Geoffrey Roberts: Towards a New Grand Alliance? – Trump, Putin and the Path to Peace in Ukraine

A Trump-Putin deal to make peace in Ukraine could be closer than some people think. There are plenty of pitfalls that could upend the dramatic about turn in American-Russian relations inaugurated by Trump’s telephone conversation with Putin, but as of now the two countries are tantalising close to agreement on the essential preconditions for an armistice that would halt hostilities in Ukraine and initiate the negotiation of a detailed peace treaty.

Putin’s terms for a ceasefire were set out last June: Kiev’s concession of Crimea and the four provinces – Donets, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhe – annexed by Russia in October 2022 – and acceptance of Ukraine’s neutralisation.

Trump’s administration has conceded that Ukraine will not become a member of NATO. Accepting that Ukraine will also de-align with NATO and become a permanently neutral state is not such a big step.

More complicated will be devising a credible international security guarantee for a neutral Ukraine. One possibility, long-advocated by Moscow, is a pan-European or pan-Eurasian collective security treaty, that would include Russia as well Ukraine. Under the terms of this treaty, Ukraine would be protected by the collective security commitments of a multitude of countries, There is also no reason why such a system cannot co-exist with the continuation of NATO (which would keep the Americans involved in Europe) and with the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation in the former Soviet space.

Putin has repeatedly identified the draft treaties initialled by Moscow and Kiev in Istanbul in spring 2022 as the starting point for detailed peace negotiations. Those drafts included provisions for Ukraine’s disarmament and limitations on the future strength of its armed forces.

Fearing the future rearmament of Ukraine, Putin will likely want a similar in-principle agreement before calling a ceasefire. At Istanbul the Russians proposed Ukrainian armed forces of no more than 75,000, but the 200,000 suggested by Ukrainian dissident politician, Oleksiy Arestovych, is more realistic. As Arestovych points out, the Ukrainians have long borders and Russia is not the only potential threat – Poland, Hungary and Romania all have historic territorial grievances against Ukraine that they might be tempted to activate if the country is too weak militarily. Arestovych has also proposed that Ukraine should undertake to guarantee Russia’s security by actively maintaining itself as a buffer zone against NATO.

In any event, Western hardliners who think Trump can wheedle Putin into a deal that will enable them to rearm Ukraine for a future fight with Russia, should dream on.

While the Americans have conceded Ukraine will lose substantial territories as a result of the war, the territorial issue remains tricky because of the complications of Russia’s domestic politics. Putin needs some kind of a victory to justify the blood and treasure he has expended. For Russia’s hardliners nothing less than the complete defeat of Ukraine and its western backers is an acceptable outcome of the war. But while Russia’s ‘pro-war’ party is very voluble, the majority of Russians will settle for a compromise peace that will protect them and safeguard their Russian-speaking compatriots who continue to live in Ukrainian-controlled territory.

Still, at minimum, Putin needs to complete the conquest of Donets and Lugansk. That means the capture of Pokrovsk and then an advance to Slavyansk, Kramatorsk and Konstantinovka – big targets that will take weeks if not months to invest. However, in relation to Kherson and Zaporozhe, Putin could conceivably concede the capitals of these regions to Ukraine. He could also pledge to keep his hands off Odessa, Dnipro and Kharkov. All of which would boost Ukraine’s future viability as an independent state.

More straightforward would be Ukraine’s withdrawal from Russia’s Kursk region in exchange for the return of Russian-occupied territory in the Sumy-Kharkov area.

But why should Putin make any concessions? Russia is winning the war handsomely. Why not wait until Ukraine collapses militarily and then impose peace terms of his choice?

While Trump’s overture offers the most immediate and certain path to an enduring peace with Ukraine, as important is that ending the war could catalyse a radical reconstruction of Russian-American relations – towards a global compact between Washington and Moscow that, together with China and other Great Power partners, would underpin a stable, multipolar system of sovereign states.

Putin’s overarching global ambition is to safeguard Russia’s security and civilisation for the ages. To achieve that goal he needs peace and an equitable relationship with the United States.

Among the highlights of Trump’s Truth Social summary of his conversation with Putin was his reference to the American-Russian alliance of World War II and the great sacrifices of the two countries’ peoples. Rumours are rife that Trump’s projected visit to Moscow will take place on Victory Day in May, when Russia will celebrate the 80^th anniversary of the end of the war. He would be in good company. China’s Xi Jinping will be there, as will the top leaders of many global South countries – states that will be a formidable lobby for peace in the coming months.

Trump’s remark about American-Russian cooperation during the Second World War was, in fact, a reprise of what he said at his joint press conference with Putin in Helsinki in July 2018.

Trump’s return to this theme coincides with the 80^th anniversary of the Yalta conference. At Yalta, the leaders of the allied coalition—the U.S., U.K, and Soviet Union—proclaimed a peacetime grand alliance, intending to use their collective power to guarantee peace and security for all countries.

That collaboration would be buttressed by multilateral institutions such as the newly created United Nations. The UN Security Council’s much-maligned veto system was designed to ensure great power consensus on critical security issues, while the Council of Foreign Ministers, established at the Potsdam conference in July 1945, was tasked to negotiate postwar Europe’s territorial-political order.

This new world order would be based on some shared values, including protections for freedom, democracy, and human rights. But none of the great powers would have the right to impose their politics and culture on the rest of the world. Free trade economics would spread but would coexist with other forms of economic organisation. Above all, this new international order would be based on one fundamental universal moral value: no more war.

Alas, this idealistic great power compact collapsed when the Grand Alliance itself disintegrated shortly after the war. A far worse alternative – the Cold War – ensued, ushering in an era of dangerous conflict and confrontation that spawned numerous wars, military interventions, brutal dictators, coups, and catastrophes, as well as the proliferation of nuclear arsenals that continue to threaten the very existence of humanity.

Any ambition that Trump harboured for a renewal of the Grand Alliance was scuppered by the Russiagate controversy. But if Trump’s recent remarks signal a revival of that project, he will find a willing partner in Putin. A yearning for a return to the Grand Alliance has been a persistent theme of Russian foreign policy. After 9/11, Putin offered such an alliance to George W. Bush, but was spurned in favor of American unilateralism in Iraq and Afghanistan. Under Barack Obama, the so-called reset in U.S.-Russian relations promised a return to collaboration, but such hopes were dashed by Western military intervention in Libya in 2011 and by Russia’s unilateral response to the Ukrainian civil war in 2014.

A new grand alliance may seem like a utopian dream. But history shows that cooperation between the world’s two great nuclear powers is both possible and necessary. President Franklin Roosevelt collaborated with Stalin to defeat Hitler. Eisenhower worked to defuse the tensions of the Cold War after Stalin’s death in 1953. Brezhnev and Nixon created the détente of the 1970s. Ronald Reagan abandoned the hardline anti-Soviet policies of his first presidential term and embraced Gorbachev’s glasnost revolution in the U.S.S.R.

Unencumbered by Russiagate, surrounded by loyal and able courtiers, and armed with a strong mandate to change the course of US foreign policy, Trump is much more able to pursue radical, global ambitions than he was in 2018.

But first there has to be peace in Ukraine. Kiev and its European allies have to be persuaded or pressurised by Trump to accept the terms of the compromise peace that he negotiates with Putin. For the sake of peace and the future of Russian-American relations, Putin will have to make concessions and take his own risks.

Geoffrey Roberts is Emeritus Professor of History at University College Cork and a member of the Royal Irish Academy