Ukraine
Will Zelensky be forced to concede defeat to Putin?
In his first remarks since Donald Trump’s victory, Vladimir Putin understood exactly what the US president-elect wanted to hear. “He behaved, in my opinion, in a very correct way, courageously, like a real man,” said the Russian leader during a forum in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on 7 November; he was speaking about Trump’s response to the attempt on his life at a rally in Pennsylvania on 13 July. Putin then added he was “ready to negotiate” over the war in Ukraine. In Kyiv, meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelensky, congratulated Trump on his “impressive election victory” on social media, praising his “decisive leadership” and “peace through strength” approach to global affairs.
Trump’s admirers invoke Richard Nixon’s “madman theory” of international politics, arguing that his unpredictability is a deliberate ploy to keep America’s adversaries and allies off-balance. But this assumes a strategy behind the caps-lock-heavy late-night tweets and abrupt policy shifts. Trump views the wider world through the prism of trade balances and deal-making, weighing whether his stance on a given issue makes him, and the US, look strong or weak. Hence the flurry of paeans from his soon-to-be interlocutors to his manliness, strength and inimitable leadership.
The danger for Ukraine is that the incoming president might cut off US aid to Ukraine (Donald Trump Jr posted mockingly to Instagram after the election that Zelensky was weeks away from losing his “allowance”). Trump admires Putin – he called his invasion of Ukraine “genius” in 2022 – and on the campaign trail he vowed to end the war within 24 hours of resuming power. Ukraine’s supporters fear he will do so by pressuring Kyiv, under threat of withholding military aid, to accept a deal on Putin’s terms. The clearest details so far as to how he might approach this have come from vice-president-elect, JD Vance, who suggested in September that a settlement could involve freezing the conflict in place on either side of a “heavily fortified” demilitarised zone. Russia would keep the territories it has taken in eastern Ukraine and Kyiv would drop its bid for Nato membership.
The problem with these proposals from Kyiv’s perspective – beyond that they reward Putin’s aggression – is that Ukraine has tried signing peace deals with Russia before, such as the Minsk I and II agreements in 2014 and 2015, or the Budapest memorandum in 1994, when Ukraine agreed to give up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons in return for an assurance that Russia would respect its borders.
There is understandable scepticism that a new deal that is not backed by serious security guarantees – such as membership of the Nato alliance – would result in anything more than a strategic pause that allows Russia to rebuild its strength before resuming its assault. “Putin is not waging this war to get a little bit more territory,” explained Ukraine’s former defence minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk on 7 November. “This is a war for the existence of Ukraine.”
There is also a serious question as to whether Putin would be inclined to take such a deal at a time when he believes he is winning on the battlefield, and with Washington giving every impression that it is preparing to abandon Ukraine.
Zelensky had become increasingly frustrated with the Biden administration’s approach, with weapons transfers slowing and the refusal to lift restrictions on long-range strikes on Russian territory.
Trump’s narcissism presents a wildcard. During his previous term, Trump was fixated on winning the Nobel Peace Prize, and he is likely to be even more focused on his legacy this time around. Zelensky knows that he wants to be seen as a strong leader who negotiated the ultimate deal, and hopes to convince him that the only way to achieve this is to strengthen Ukraine’s position; then perhaps he can avoid being forced to capitulate. It is a tough ask, but Zelensky knows that Trump is susceptible to flattery.
In the end, much will depend on the national security team the new president assembles around him, and the influence of his billionaire backers – Elon Musk joined a call between Trump and Zelensky on 8 November – and whether, if the worst comes to pass and the US betrays Ukraine, Europe can step up in America’s place.
By Katie Stallard
Middle East
Netanyahu may decide now is the moment to reshape the region
In the early hours of 6 November, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly congratulated Donald Trump on “history’s greatest comeback”. He lauded Trump’s win as a “powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America”.
Netanyahu’s hasty and fulsome praise was calibrated. Trump has nurtured a grudge against the Israeli leader for much of the past four years, after Netanyahu congratulated Joe Biden on winning the 2020 election, which Trump falsely claimed to have won. “F*** him,” Trump reportedly said of Netanyahu to Axios’s Barak Ravid in April 2021. He assailed Netanyahu’s leadership after Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, telling Fox News that Netanyahu “was not prepared”. The Israeli prime minister has worked steadily since to repair the relationship, including making the pilgrimage to Florida in July for talks with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Netanyahu was determined to seal his redemption by being among the first – and most enthusiastic – leaders to recognise his victory this time.
The Israeli leader also sees strategic opportunities in Trump’s return to power. During Trump’s previous term, Netanyahu praised him as “the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House”. With good reason. Trump moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, abruptly changing US foreign policy to recognise the contested city as Israel’s capital. He recognised Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights and reversed US opposition to Israeli settlement buildings in the occupied West Bank, which surged during his presidency. He signed the Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco, without requiring Israel to commit to accepting an independent Palestinian state, and expressed scepticism over the viability of a two-state solution.
Trump also withdrew the US from the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal, increased sanctions on Tehran in what he called the “maximum pressure” campaign, and authorised the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, a top Iranian commander. He returns to power in the knowledge that the Iranian government plotted to kill him ahead of this election, according to federal prosecutors in New York.
Trump reportedly told Netanyahu in an October call to “do what you have to do” regarding the war in Gaza and Lebanon. He “expressed his awe for [Israel’s] military
operations” in Lebanon, according to the Republican senator Lindsey Graham, who joined the call. With the region now teetering on the brink of a wider conflict amid retaliatory strikes between Israel and Iran, Trump has also indicated that he expects the war to be winding down by the time he takes office in January.
“Both Israel and Iran will be calculating the odds [of a Trump presidency],” said John Jenkins, the former British ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Syria. “Netanyahu may calculate that he can get away with more in the case of Iran than [he could with] Hamas or Hezbollah because of the apparent Iranian plot to assassinate Trump, which he will take personally. But it’s all game theory.”
The next two months would be critical, Jenkins said. “I assume Netanyahu will want to square a lot away in that time, and Iran will be calculating how much damage it can take and how much it dares to inflict.”
Emboldened by Trump’s resurgence, and with at least a dozen US warships still deployed to the Middle East, the danger is that Netanyahu decides that he now has a historic opportunity to reshape the region and secure his own legacy.
By Katie Stallard
Europe
Once again the EU is misjudging Trump
Had European countries responded to Donald Trump’s 2016 victory by making themselves less dependent on the US for defence, technology and trade, they would be in a better place today. The EU thought Trump was an aberration. Some Europeans, like Angela Merkel, warned that the EU needed to become more self-sufficient on defence, but she did not invest political capital to support this idea.
There are, in principle, three ways you can respond to Trump. The first is to do what the EU essentially did: ignore him and keep on doing what you did before. The second is to take steps to become more independent. The third is to delude yourself into thinking that you can cut deals with Trump and come out as the winner. Both the British and German opposition leaders, Kemi Badenoch and Friedrich Merz, think they can make free-trade deals with Trump. This is delusional. He does not want a good trade deal. He wants industrial jobs back.
What Europeans choose not to see is that Trump II differs from Trump I in important respects. He is now better organised. With Susie Wiles, his former campaign manager, he has hired an experienced chief of staff. The Republicans also now hold a majority in the Senate and, at the time of writing, are in a good position to retake the House. There will be much less pushback against Trump than there was last time.
For Europe, the three biggest themes of Trump II are Ukraine, tariffs and regulation. It’s early, but the contour of a policy is starting to emerge in all three areas. It’s not looking great for Europeans.
By refusing to reappoint both Mike Pompeo, his former secretary of state, and Nikki Haley, his former US ambassador to the UN – who challenged him for the Republican nomination – Trump has shut out two of Ukraine’s biggest supporters in the Republican Party. (He is expected to appoint the Florida senator Marco Rubio, a China hawk, as his secretary of state.)
As Katie Stallard writes, during the election Trump promised to end the Ukraine war in 24 hours. We should not take him literally on the timing, but we should expect him to pursue the idea of an enforced peace settlement. Such a deal would draw a demarcation line within a few kilometres of the battle front. With Trump in the White House, the issue of Ukraine’s accession to Nato will be stalled for the time being anyway. Ukraine’s European allies are also not in a position to take over the financial and political vacuum of a withdrawal of US support. I posited some time ago that with current levels of Western support, Ukraine has no path to victory. The impact of Trump is mostly to bring the moment of Ukraine’s partition forward.
Whatever the Europeans may say, a settlement in Ukraine will come as a relief to the EU, because it has a strategy of its own. The part of the Trump agenda that is most threatening to them are the tariffs, which for the EU could be as high as 20 per cent. The most underrated impact will be on regulation. JD Vance, the vice-president-elect, threatened that the US would drop support for Nato if Europe tried to regulate Elon Musk’s X. Europeans should expect to hear more such threats.
The best strategy would be to make ourselves less dependent on the US. I suspect that European leaders will instead try to charm Trump and pretend that they can cut deals. But he will not support governments that do not meet their Nato defence spending targets and those that run large and persistent trade surpluses against the US. Once again, Europe is misjudging him.
By Wolfgang Münchau
China
Would the US fight for Taiwan?
During the US presidential campaign, a Chinese scholar compared the choice between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump to drinking from “two bowls of poison”. No matter who was elected, the view from Beijing was that the US was set on long-term strategic rivalry with China. They believed that there would be few surprises with Harris. She would have been surrounded by an experienced team of diplomats and officials with a steady working relationship with Beijing, but would have upheld existing restrictions on Chinese goods and strengthened relationships with US allies across the region, which Beijing views as a form of containment.
By contrast, a Trump presidency threatens enormous short-term volatility if he follows through on his commitment to impose a blanket tariff of a minimum of 60 per cent on all Chinese imports, and up to 20 per cent on the rest of the world. This will trigger a global trade war and hurt China’s already faltering economy. Then again, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has dealt with Trump before. Xi understands how fickle the former president’s approach to policymaking can be, and how susceptible he is to the allure of a deal. Trump also launched a trade war with China during his first term in office, but the two sides signed a “Phase One” deal in 2020, committing China to buying an extra $200bn worth of US exports over the next two years in a nominal effort to address the trade imbalance. Trump celebrated the “historic trade deal” as evidence of his negotiating prowess, even though two years later China had not followed through on its commitment to purchase the extra goods. Xi may believe that if China can offer a sufficiently impressive-sounding trade deal again – which the US president-elect can present to his domestic audience as another great victory – then perhaps he can defang Trump’s worst impulses.
Xi knows, too, that there will be a political price to pay in the US if a renewed trade war ramps up the price of consumer goods domestically, as Trump has been elected in large part on a promise to lower inflation and reduce the cost of living. There is also a potential upside for China in the return of an erratic US president who questions the value of alliances and undermines America’s global image. “Beijing sees the return of Trump as a rare opportunity for Chinese leaders to reinforce the message that the US is the single and most disruptive source of global instability,” said Yu Jie, senior research fellow on China at the Chatham House think tank. China, on the contrary, will be portrayed as a “responsible and confident world power that is challenging US hegemony”. Beijing will also make a renewed push to engage the emerging economies of the Global South, Yu told me, to advance both its political goals and “find alternative markets for Chinese exports”.
The outlook for Taiwan is ominous. During his last term, Trump compared the self-ruling island to the tip of a Sharpie pen and China to the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, according to his then national security adviser John Bolton. Trump has accused Taiwan of stealing America’s semiconductor manufacturing industry and suggested that the territory is too far away to defend, insisting that it should pay more to the US for protection. “I don’t think we’re any different from an insurance policy,” Trump told Bloomberg in July. The danger is not necessarily that this will embolden Xi to launch an imminent military assault, which Beijing still views as a last resort with uncertain consequences, but that Trump’s indifference strengthens the Chinese narrative that resistance is futile, and Taiwan must ultimately come to terms with unification. The only certainty at the dawn of the new Trumpian era is the uncertainty that lies ahead.
By Katie Stallard
[See also: Trump’s war on the “deep state”]
Content from our partners
Related
This article appears in the 13 Nov 2024 issue of the New Statesman, Trump World