Not even to end the war.
N egotiations to end the war in Ukraine seem to go back to an endless loop. On the one hand, Volodymyr Zelensky has sworn over and over again that he cannot agree to ending the war without guarantees. The United States’ major aim as Ukraine’s sponsor has been to punish Vladimir Putin for the invasion and breaking of norms, and deter any future challenge to NATO.
After the meeting in Alaska, and shuttle diplomacy to the White House, European leaders described it as a “breakthrough” when Donald Trump hinted that America might be willing to play a role in providing security guarantees to Ukraine after the war.
Even if it would end the war, the United States should not take Ukraine on as a permanent security and economic dependent. The case for doing so has not improved since 2007’s Bucharest summit, at which Ukraine was promised NATO membership in some near or distant future. And it has not been materially changed by the war since 2022.
One of Putin’s principal war aims is to either neutralize Ukraine or permanently bend its geopolitical and economic orientation back toward Moscow. Presently, Russia is pouring in more blood and treasure than anyone else. Russia sees this as a vital interest. And it has repeatedly defined the presence of NATO weaponry in Ukraine as a red line.
Europe does not see Ukrainian independence and sovereignty as a vital interest. EU nations, either in concert or as a coalition of the willing, have balked at the idea of providing some guarantee themselves. That they do this after having so often expressed anxiety about a security rationale of their own to build up an EU armed force, with priorities distinct from NATO, is galling. It should tell us everything we need to know about the desirability of taking on such a commitment.
Putin’s war aims have their own tensions. The mandate his government gave him to annex eastern oblasts of Ukraine actually makes sustaining the neutrality or Russian orientation of any future government in Kyiv more difficult. (A million Ukrainians who presumably identify with Russia have sought refugee status under Moscow. Crimea, and the Eastern oblasts that have been depopulated and may soon be recognized as Russian territory, were previously the heartland of Ukrainian political coalitions that leaned toward Moscow.)
But Western policy has its own contradictions. George W. Bush, angry that Europeans would not immediately agree to incorporate Ukraine into NATO, took the disastrous misstep of proclaiming Ukraine’s NATO membership as a future inevitability. This simultaneously conflated Ukraine’s status with the credibility of the NATO alliance without actually offering Ukraine even a fig leaf of a guarantee. In the diplomatic exchanges before the 2022 invasion, Joe Biden would not back down from George W Bush’s promise. Even apart from whether one thinks NATO’s buildup of military resources in Ukraine was provocative, the enormous gap between the promises made by Western officials and the willingness of their constituent democratic publics to risk blood and treasure presented Putin with a target he could not resist.
In this environment, Putin could punish Ukrainian nationalists for their westward aspirations, and for whatever he perceived as the injustices of the Maidan Revolution and conflict in Eastern Ukraine. Simultaneously, he could subtly undermine NATO credibility with the confidence that, having not actually triggered an Article 5 emergency, elected governments would turn to the publics who were either too indifferent or war-weary to desire a major role in a conflict that was happening beyond their economic blocs and traditional political alliances. The help given to Ukraine has been similar to the help offered to the Afghan National Army, another NATO-sponsored military: just generous enough to fail at great cost.
The United States does not want another, much longer DMZ to patrol deep in Eastern Europe. It should not want its credibility to be conjoined to a government that, even before the war of 2022, had difficulty controlling ultra-nationalist militias and whose opaque political culture is still stalked by Moscow-leaning opportunists.
Donald Trump’s instinct to do a minerals deal with Ukraine to increase America’s shareholder interest in the country could be read as exploitative, but it has a logic to it that needs to be broadened. The tragic turn toward unstoppable internal conflict in Ukraine came about because Europe and Russia were engaged in a zero-sum, winner-take-all bidding process for Ukraine’s economic future. Turning back from war should mean instituting something like the opposite dynamic. Ukraine’s security should be shored up by its shared economic indispensability to Russia and to Europe, instead of major-power military guarantees. A rebuilt Ukraine should be the platform on which Europe and Russia aspire to play positive-sum economic games with each other — instead of a contested borderland or geopolitical pivot point, an economic bridge.
We have seen how quickly Poland grew itself economically once integrated in the EU and blessed with smart government. Those games could increase with Russian good behavior, and be curtailed in the event of bad behavior. But only something like this — a real stake — would increase the European appetite to defend a Ukraine that was under threat, and slowly melt away the Russian desire to dominate Ukraine through force.