After winning elections and entering the White House, many presidents end up breaking a campaign promise. Donald J. Trump won’t even wait that long. He will break a major campaign promise as soon as he takes the oath of office.
While fighting for a return to power in the fall, Mr. Trump repeatedly made a sensational, if implausible, pledge with profound geopolitical consequences: He would negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine within 24 hours. And not just in 24 hours – he would do it before he is sworn in as president.
“Before even arriving at the Oval Office“Soon after we win the presidency, I will make sure that the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine is resolved,” Mr. Trump promised at a rally in June. “I will solve this problem even before becoming president” he declared during his televised debate with Vice President Kamala Harris in September. “I will resolve the conflict between Russia and Ukraine as long as I am president-elect” he said again during a podcast in October.
It wasn’t an offhand comment, not an isolated instance that he didn’t repeat. It was a vital part of his public argument when it came to the largest ground war in Europe since the fall of Nazi Germany. Yet not only did he fail to keep his promise; he has also made no serious effort to resolve the war since his election in November, and the fighting will still rage even after noon Monday, when President-elect Trump becomes President Trump again.
“Wars cannot be settled by grandiloquence,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said in an interview. “And the missing link in his thinking is the failure to understand that the Ukrainians will only reach a settlement if they are at the negotiating table from a position of strength. He actually undermined their position, and that’s one of the reasons he didn’t come to a solution before his inauguration.”
Of course, Mr. Trump is no stranger to hyperbole. The brash assertion that he could easily, quickly and single-handedly end the war with a snap of his fingers was consistent with the long-standing “I can fix anything” image that Mr. Trump likes to present to the audience.
But time and time again, over nearly a decade of national politics, fine words have turned into reality and grandiose promises have fallen by the wayside. And while other presidents have paid the price when they broke a promise (ask George HW Bush if he reads his lips on taxes), Mr. Trump is content to move forward without obvious consequences.
For example, he hasn’t fully built his much-heralded border wall, much less forced Mexico to pay for it. He did not erase the federal budget deficit or shrink the national trade deficit. He did not forge a permanent peace between Israel and the Palestinians, which he said would be “not as difficult as people have thought over the years.” He did not repeal or replace Obamacare. It did not stimulate economic growth “4, 5 and even 6 percent.”
During this transition to a second term, Mr. Trump helped impose a temporary halt to the fighting in Gaza that took effect on Sunday, sending an envoy to pressure Israel to accept the ceasefire. long-standing fire that President Biden first brought to the table. . While the deal was negotiated by Mr. Biden’s team, pressure from Mr. Trump played a crucial role in ultimately pushing it through, a major success for the new president.
But Ukraine, in many ways, poses a far more formidable challenge for Mr. Trump, because he will be starting from scratch. Unlike Gaza, there is no peace plan from his predecessor, with all the complex logistics, timetables and formulas already worked out, that Mr. Trump could simply adopt and cross the finish line.
This month, Keith Kellogg, the new president’s special envoy for the war in Ukraine, postponed plans to travel to kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and other European cities to begin exploring the situation , until after the inauguration. He told Fox News he hoped resolve it within 100 dayswhich would be 100 times longer than Mr. Trump initially promised, even if successful.
“It was an absurd promise,” said Kathryn Stoner, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. “The only person who can end the war in 24 hours is Vladimir Putin, but he could have done it years ago. Any negotiation will take more than 24 hours, regardless of when Trump starts the clock.”
Michael Kimmage, author of the book “Collisions,” about the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and new director of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, said Mr. Trump’s campaign promises had always been kept “very loosely” and may have been about more sending signals rather than being precisely interpreted.
“His goals with this language could be: to let the government know that his approach to Russia and the war will be different from Biden’s, that his main goal is to end the war and not to win Ukraine ” and ” that it is he who will lead and not the deep state which locks the United States in eternal wars “.
These signals leave unclear how Mr. Trump imagines he will reach a deal, but given his long-standing affinity with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, his hostility toward Ukraine and his resistance to aid US military in kyiv, analysts expect a settlement to be reached. seeks to be favorable to Moscow. Vice President-elect JD Vance suggested letting Russia keep the 20 percent of Ukraine it illegally seized through aggression and forcing Ukraine to accept neutrality rather than alignment with the West, a framework echoing Russian priorities.
When asked by email why Mr. Trump had not kept his campaign promise to end the war before his inauguration, Karoline Leavitt, Mr. Trump’s new White House press secretary, did not did not respond directly, but reiterated that he would make it “a top priority.” in his second term.
Since his election in November, Mr. Trump has met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and raised the possibility of meeting with Mr. Putin after his inauguration.
Representative Michael Waltz, Republican of Florida, who will become Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, stressed Sunday that ending the conflict in Ukraine remains a top priority for the new president, calling the war “literally a meat grinder.” meat of people”, similar to Trench warfare of the First World War “with the consequences of an escalation of the Third World War”.
But the thought that Mr. Waltz described during an appearance on “Face the Nation” on CBS sounded like the formula for a process that could take some time: “The key elements: Number one, who do we need to bring to the table? Second, how can we bring them to the table? And then thirdly, what are the frameworks of an agreement?
“President Trump is clear: this war must end,” added Mr. Waltz. “I think everyone should agree with that.”
Even if everyone agrees with this objective – and doubt is allowed – the possible conditions remain thorny. Even assuming that NATO membership is not an option, Ukraine expects serious security guarantees from the United States and Europe, especially if it is forced to abandon its territory, which which Russia would object to.
Then there are questions of reparations and consequences. Who would pay to rebuild Ukraine’s devastated cities and countryside? What would happen to arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court against Mr. Putin and other Russian figures for alleged war crimes? Would the United States and Europe ease sanctions imposed after the 2022 full-scale invasion, and if so, under what conditions? Who would monitor a de-conflict line and what would happen if a ceasefire was violated?
Mr. Trump has not publicly addressed these issues in depth, leaving many people guessing. However, he expressed his distress at the continuing losses in Ukraine and the urgency of finding answers, whatever they may be.
“Part of the problem – and this may shed some light on his administration’s eventual course of action – might be not having a storyline and therefore speaking in a way that obscures rather than reveals what the storyline is real,” Mr. Kimmage said. said. “The less you know what he’s doing, the more he can improvise.”
