Dismiss Trump's bluster and one-line foreign policy statements all you want. But it becomes important when "the foreign policy of the world's most powerful country … makes a sudden and far-reaching lurch into the bizarre," as Stephen M. Walt wrote in Foreign Policy last week. [my emphasis] (1)This is an interesting point about the “realist” foreign policy approach Walt uses. It assumes that great powers typically act to protect their own power-political interests and are especially sensitive to particular threats in their immediate geographic vicinity. In the case of the US and its two-centuries-old Monroe Doctrine, the US view of its immediate vicinity includes all of North, Central and South America. And in that context, the realists argue that leaders should make rational calculations about how to pursue their security interests.
For realists like Walt and his sometime collaborator John Mearsheimer, achieving security goals without actually going to war is preferable to looking for countries to invade and/or annex. They also take account of international law and morality as important and meaningful factors in international politics, for all their obvious limitations in practice. And, very importantly, they recognize the foreign policy is run by human beings, not by blind determinism. That means that countries can and do make bad calculations on how to pursue their interests. Both of them have argued for a long time that the US policy of giving more-or-less unconditional support to Israel has been more damaging than helpful to US security interests, a case where political dynamics and have often overridden pragmatic considerations.
Neither of them is a fan of colonialism or genocide. But both are very aware of the kind of diplomatic signaling used in the real world.
Mearsheimer has been giving interviews more-or-less weekly since February 2022, when the current Russia-Ukraine War started (or escalated, if one prefers). The following is a current one, with the conservative British news service, The Spectator. Mearsheimer has made extensive use of a set of more-or-less conservative podcasts who are receptive to hearing a foreign policy analysis that advocates a general policy of restraint in military affairs. This one deals with both Gaza and Ukraine. (2)
Reminder: A number of these podcasts on YouTube now include a voice-recognition transcript that can easily be double-checked with the video.
Daniel Davis (another of those prickly conservatives with “restrainer” leanings) argues that the Biden Administration’s approach to the Russia-Ukraine War relied on overly-optimistic assumptions and let glib optimism about the outcome detract them from a more hard-headed calculation of potential benefits and expected costs.
Last September, after sending Ukraine thousands of American combat vehicles, millions of rounds of ammunition, and over $100 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars, U.S. Air Force General James Heckler admitted that despite such extraordinary expenditures, the Russian military had become bigger, stronger, and more capable than it was in 2022. That is an astounding confession. It is also unsurprising.Now negotiations of some kind are (apparently) under way. Trump and Putin appear to be negotiating with each other over the head of the Ukrainian leadership. Politico Europe reports:
It is not merely important, but a paramount obligation for any American president to soberly assess any situation from the framework of “ends and means.” It is not enough to merely state a preferred outcome – “weakening Russia” in this case – but to make certain we have the means to bring that end to successful fruition.
Clearly, the Biden Administration never conducted such an assessment, choosing instead to lead with emotion, anchoring American interests to the unsubstantiated hope that something good would result. It should have been obvious to senior Administration officials from the outset that Russia had an overwhelming advantage over Ukraine in the key metrics that determines a nation’s war-making capacity.
Russia had millions more men from which to mobilize or recruit into its Armed Forces than Ukraine. It had enormous quantities of natural resources within its borders, and perhaps most crucially, a defense industrial base to indefinitely maintain production of all war material necessary to sustain a war of attrition. Ukraine has comparative deficiencies in all such categories.
Further, when Biden first committed the United States to open-ended support to Ukraine, Russia had a lukewarm relationship with China and was at arm’s length from North Korea and Iran. Today, China and Russia have a stronger military relationship than before, as well as an advanced economic interdependency. [my emphasis] (3)
In a readout issued Wednesday, the Kremlin said Trump and Putin had spoken for 90 minutes. Meanwhile, the American president posted on Truth Social that the two leaders have “agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately.”Problem: Trump is symbolically thumbing his nose at Zelenskyy and Ukraine by not formally insisting that Ukraine has to be an equal partner at the negotiations. It’s true that the attitude of the US will have an enormous impact on the outcome. But Ukraine is the country that was invaded. The war is a war between Ukraine and Russia. Without some arrangement acceptable to the Ukrainian government, it’s hard to see how any negotiation can produce a stable peace.
“We will begin by calling President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy, of Ukraine, to inform him of the conversation, something which I will be doing right now,” Trump added. (4)
Our strange new Secretary of Defense stepped onto the stage of history for what will hopefully be a short visit on the Ukraine issue:
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said earlier on Wednesday that Ukraine will not join NATO, and that Europe must be responsible for its own defense. In a fiery rebuke, Zelenskyy said later the same day that “Putin does not want to end the war,” and called on Trump to provide “real security guarantees.”I won’t rehash the sad history of Ukraine and NATO membership here. But the principle – and to Russia a practical defense priority – of Ukraine someday joining NATO has been a central issue in the process that morphed into the current war. On the face of it, the hard-drinking Defense Secretary just conceded one of the most important and tricky major points in the negotiation. And there is no mention there of any reciprocal concessions on the Russian side for that.
Is anybody driving this car? Or is it a metaphorical version of one of President Musk’s self-driving Teslas? Because it looks like whatever AI negotiating program they’re using needs some tweaking. This whole war could very possibly have been avoided had the Cheney-Bush Administration not insisted on the 2008 NATO declaration that someday Ukraine and Georgia would become members.
But now it’s 2025, nearly three full years into this phase of the war (for which there’s some argument that it began in 2014 with Russia’s seizure of Crimea). And the Administration of those two master negotiators and very stable geniuses Musk and Trump is giving away one of the key bargaining points in the negotiations to terminate the conflict while getting nothing in return?
It sounds like SecDef Hegseth even agreed in advance to permanently conceding Ukrainian territory to Russia:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday insisted a return to Ukraine’s old borders is an “illusory goal,” and called for a European military force to back any peace deal between Kyiv and Moscow. …It looks very much like the Musk-Trump Administration is fumbling around for a way to shut down US aid to Ukraine without looking like they are just giving up and giving Russia a green light. If they have any coherent negotiating strategy, it’s not immediately evident.
“We will only end this devastating war and establish a durable peace by coupling allied strength with a realistic assessment of the battlefield,” he said, adding that “returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective.” (5)
The most parsimonious assumption would seem to be that the Musk-Trump team has no clear political strategy for the Russia-Ukraine War. Certainly, that promise Trump made during the 2024 campaign that he would end the war within 24 hours doesn’t seem to have panned out.
Anatol Lieven gives us a reality-check:
[W]hile Hegseth restated the U.S. commitment to the defense of NATO within its existing borders, he is also expected to repeat Trump’s demand that European countries raise their own defense spending to five percent of GDP. On the one hand, this is a strong indication of the Trump administration’s belief that in the future, Europeans themselves must be chiefly responsible for Europe’s defense.Mearsheimer isn’t one to obsessively promote sweetness and light. So here’s what he says in the interview above about Ukraine. He says he sees “no evidence” that the Administration has a meaningful plan for negotiating an end to the war.
On the other hand, it isn’t going to happen. Given the combination of economic stagnation, budgetary pressures and the erosion of support for establishment parties, such an increase is out of the question — especially if this means spending the money not on European but on U.S. weaponry. In consequence, while the Trump administration will remain in NATO, friction between Washington and Europe can be expected to increase, and U.S. support for European agendas to diminish.
The truth of the matter is that European establishments find themselves in the position of a cartoon character who has run out over the edge of a cliff, and continues running on air for several seconds before realizing that there is no ground underneath him, at which point he falls with a shriek. For years now, European policies towards Russia and Ukraine, and hopes of expanding the EU eastwards, have not just been predicated on support and encouragement from the United States, they have tagged along behind the U.S. Under EU President Ursula von der Leyen and foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, the EU’s central bureaucracy virtually transformed itself into the political and economic wing of NATO. The wing is still flapping, but where’s the bird? [my emphasis] (6)
Trump told us that he was going to settle the Ukrainian conflict in one day. And there is no evidence that we are even close to settling the Ukraine conflict. And, if anything, we're heading in the other direction. So, he has failed so far.Meanwhile, Trump the Peace President is preparing for – or at least publicly hinting about - a US occupation of Gaza and a bloody counterinsurgency war there. That is, if the statements coming from his mouth have any policy meaning and aren’t just hot-air phrases he thinks sound good to the Trumpista base at the moment.
Now, of course, he's only been in office for three weeks. But there is no evidence that he has a plan for shutting this war down. And it looks like the war is going to go on, and it looks like he is doing everything he can to dump this war into the lap of the Europeans.
And it looks like the Europeans are coming to recognize that they don't have any choice but to accept much more of the burden of dealing with this war. So, this is just all, this is bad news all around; bad news for the Ukrainian people; bad news for the Russians; bad news for the United States; bad news for the West, because we're not gonna shut this one down anytime soon. …
There’s no evidence they have a plan. There’s no evidence there are any meaningful contacts between the Russians and the Americans for purposes of shutting this war down. ... The question is, what is the deal? What does Trump think he can do to shut this war down? And, there’s no evidence [chuckle] the Administration has the foggiest idea how they can shut this war down. (42:00ff)
Notes:
(1) Pinkas, Alon (2025): Trump's Intimidation of U.S. Allies Is Creating a Dangerous, Unstable World. Haaretz 02/09/2025. <https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2025-02-09/ty-article/.premium/trumps-intimidation-of-u-s-allies-is-creating-a-dangerous-unstable-world/00000194-ea1c-d0d3-a1d6-ef9e64240000?gift=46a416523e454294938a4681b753c958> (Accessed: 2025-13-02).
(2) Rebuilding Gaza & a deal with Putin–Professor John Mearsheimer on Trump. The Spectator YouTube channel 02/12/2025. <https://youtu.be/-yfNdkeStoo?si=fjr9FxlsROXQo6Y8> (Accessed: 2025-12-02).
(3) Davis, Daniel (2025): Blame Joe Biden If Ukraine Loses the War to Russia. 1945 02/08/2025. <https://www.19fortyfive.com/2025/01/blame-joe-biden-if-ukraine-loses-the-war-to-russia/> (Accessed: 2025-12-02).
(4) Von Der Buchard, Hans & Gavin, Gabriel (2025): Trump-Putin Ukraine peace talks mustn’t exclude Kyiv, EU allies warn. Politico Europe 02/12/2025. <https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-donald-trump-vladimir-putin-peace-talks-defense-eu-allies/> (Accessed: 2025-12-02).
(5) McCleary, Paul & Melkozerova, Veronika (2025): Hegseth calls Ukraine’s return to old borders ‘unrealistic’. Politico Europe 02/12/2025. <https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/12/hegseth-calls-ukraines-return-to-old-borders-unrealistic-00203799> (Accessed: 2025-12-02).
(6) Lieven, Anatol (2025): Hegseth finally pops bubble of illusion: 'no NATO for Ukraine'. Responsible Statecraft 02/12/2025. <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/hegseth-nato-ukraine/> (Accessed: 2025-12-02).
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