The Opinions - Trump Should Bring the Ukraine War to Its ‘Inevitable Ending’

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

President-elect Donald Trump has said that as president, he will negotiate an end to the carnage in Ukraine in a single day. A peace deal could have ugly effects for Ukraine, but according to the contributing writer Megan Stack, Trump should put an end to the war and finally be the friend to Ukraine America likes to believe it is.Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail]. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. My name is Megan Stack. I write for New York Times Opinion. I cover foreign affairs. I was a foreign correspondent for a long time. And I was based in Moscow for three years. President Trump is coming into office in January. And he is inheriting a war that will be almost three years old at that point. between Russia and Ukraine. It has been a bloody, really horrible conflict. The U.S. has spent billions of dollars

supporting the Ukrainian military. Nevertheless, I think it is fair to say that Ukraine is losing the war. I do believe that at this point, the only good thing that can be done because we are not going to send the kind of troops and weapons that Ukraine needs is to look to save lives and perhaps speed up what is an inevitable ending.

Trump campaigned on promises to put a swift end to this war. In fact, he bragged that he would end it within 24 hours. I know Zelensky well. I know Putin well. I would get that ended in a period of 20. You can break that deal. 100%. It would be easy.

That deal would be easy. There are a lot of risks. and there will be no doubt some very ugly effects of a peace settlement, but Trump should do it anyway. I am personally very torn about the American-Ukrainian relationship. Unlike a lot of the people who talk about Ukraine, I've spent a lot of time there. I have old ties to the country through my family. When I was a child, we had Ukrainian students come and live with us. I feel sick at what's happened to Ukraine.

It's awful. And there's no, there's just nothing you can say about it to make it all right. I think in a pure moral sense, we should support Ukraine. I also do see the tremendous risk of getting into a war with Russia. What I think is very difficult to justify is what we've asked. actually done. I think that the U.S. should either say to Ukraine, yes, we are supporting you, we are going to defend you. We're going to get you into NATO. And if Russia attacks, that's it. We are actually going to end up in a war with Russia. Or I think the U.S. should talk to Ukraine

bluntly and talk to American voters bluntly and say, Ukraine is right. We love Ukraine. We cannot afford to get into a war with Russia. And that is why we are offering this specific amount of support. We're prepared to do this. We're not prepared to do that. I think instead we have gotten into this drift in the Ukraine war, where we have slowly, slowly allowed Ukraine to do a little bit more of this, or we have finally given Ukraine a specific type of weapon

that they have wanted to get and we have withheld, but then we'll finally give it, and the aid gets tangled up in our domestic political debates. And frankly, I don't think we have a clear idea of what we are trying to achieve. I think that the U.S. could use some self-reflection on the idea that essentially what we have done, while framing it as this very fulsome and complete support and help for Ukraine, following the Russian invasion. In reality, what we have done is we have supported Ukraine enough to keep the war going, but we have not supported Ukraine enough to win the war.

I don't know that we have any real reason to see Trump as someone who's deeply concerned about Ukrainian lives or Ukraine's future security. But I think he has a sense of his. himself as a dealmaker and he has a certain ego drive where he wants to be the one who comes in and puts all these foreign leaders in their place and sorts everything out and shows that they don't dare to do anything disruptive while he's in charge and I think he is so wedded to that vision of himself that it will make him work very hard to make a deal in Ukraine. I am concerned about his fondness for Russia, the way that he has talked about Putin in the past. But I do think that

Trump will push to make a deal. I think he overall is just not afraid to crash into the China shop and, you know, break things and make people mad and sort of upend all the status quo. And actually, when it comes to a situation that is as entrenched in, in my view, bad foreign policy habits and broken promises and disappointment as the war in Ukraine, I'm not sure that that's an entirely bad thing, as much as I kind of shudder to say it. I think this war, it is in many ways an extension of this dynamic that I've seen for many years in covering Ukraine, covering Russia, which is that the U.S. involves itself in a way that makes places like Ukraine vulnerable to Russian attack. We say to Ukraine that we are going to support them no matter what, only to, in the

end, back away, and we're not willing to give that protection to the degree that it would be needed when a real crisis hits. When the Soviet Union fell, Ukraine found itself in possession of the world's third largest nuclear arsenal, and it was President Bill Clinton, who was very involved in convincing Ukraine to dismantle the program, sell the uranium to Russia, with an assurance that, don't worry, we have got your back. we're going to, you know, guarantee your security. Obviously, those guarantees did not end up being worth anything.

Later on in 2004, when ordinary Ukrainians stood up in protest against a Russia-backed politician, that turned into a broader protest looking for a different future, a future where Ukraine would be aligned with the West and Europe. Of course, at that time, the Bush administration loved it. Bush said to Ukraine at the time and said publicly in multiple forums that I'm going to help Ukraine get into NATO. I'm going to support Ukraine's bid to join NATO. Ukraine's going into NATO, NATO, NATO, NATO, NATO. Well, that never happened.

What is the end going to look like? We don't really know. But basically, it's going to be terrible for Ukraine, I think, almost no matter what happens. I think the U.S. acknowledges the righteousness and the justice of the war, but at the end of the day, we are not going to save them. We cannot risk getting into what would really be something closer to a World War III type scenario by getting into a direct war with Putin. We are both nuclear powers, and it could be absolutely disastrous for just untold numbers of people. If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you. you get your podcasts. This show is produced by Derek Arthur, Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Bishaka, Fiby Lett, Christina Samuoski, and Jillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin, Alison Brusek, and Annie Rose Strasser. Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero,

Pat McCusker, Carol Saburo, and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amin Sahota. The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience Strategy, by Shannon Busta, Christina Samuiluski, and Adrian Rivera. The executive producer of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Dresser.