When he ran for the United States presidency in 2024, Donald Trump pledged to end the Ukraine conflict “within 24 hours”. Although this was aspirational, he is urgently seeking a peaceful outcome to the three-year conflict, although it was never going to be easy. His style is unorthodox and he has put noses out of joint, but there is method in his “madness”.
There are certainly those who hope the conflict will endure, including the arms manufacturers for whom it is the gift that keeps on giving. For example, NATO and its secretary general, Mark Rutte, hope to see Russia broken, even if it destroys Ukraine in the process. However, the conflict is far broader than Ukraine, and NATO also hopes to engineer “regime change” in Moscow.
On March 26, 2022, for example, the then-US president, Joe Biden, said that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, “cannot remain in power”. The UK’s then-prime minister, Boris Johnson, agreed, declaring that the punitive sanctions imposed on Russia were intended “to bring down the Putin regime”. Three years later, it is they who are on the scrapheap of history, while Putin is as secure as ever.
Against this background, NATO’s hawks have incessantly encouraged Kyiv to raise the stakes despite the risk of triggering a third world war. For example, last November, Biden gave Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, the green light to fire US-made Atacms missiles (with a range of 305 kilometers) deep into Russian territory. Not to be outdone, the UK’s prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, permitted Zelensky to fire Anglo-French Storm Shadow missiles (with a range of 250 km) into Russia. As they must have anticipated, Putin did not take this lying down. He has now approved a revised nuclear doctrine, lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons, meaning Armageddon is one step closer.
After Zelensky and his European backers criticized his peace moves, Trump did not spare them. On Feb 18, he said that Europe had “failed to bring peace” in the region, and that Zelensky was a “dictator” who “better move fast” to save Ukraine. He also said Ukraine was responsible for Russia’s invasion in 2022, and that it “should never have started it”.
Although Trump’s criticisms were generalized, he apparently called Zelensky a “dictator” because he refused to hold presidential elections once his tenure expired last year, clamped down on opposition political parties, and muzzled the media (which left his European facilitators unfazed).
Not surprisingly, Zelensky and his backers were stunned. For example, Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, called Trump’s comments “wrong and dangerous”, while Starmer, with France’s Emmanuel Macron nodding away quietly in the background (his spokesman rejected Trump’s “logic”), promised Zelensky his undying support. However, despite their blustering, Europe’s leaders had no real answers to Trump’s home truths. With Biden, their facilitator-in-chief, gone, they have to confront reality, and the name of the game is now “peace”.
Although Starmer and Macron are flying to Washington shortly, reportedly to plead Zelensky’s cause, Trump has their measure. On Feb 20, he said they “haven’t done anything” to end the war in Ukraine, adding that Zelensky had “no cards” in peace negotiations.
Although Starmer, Macron and Rutte, want to keep the conflict going, the writing is on the wall. With peace looming, their hopes of using Ukraine to weaken Russia and topple Putin are dissolving before their eyes. Even if Zelensky is still prepared to play along with them, they have backed a loser whose days are numbered.
In contrast, Trump has reversed Biden’s folly. He pointed out that the US was duped into giving Zelensky $350 billion for a lost cause and that he had been elected to stop throwing good money after bad. Regrettably, the UK, which has already wasted 12 billion pounds ($15.22 billion) on Ukraine’s conflict and is committed to handing over 3 billion pounds a year, has yet to learn this lesson.
When Trump said that Ukraine provoked the Russian invasion, he presumably had in mind Kyiv’s maltreatment of its Russian-speaking minorities in eastern Ukraine. In the years immediately preceding the invasion, they were, in violation of the Minsk agreements, regularly targeted by Kyiv’s military (including the Azov Brigade, a neo-Nazi militia, since absorbed into the regular army).
By pulling together, the US and China can make the sort of real progress the warmongers dread. If Russia’s concerns over NATO’s threats on its borders can be addressed, and if the safety of ethnic minorities within Ukraine can be guaranteed, a lasting peace is certainly possible. As Trump knows, Putin also wants peace, although he will not allow himself to be hoodwinked again, as he was at Minsk. Even if some of NATO’s leaders want to derail the peace process and prolong the fighting, the momentum now lies firmly with the peacemakers
Although the Minsk agreements, which France and Germany brokered with Moscow and Kyiv in 2014, were supposed to guarantee the rights of ethnic minorities and prevent tensions from escalating, Russia was cynically hoodwinked. As Germany’s former chancellor, Angela Merkel, revealed to the Die Zeit newspaper in 2022, the Minsk agreements were only an “attempt to give Ukraine time”, with Ukraine having used them “to become stronger” (her account was confirmed by the former French president, Francois Hollande). It was, therefore, little wonder that Putin felt tricked, describing the revelations as “completely unexpected and disappointing”. He finally realized that “no one was going to implement the agreements”, despite the French and German promises.
However, although Zelensky and his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, must bear some responsibility for provoking the conflict, the primary responsibility, as Trump undoubtedly appreciates, lies with NATO. When the Soviet Union, NATO’s raison d’etre, collapsed in the 1990s, it might have been expected to contract. Instead, it expanded from 16 members in 1990 to 32 members in 2024. Without regard to Moscow’s sensitivities, it even enlisted Eastern European countries on Russia’s flanks.
They included the Baltic states of Latvia, where NATO has established its Multinational Brigade (over 3,500 troops), and Estonia, where the UK has deployed troops from its 4th Brigade, and plans to base its most advanced Challenger 3 tanks, together with long-range missiles. Therefore, NATO is now breathing down Moscow’s neck, and it is hard to think of anything more provocative.
As the US director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, explained in 2022, “This war and suffering could easily have been avoided if Biden/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns”, but unfortunately nobody in the West was interested.
Indeed, the US would also feel threatened if, for example, hostile forces were stationed in Mexico, as would the UK if this happened in Ireland.
Moreover, when Ukraine, with its vast land border with Russia, applied to join NATO in 2008, its then-secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said it would eventually be allowed to join. As he must have known, this was a red rag to Russia’s bull, given Moscow’s security concerns. More recently, NATO has inflamed tensions by indicating its wish to recruit Ukraine. For example, Starmer told Zelensky that he supported Ukraine’s “irreversible path” to NATO membership. However, good sense is finally prevailing, and Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, told European leaders that “The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement” (Feb 12).
Trump was also spot-on when he pointed out that Europe’s leaders had failed to bring peace and sought instead, with Biden’s encouragement, to aggravate tensions. Although they reacted furiously to Trump’s plain-speaking, they had also opposed earlier attempts to broker peace. When, on Feb 24, 2023, China unveiled its 12-point peace proposals, which called for a “political settlement” to the conflict, NATO was not interested, with Biden calling it “irrational”.
Although China’s proposals contemplated, for example, peace talks, respect for national sovereignty, ending attacks on civilians, humanitarian support, guarantees for Ukrainian grain exports, and safeguards for nuclear power plants, these were anathema to the war party. NATO dismissed them as imprecise, with its then-secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, a Cold War throwback, claiming “China doesn’t have much credibility”. Although Ukraine called China’s proposals a “good sign”, with Zelensky indicating he hoped to pursue them with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, NATO blocked them.
With Trump now wanting peace, the European leaders cannot ignore both Washington and Beijing. The Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, has backed Trump’s initiatives, saying “China would love to see all efforts conducive to peace”. He welcomed Trump’s “common understanding” with Russia, and said he believed that “all parties and all stakeholders should, at an appropriate time, participate in the peace talks process”. He assured the G20 foreign ministers’ summit that “China is willing to play a constructive role in the political resolution of the crisis”, and it can bring much to the table.
And despite NATO’s escalating hostility toward China during the Biden years, Kyiv recognizes its importance, seeing it as the leader of the Global South. Zelensky’s spokesman, Andriy Yermak, said China was a “global player” with a “crucial role to play in achieving peace” (Feb 14). However, it is not only Zelensky who wants China’s involvement.
When Trump addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month, he said he hoped that “China can help us to stop the war with, in particular, Russia-Ukraine”. He added that China had “a great deal of power over that situation, and we’ll work with them”.
With its long-standing ties with Russia, China now finds itself being courted by both the US and Ukraine, and its role will be pivotal. Whereas Zelensky fears both Putin’s territorial claims and Trump’s coveting of his country’s rare earths, he knows that Beijing has no dog in the race. Its objectivity, therefore, is its strength, and it can be an honest broker. China has always maintained cordial relations with Kyiv, and Wang Yi has emphasized that “China sees Ukraine as a friend and partner”, which must have reassured Zelensky, still reeling from Trump’s criticisms.
By pulling together, the US and China can make the sort of real progress the warmongers dread. If Russia’s concerns over NATO’s threats on its borders can be addressed, and if the safety of ethnic minorities within Ukraine can be guaranteed, a lasting peace is certainly possible. As Trump knows, Putin also wants peace, although he will not allow himself to be hoodwinked again, as he was at Minsk. Even if some of NATO’s leaders want to derail the peace process and prolong the fighting, the momentum now lies firmly with the peacemakers.
The author is a senior counsel and law professor, and was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
