The seven European leaders who accompanied President Volodymyr Zelensky to the White House on Monday made little secret of why they had suddenly interrupted their summer vacations to make the trip. They believed they might need to shield the Ukrainian leader from the disparagement and bullying he had to endure on his last Oval Office in February.
In the end, that wasn’t necessary. Host Donald Trump was jovial and eager to get along with his guests. He complimented Zelensky on his suit-like attire and flattered the seven Europeans— NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and Finnish President Alexander Stubb—each with a personalized compliment. They flattered back with even more lavish and ingratiating thanks and praise, and everyone seemed to go home happy.
The questions left hanging amid all the smiles and good cheer: what exactly did they discuss—and what issues, if any, were settled?
In fact, the three big items that should have been on the agenda—the critical issues that should be at the heart of any agreement ending the war in Ukraine—were conspicuously absent.
There was little discussion at the summit of the question Vladimir Putin has put front and center by proposing what the White House calls a “land swap.” Russia is demanding that Ukraine cede some 6,600 square kilometers of territory—a strategically pivotal area Moscow has failed to conquer in over a decade of off-and-on fighting—in exchange for two other, relatively insignificant chunks that together add up to only 440 square kilometers. Putin says he won’t stop fighting until that deal is done; Zelensky refuses to cede the territory. But somehow, everyone managed to avoid the issue over nearly six hours of meetings at the White House. Zelensky ignored a media question on the subject, and no conclusions were reached behind closed doors.
Also missing from the agenda was any discussion of what Putin calls the “root causes” of the war—Ukraine’s political independence from Russia, its maturing ties to the West, and NATO’s expansion into the former Russian and Soviet sphere of influence. As Putin has repeatedly stressed, including last week in Alaska, these are the irritants that led Russia to invade in 2022, and he will not accept any peace that does not resolve them, recognizing what he calls Russia’s “legitimate concerns” in Ukraine and aiming to “reinstating a just balance of security in Europe.” It’s hard to imagine a more momentous set of issues for the leaders gathered in the White House to discuss—but apparently none of them were addressed in either the public or private segments of the summit.
Nor—the third missing topic—was the cause that ought to be uniting Western leaders as they shape proposals for a just and lasting peace in Ukraine: how to address the disturbing geopolitical assumptions underpinning Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. How should democratic leaders counter his implicit claims that might makes right and big countries can do as they wish with smaller neighbors? The problem is that Europe and the United States may no longer agree on this essential issue. Remember Trump’s claims on Greenland and Panama. So the topic may never come up among Western leaders—essential as it is to sustaining peace in Europe and elsewhere.
The three topics that made it onto the White House agenda were as revealing as those left out of the discussion.
Number one, not surprisingly, was Trump’s obsession: a continuation of the unscripted mano-a-mano diplomacy he thinks he’s so good at and aims to turn into an international norm. The president repeatedly returned on Monday to the idea that Zelensky and Putin should meet face-to-face, followed by what Trump likes to call a “trilat,” or three-way meeting.
Never mind that Putin has spent over four years belittling Zelensky as a Western puppet with no legitimate governing mandate—anything but a peer of the kind one would want to meet on a world stage. More threatening in Putin’s eyes, a bilateral or trilateral meeting would call his bluff and likely expose his reluctance to stop fighting in Ukraine. No wonder Moscow has responded to Trump’s suggestion with the usual Kremlin two-step: agreeing in principle to a meeting but waffling on what that means and stalling for time.
The second item on Monday’s agenda, Western security guarantees for Ukraine, was more substantial and meaningful, though perhaps still premature. Putin has openly expressed his desire to restore Moscow’s control over all of Ukraine and several other European countries, including Poland and the Baltic States, which were once dominated by Russia and later the Soviet Union. As French President Macron stated on Tuesday, the Russian leader “is a predator, an ogre at our gate” who “for his own survival, needs to keep eating.”
No peace deal can hope to stick without robust security guarantees to prevent renewed fighting in Ukraine or on the borders of NATO, and Ukraine will need Western support to stop another Russian attack: a continuing flow of Western weapons, ammunition, intelligence, air defenses, and perhaps boots on the ground.
Discussing security guarantees now, before a deal is made, might seem like putting the cart before the horse—similar to insisting on a prenup before the romance has fully blossomed. But maybe that’s actually the best time to bring up a prenup—and some progress was achieved in Washington, with the 47th president agreeing to join a European-led deterrent.
Still, the issue remains unsettled. Complex and contentious negotiations lie ahead. It’s far from clear that any European countries will agree to send troops. Putin has already nixed a peacekeeping force composed of NATO fighters. Ukraine has a long, bitter history of relying on Eastern and Western security guarantees that never materialized, and anyone who trusts Trump—or American voters, for that matter—to stay the course in world affairs is only asking for trouble. Remember the League of Nations, proposed by Woodrow Wilson and agreed to in the treaty that ended World War I, but then rejected by Congress when it refused to ratify that treaty?
The third item on Monday’s agenda came and went quickly in the public conversation between Trump and Zelensky, but it explains a lot. The Ukrainian leader offered to buy $100 billion of U.S. weaponry and sign a $50 billion deal for U.S.-Ukrainian co-production of Ukrainian drones. Now that’s Trump’s kind of diplomacy—and the truth is it’s the most likely of anything on the summit agenda to come to fruition.
What’s next? What are the prospects for a meaningful truce? Anything could happen—there’s a lot in the air. But the smart money in both Europe and Ukraine is cautious.
This may be the beginning of the end—a true peace deal. Or it may just be a new and prolonged phase of the war, as Putin pretends to consider peace but continues fighting, and Trump continues to dither, changing his mind every few weeks, about how to respond. The president still doesn’t seem to understand the man he’s up against in the Kremlin, and until he does, there’s no hope for a just or lasting peace in Ukraine.
The post Trump, Zelensky, and European Leaders Got Along—Mostly by Sidestepping the Big Issues appeared first on Washington Monthly.
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