Trump and the viable road to peace in Ukraine

Finally, there is a prospect for bringing the war in Ukraine to an end. President Trump and his foreign policy team have created the conditions for a negotiated end to the war, replacing a fundamentally flawed and dangerous set of policies adopted by his predecessors including, ironically, the Donald Trump of his first administration.

This is true even after the very public blowout in the Oval Office on Feb. 28. What brought on Trump’s ire was Zelensky’s comments on the minerals deal and then his repeated complaints about negotiating with Putin, something Trump has made clear he will do. Trump had apparently expected a quick signing ceremony to convince Ukraine supporters in his own party like Senator Lindsey Graham — who were invited to witness — that a negotiated peace would be advantageous to the United States. When Zelensky turned the meeting into a debating session and aroused Trump’s memories of the bogus “Russiagate” charges that plagued his first administration, Trump reacted predictably.

Indeed, anyone interested in peace rather than the threat of nuclear war should be congratulating President Trump. After all, if the war does end and Russia is brought back into cooperative economic relations with Europe and the United States, everyone will benefit. If the war and the attempted isolation of Russia continues, all will suffer and cooperation to deal with common problems such as environmental degradation, mass migration and international financial crime will become impossible.

I say this not as a Trump supporter — I did not vote for him and have been critical of most of his moves. But in regard to the war in Ukraine and relations with Russia, I believe he is on the right track.

My judgments are based on decades of diplomatic experience negotiating the end of the Cold War and on a close knowledge of both Ukraine and Russia, their languages and their history. I am proud that my generation of diplomats achieved a Europe whole and free by peaceful negotiation. I have been appalled that a succession of American presidents and European leaders discarded the diplomacy that ended the Cold War, abandoned the agreements that curbed the nuclear arms race, and provoked a new cold war which has now become hot.

President Trump’s restoration of the diplomacy that President Reagan and the first President Bush used to end the Cold War should be welcomed. Reestablishment of direct communication between the Russian and American presidents is an essential precondition for any settlement.

The agenda announced by Secretary of State Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov after their meeting in Riyadh makes sense: (1) expansion of diplomatic capacity between the U.S. and Russia, dangerously eroded by a series of mutual expulsions, (2) cooperation on common geopolitical and commercial interests, and (3) ending the war in Ukraine.

Days before the agreement was announced in Riyadh, Vice President Vance and Secretary of Defense Hegseth made policy statements at the Wehrkunde conference in Munich that raised the ire of some European allies and prominent politicians and journalists in the United States.

In fact, these comments were either statements of fact (Ukraine is not a member of NATO) or of policy adjustments that are not only essential if the war is to end but in fact would have prevented the war if they had been adopted by earlier presidents: (Ukraine will not become a member of NATO; direct American involvement in the fighting will end; the U.S. will not act to protect European NATO forces deployed in Ukraine.)

If these had been the policies of previous American administrations, the war in Ukraine would not have occurred. They are not capitulations in advance or appeasement as some critics have charged. They get at the roots of the war.

President Zelensky, French president Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, among others have objected to Trump’s plan to negotiate with Russia first, then bring in the others. Actually, bilateral talks between the U.S. and Russia make sense. Former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin let the cat out of the bag when he observed that the purpose of supporting Ukraine was to weaken Russia. That policy has to end if there is to be peace in Europe in the future and it must be negotiated by the U.S. and Russia.

This is exactly the procedure used by the first Bush administration to negotiate the unification of Germany. In 1990 the United States first engaged in bilateral talks with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev before referring the agreements to the other four parties involved in German unification: Britain and France because of their rights in agreements that ended World War II, and the two German states directly affected. The other parties were kept informed of these negotiations as they progressed and all accepted the outcome.

As a participant in these negotiations, I can testify that assurances were given to Gorbachev orally by the American secretary of state, James Baker, that NATO jurisdiction would not move to the east if the Soviets agreed to let East Germany join West Germany on conditions specified by West Germany. Soviet approval was required because of agreements that ended

World War II. Declassified documents now available also show that British prime minister, John Major, and also the West German foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, gave similar assurances. In fact, it had been Genscher’s idea.

It is these assurances to which President Vladimir Putin refers repeatedly as broken promises. Although they were not formalized in a treaty, they were promises and they have been broken. President Putin is neither lying nor engaging in baseless propaganda when he says so.

It is often alleged that Russia has nothing to fear from NATO because it is purely a defensive alliance. Yes, it was conceived as a defensive alliance to protect Western Europe from an attack by the Soviet Union. But, after Eastern Europe was liberated and the Soviet Union shattered into fifteen countries, Russia was not a threat or even a potential threat. In the late 1990s NATO began to be used as an offensive alliance.

Proposals to construct a security structure for Europe that would protect all countries were simply sidelined by the United States and its allies. None seemed to ask what they would do if the shoe were on the other foot and how they would react to the prospect of military bases by a hostile alliance on their borders.

If American behavior throughout its history as an independent state is any guide, the prospect of military bases controlled by a foreign power near its borders — in fact, anywhere in the Western Hemisphere — has been a casus belli if not removed.

The Cuban missile crisis of 1962 provided an illustration of how the United States reacts to a perceived threat from abroad. I was stationed in the American Embassy in Moscow when the Soviet Union deployed nuclear missiles in Cuba and have vivid memories of this crisis.

I translated some of the messages Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev sent to President John F. Kennedy. If Khrushchev had not backed down and removed the missiles, Kennedy would have attacked, but if he did local commanders could have launched nuclear missiles against Miami and other cities with the U.S. responding with strikes on the Soviet Union. So Kennedy made a deal: you take your missiles off Cuba and I will remove ours in Turkey. It worked, and the world breathed easier.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was initiated by President Putin because he believed, with reason, that the United States was trying to draw Ukraine into a hostile military alliance. Therefore, in his eyes it was provoked. In 2003 the United States invaded, devastated and occupied Iraq when Iraq posed no threat to the United States. So now, how is it that the U.S. and its allies are conducting an all-but-declared war against Russia for crimes they themselves have not only committed, but have committed with less provocation? The pot is calling the kettle black and trying to damage it.

This is not to justify the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Far from it. It is a catastrophe for both nations and its effects will be felt for generations, but the killing must stop if Europe is to deal effectively with the many challenges it confronts now.

We cannot know what deal President Trump has in mind or how President Putin will respond. The negotiations will be difficult and, most likely, lengthy. But, at last, the American president has defined a viable road to peace and the Russian president has greeted this effort. This is a welcome start of a process Americans and Europeans should support.

Jack F. Matlock, Jr. is a career diplomat who served as U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987-1991. Prior to that he was Senior Director for European and Soviet Affairs on President Reagan’s National Security Council staff and was U.S. Ambassador to Czechoslovakia from 1981-1983.