surprisingly popular — but internationally, even the staunchest friends of Ukraine have become resistant to his attempts at inspiration.

And, sadly, the list of staunch Ukraine supporters has shortened considerably, even as the lip service continues, unconvincingly, from the likes of the U.K.’s Keir Starmer.

Of course, the list of truly “staunch” supporters was never long to begin with. Despite the impressive dollar figures involved, U.S. support under Joe Biden was always heavily compromised, from Biden’s “minor incursion” invitation to Putin through his repeated insistence on slow-walking the provision of vital weapons and equipment. This, coupled with the fearful imposition of inane restrictions on the use of the weapons that might have made a strategic difference gives the lie to any notion of support from Biden. (RELATED: Biden’s Foreign Policy Was a Colossal Failure — From Ukraine to China)

The major Western European countries have likewise confined themselves to practical half-measures accompanied by performative speeches. Over the last three years, Ukraine has been singularly ill-served by its supposed friends.

Only its Eastern European neighbors, themselves directly threatened by potential Russian aggression, have been stalwart in their support. And while even laggardly supplies of weapons and equipment have enabled continued resistance, real battlefield success has relied most of all on Ukrainian creativity — witness their use of UAVs — and Ukrainian courage.

Sadly, to the extent that Zelenskyy made himself the symbol of “heroic Ukrainian resistance,” he’s now become a liability internationally, a barrier to those, particularly Trump, who identified themselves with a quick resolution. Moreover, Trump has longstanding personal issues going back to the way in which Ukraine was used against him during his first administration, specifically during his second impeachment. (RELATED: The (Inconvenient) Truth About the War in Ukraine)

But the problem runs deeper, much deeper, than a clash of personalities, or even Trump’s purported — and much-exaggerated — bond with Putin. Unfortunately, after three years, many thousands of lives, and untold damage, it’s become quite obvious that there’s no path forward to “victory” for either side, whatever way that might be defined — it’s time for a negotiated peace, and given the relative power of Russia and Ukraine, this would likely be to Ukraine’s disadvantage even with someone more positively disposed than Trump.

Ukraine deserves better than what it’s likely to get, and the world deserves better than a peace that rewards Putin’s aggression, even symbolically. This war has, of course, been about Ukraine, but from the very beginning, it’s always been about much more than Ukraine. I’m not one of those who believes that the rights and wrongs of this war come down to a question of who is most virtuous. Ukraine’s case, in my view, has never had much to do with its commitment to Jeffersonian democracy or a pristine absence of corruption. (RELATED: Trump Will Force a Compromise on Ukraine)

Nor should we be taken in by claims that NATO somehow provoked this war, that Putin’s Russia is somehow a victim. The moment Russian tanks rolled across the Ukrainian border, Ukraine became the victim of a war of aggression, and this should have been wholly unacceptable.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, the first President Bush was able to fashion a “coalition of the willing” to push him out. What unified this coalition was not a belief that Kuwait was a great democracy and its Emir a just and wise ruler. No, the coalition was founded in the shared belief that using military force to take over another country was simply wrong, a profound insult to every notion of international order.

One can play endlessly with the notion that the borders of Ukraine were somehow “artificial,” that this or that region was Russian by virtue of history or current population. For those of us who believe that we need to defend our southern border, with a wall and, if it comes to that, with armed force, then dismissing Ukraine’s 2022 borders rings very hollow. There are Mexicans — and not just a few crank politicians south of the border — who still regard Texas and Mexico as rightfully theirs and the Hispanic population of these regions may well be proportionally as great as the percentage of native Russian speakers in the Donbas.

But we should refuse to play these kinds of games. If we are to have a world with borders — and we should — then we should never reward invasions, whether across the Rio Grande or the Dnipro.

Arguably, then, the argument from morality is specious — at the very least, in the present moment, it wastes time and intellectual energy. From day one — and unlike Kuwait in 1990 — Ukrainians stood ready to defend themselves. They never asked for a Norman Schwarzkopf and the 18th Airborne Corps. The “coalition of the willing” they needed was a coalition of unstinting support in weapons and material, accompanied by rigorously imposed sanctions on Putin and his mafiacracy of oligarchs.

None of this happened and for two very simple reasons. First, the Europeans, particularly Germany, were hopelessly compromised by their energy dependence on Russia, yet another geo-strategic insanity of the green agenda. Second, when Saddam invaded Kuwait, he didn’t have the world’s second-largest nuclear arsenal. Putin’s actual willingness to use nukes has been debated endlessly, but his saber-rattling served its purpose, adding a modicum of strategic logic to Joe Biden’s instinctive fecklessness. (RELATED: Germany Halves 2025 Military Aid to Ukraine)

There’s no going back now, no chance to retrieve the opportunities lost in the past three years. If there is to be a negotiated sustainable ceasefire — and that’s the most that can be reasonably hoped — then Donald Trump has become the indispensable man. The very notion that Starmer, or Scholz, or Macron can achieve anything is perfectly laughable. In all fairness, Zelenskyy has been dealt a bad hand by Biden and the Europeans, and so, too, has Trump — a very bad hand indeed. (RELATED: The Biden Trap) 

I’m concerned about Trump’s recent inflamed rhetoric and equally concerned about the idea that peace can be achieved without meaningful Ukrainian participation. Trump wants to end the bloodshed, but too much blood has been spilled for the Ukrainians to simply roll over. Indeed, it’s very likely that Zelenskyy would find himself chased out of the country, or shot, if he agreed to a bad deal.

No matter how bad things are for Ukraine, wars have their own momentum, and Ukraine is nowhere near ready to simply fold, even if cut off from U.S. support. Trump needs more than just a ceasefire. He needs a peace that can fulfill all the promises he’s made.

For all these reasons, I fail to see last week’s verbal gyrations as evidence that Trump is simply playing 4D chess. Instead, I think that they represent the moment where Trump’s fervent and thoroughly laudable desire to bring about a peace settlement finally collided head-on with reality.

Thanks to his predecessor, to the Europeans, and, yes, to both Zelenskyy and Putin, Trump the diplomatic golfer now finds himself mired in a sand trap surrounded by a water feature, with the pin so far away it’s barely visible. It’s no wonder then that he’s thrown a few clubs and cussed out the caddy. He’s got a long, long way to go before he gets to the clubhouse, and now he knows it.

READ MORE from James H. McGee:

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Maybe We Should Take Trump’s Gaza Proposal Seriously

James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a national security and counter-terrorism professional, working primarily in the nuclear security field. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. His recent novel, Letter of Reprisal, tells the tale of a desperate mission to destroy a Chinese bioweapon facility hidden in the heart of the central African conflict region. A forthcoming sequel finds the Reprisal team fighting against terrorists who’ve infiltrated our southern border in a conspiracy that ranges across the globe. You can find Letter of Reprisal on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback editions and on Kindle Unlimited.