Between Conciliation and Coercion

Is there an actually existing Ukraine policy? Probably not.

Superimposing a coherent narrative where none likely exists in order to explain the policies of President Donald J. Trump is an deeply unenviable task, not least because of the famously mercurial nature of the President. In order to make sense of his policies toward Russia and Ukraine it helps to begin with the obvious: President Trump has set for himself the goal of winning a Nobel Peace Prize by the end of his term, as such, he will do almost anything to achieve it.

It is the way in which he has gone about doing this that many find so confounding. Depending on your point of view, Trump’s approach has been either highly innovative or highly erratic. It helps to understand that Mr. Trump sees the war in Ukraine in a far different light than his immediate predecessors. Trump has often said that there never would have been a war if he had been in office at the time of the Russian invasion. And of course it is true that the crisis in Ukraine which began on Maidan (Independence) Square did not begin on his watch. And policy initiatives (such as Washington’s financing and arming of Kyiv in its nearly 13 year project of reincorporating the Donbas region by force of arms) that do not bear Trump’s imprint but rather the imprint of Presidents Obama and Biden do not fare well. Consider the fate of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action between the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council (plus Germany) and Iran. Trump saw this as a purely Obama initiative, as such, he (unwisely) withdrew from it.

During his first term, Trump did in fact take a harder line against Russia than many had anticipated. The accusation that he and his 2016 campaign “colluded” with Russia have been shown to be unfounded. With regard to Russia policy, he, as he often does, vacillated between public flattery of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and hawkish policies designed to coerce the Kremlin into changing its behavior. Indeed, in some respects Trump went beyond the Obama-Biden policy toward Russia and Ukraine. While Obama resisted sending Ukraine Javelin anti-tank missiles for fear of escalating the conflict, Trump went ahead. Seven months into his first term, Trump signed into law the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), enacting new sanctions on Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Multiple waves of sanctions followed. Still more, on the advice of his neoconservative national security adviser John Bolton, Trump withdrew from the landmark 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and from the 1992 Open Skies Treaty which allowed for unarmed surveillance flights between member nations, including Russia. And despite placing a 55-day hold on a tranche of funding to Kyiv in 2019 (which led to his first impeachment),Trump approved roughly $677 million in arms financing and another $1 billion through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. By the time Trump grudgingly left office in January 2021, the full- scale Russian invasion of Ukraine was still over a year away.

Second Term Trump is a different animal. First Term Trump evinced a vast incomprehension of the way the US government, particularly the way the national security services, works. Now Trump is more fully in control of his government and his foreign policy. But control has not translated into coherence. Once again, there is the public flattery of Putin, which is then followed by policies and pronouncements which seem designed to coerce Russia into taking a different course in Ukraine. The results, so far, have been dismal.

Second Term Trump has both publicly berated and praised the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky. He held a friendly summit meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska, yet expressed vexation over Putin’s lack of interest in negotiations. He has approved $962 million in arms sales to Kyiv under the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program and has called for the US to resume underground nuclear testing. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has approved the sale of long-range Tomahawk missiles to Kyiv.

A number of these decisions seem to be at variance with Trump’s long stated goal of ending the war. They are certainly not designed to win the approval of the Wizard of the Kremlin.

So what explains these wide pendulum shifts between conciliation and coercion? I believe the theory with the most explanatory power is that Trump is seeking to placate two specific constituencies within his own administration and political party. And the two constituencies—America First and the Neoconservatives—have vastly different views of Russia and the war in Ukraine.

The America First constituency is made up of members of what are collectively sometimes referred to as the New Right; they are latter-day populists who have won vast audiences through non-traditional or alternative media: Podcasts, YouTube, Rumble and the like. First Term Trump adviser Steve Bannon and pundit Tucker Carlson are perhaps the leading figures of the America First movement. America First, unlike so many things in American politics, is what it sounds like: It is a movement that is suspicious of alliances and foreign influence, that seeks Washington’s retrenchment from world affairs. America First figures do not understand why the matter of who governs the Donbas should so preoccupy Washington.

The views of the second constituency, the neoconservatives, are well known and happen to be shared by a plurality of Democratic lawmakers in Washington. The neoconservatives view Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine through the lens of ‘Munich,’ meaning that Putin cannot be met with appeasement, as Hitler was after his meeting with Neville Chamberlain in 1938. The neoconservatives believe that should Putin conquer Ukraine, he will set his sights elsewhere, putting the rest of Europe at risk. Though far removed from reality, these fantasies fuel the weltanschauung of the neocons. And when Trump seeks to appease people who hold such views, such as his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, or leaders in Congress such as Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, the pendulum swings back, away from conciliation toward coercion.

As of this writing there appeared to be a stalemate between the two competing ideologies within the administration. And so, we should expect the pendulum swings to continue—and nothing in the way of progress.

James W. Carden, editor of The Realist Review, is a senior adviser to the American Committee for US-Russia Accord.