Has Trump Learned That Russia Is the Problem?

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

 

If you are inclined to take Trump literally or seriously, you likely got the impression from his statements, his staffing decisions, and his general disposition toward Russia’s war in Ukraine that he would be inclined to wash his hands of America’s commitments to Kyiv’s sovereignty. It’s not as though he did much over the course of the 2024 campaign to disabuse observers of that suspicion.

 

“Every time [Ukrainian president Volodymyr] Zelensky comes to the United States, he walks away with $100 billion. I think he’s the greatest salesman on Earth,” Trump scoffed at one of his rallies amid raucous heckles and catcalls from his supporters. “But we’re stuck in that war unless I’m president,” Trump continued before speculating about Russia’s record of success on history’s battlefields. “That’s what they do,” he said of the Russians. “They fight.” If there was any question about his policy preferences, Trump made them plain: “We gotta get out.”

 

Pretty unambiguous stuff. So, too, were his personnel decisions prior to and after his election. His vice president, JD Vance, has made an embarrassing habit of accusing those who support Ukraine’s resistance against Russia’s war of subjugation and expansionism of salivating over the prospect of nuclear war. That’s unconvincing nonsense, of course. But when Vance cares to persuade, he has made the case that the U.S. is too mired in decline — too beset by trials at home and abroad — to help defend its partner in Europe. We simply lack the wherewithal (and, oddly enough, efforts to augment our defense industrial capacity represent “a kill switch for the next Trump presidency”).

 

If Trump disagreed with his vice presidential nominee, you wouldn’t know it from his pick for special envoy to the conflict in Europe, Keith Kellogg. Along with his co-author, Kellogg proposed a peace plan in Ukraine that functionally cedes the territory Moscow secured with force, puts the screws to Kyiv, and lends Western legitimacy to the “frozen conflict” in Ukraine that Moscow would invariably thaw at the most advantageous time. The only inducement for Russian leader Vladimir Putin to come to the table is the promise that, if he didn’t, Trump would increase material support for Ukraine.

 

But why would the Kremlin do that when this perfunctory ultimatum was an island in a sea of apologia for Russia’s actions? Why wouldn’t Putin’s regime conclude that it could extract more concessions from this administration? That seems to be the Russian regime’s posture today. “Kellogg comes to Moscow with his plan, we take it and then tell him to screw himself, because we don’t like any of it,” Russian billionaire and Putin proxy, Konstantin Malofeev, told the Financial Times in December. “For the talks to be constructive, we need to talk not about the future of Ukraine, but the future of Europe and the world.”

 

In those remarks, we’re privy to a classic Russian gambit: The consequences of Moscow’s naked aggression aren’t really about Moscow or its naked aggression; it’s about the grander geopolitical milieu that is so hostile to non-Western interests. That’s what must be addressed before we even begin to think about Russia’s illegal land grabs and crimes against civilization.

 

Fortunately, it seems like the reality of Russia has cut through the fantasy crafted for Trump by those who don’t think they can persuade him to adopt a policy of retrenchment on the merits.

 

In late December, sources in Trump’s orbit reportedly began telling their European counterparts that Trump would not condition America’s future commitments to Ukraine at all. Separately, he would like to see NATO member states increase their defense commitments to the equivalent of 5 percent of GDP — vastly more than even the U.S. spends on defense — but he would settle for a more reasonable 3.5 percent. After he took the oath of office, Trump implemented an across-the-board freeze on all foreign aid for a 90-day study period with two glaring exceptions: Israel and Ukraine. And on Thursday, Trump allowed his frustration with the Putin government to spill out all over the American president’s proprietary social-media network:

 

 The observation posited by O’Brien, a strategic studies professor at the University of St. Andrews, is quite keen. Russia has been severely weakened by its avaricious war. So, too, are its allies. The Iranian regime is in arguably the most parlous position it has occupied since the 1980s. Its vassal in Damascus is deposed, and its 99-year lease on the Mediterranean port at Tartus is no more. Everywhere, it seems, the Russians are coming home. But not yet in Ukraine.

 

Unwisely, Trump spent the Biden interregnum indulging the cynicism of his most ardent followers, many of whom are hostile to the commitments America must keep if it is to preserve the U.S.-led geopolitical order that we take for granted. But the world looks different from behind the Resolute Desk.

 

As I wrote in the fall of 2022, the baseless allegations retailed by anti-Ukraine Republicans — the talk of the “blank check” they were getting from American taxpayers, the menace represented by NATO’s willingness to allow Russia’s desperate and frightened former colonial possessions to ascend to membership, etc. — all of it was little more than fan service. The GOP, from Trump on down, was already committed to Ukraine’s defense in the effort to correct Barack Obama’s blunders. If their “comments on Ukraine were a mistake,” I speculated, “we can safely expect many more similar errors in the near future.”

 

We don’t yet know what kind of policy Trump will pursue vis-à-vis our old foes in the Kremlin. And yet, we now have plenty of indications Trump’s approach will look more contiguous than radical. All that campaign trail talk might have thrilled Tucker Carlson and company, but it was extremely cheap.