Professor Stefan Wolff comments on the impact the second Trump presidency could have on NATO, Russian imperialism and the future of Ukraine.
CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
“After Donald Trump’s victory, Ukraine’s biggest military backer to date will now be led by someone who has repeatedly claimed he would quickly end its war with Russia.
In all probability, any peace agreement would be more on Russia’s terms than Ukraine’s: Ukrainian acceptance of Russia’s territorial gains, including the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the territories occupied since then. Trump is also likely to accept demands by Russian President Vladimir Putin to prevent a future Ukrainian membership of NATO. Given Trump’s animosity towards NATO, this would also put pressure on Kyiv’s European allies: Trump could, once again, threaten to abandon the alliance in order to get Europeans to sign up to a deal with Putin.
But for a deal to work, even in the short term, Trump will also need Putin to sign it. Yet, the Russian president is not under any particular pressure right now to accept just any deal. Russia is still making gains in Donbas and pushing Ukrainian troops back in Kursk with the help of North Korean soldiers. But in the same way in which Trump will likely threaten to cut all support from Kyiv to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to come on board, Trump could alternatively also put pressure on Moscow by considering more military support for Ukraine and removing all constraints on the use of US and allied weapons, including against targets deep inside Russia.
In the short term, this would not necessarily lead to an immediate Ukrainian victory, but it would make a Russian one impossible for the foreseeable future and might reverse some of Moscow’s recent gains in eastern Ukraine. Given Trump’s unpredictability, this may not be a bluff that Putin would dare to call.
In the long term, however, a deal Trump makes with Russia over the head of his EU and NATO allies and by threatening them with abandonment would undermine the longevity of any bargain with Moscow: the still relatively dismal state of European defence capabilities and the diminishing credibility of the US nuclear umbrella could not but encourage Putin to push his imperial ambitions further once he has secured a settlement in Ukraine.”
Professor of International Security
A political scientist by background, Stefan Wolff specialises in the management of contemporary security challenges.
