Ending the war in Ukraine is more important than determining who won, according to former President Donald Trump, who promised, if elected, to quickly settle the conflict by pressuring both sides to end hostilities.
“If I’m president, I will have that War settled in one day—24 hours,” Trump said during a May 10 town hall in New Hampshire hosted by CNN.
“How would you settle that war in one day?” asked the moderator, Kaitlan Collins.
He said he would meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“They both have weaknesses and they both have strengths and within 24 hours that war will be settled. It‘ll be over. It’ll be absolutely over.
“Do you want Ukraine to win this war?” Collins asked.
“I don’t think in terms of winning and losing,” Trump responded. “I think in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all these people and breaking down this country [of Ukraine].”
Trump’s take contrasts with much of the political establishment, which has been locked in the dichotomy of the conflict.
Trump’s position didn’t directly affirm or contradict the dichotomy, but rather replaced it with a paradigm centered on the lives of ordinary Ukrainians and Russians, none of whom started or perhaps desired the war.
The audience, comprised of New Hampshire’s Republican and undeclared primary voters, cheered and applauded.
Collins interrupted Trump, declaring that she wanted to ask a follow-up question. Yet when Trump acquiesced, she didn’t follow up on his answer. Instead, she reverted back to the establishment paradigm and repeated the same question: “Can you say if you want Ukraine or Russia to win this war?”
“I want everybody to stop dying,” Trump said. “They’re dying—Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying.”
Trump reinforced the same point earlier in the conversation as he reiterated his argument that, had he been in the White House, Putin would not have invaded Ukraine.
“All those dead people both Russian and Ukrainian, they wouldn’t be dead today, and all those cities that have blown up and disintegrated right to the ground—that wouldn’t have happened.”
He elaborated further, when Collins asked if he considers Putin a “war criminal.”
“I think it’s something that should not be discussed now,” he said. “It should be discussed later.”
He explained: “If you say he’s a war criminal, it’s going to be a lot tougher to make a deal to get this thing stopped. Because if he’s going to be a war criminal where people are going to go and grab him and execute him, he’s going to fight a lot harder than he’s fighting, you know, under the other circumstance. That’s something to be discussed at a later date. Right now, we want to get that war settled.”
Global Impact
The Ukraine conflict has had a global impact. Beyond the direct loss of life, which Trump said has been underestimated, the war has affected trade in grains and fertilizer, of which Russia and Ukraine are significant exporters. It has also pushed up oil prices in the West, while discounting Russian oil for countries that still import it, particularly China.The United States and the European Union have committed so much in terms of financial and military resources to the conflict, it’s affected their own readiness to face other adversaries, especially China, which has been flirting with the notion of invading Taiwan.
Trump touched upon these issues from two angles.
First, he said, “we’re giving away so much equipment [to Ukraine] we don’t have ammunition for ourselves.”
Then he criticized the EU for committing to Ukraine a fraction of the support the United States has agreed to.
Foreign Policy Bona Fides
While Trump didn’t detail his plan for dissolving the Ukraine conflict, he outlined a direction—prioritizing human lives over declaring winners and losers.If simply ceasing hostilities is the end goal, the United States has leverage over both Ukraine and Russia. Without U.S. financial and military support, Ukraine likely couldn’t continue to fight.
On the Russian side, Trump’s push to have the EU commit substantially more money to the war could represent a bargaining chip with Putin.
His apparent willingness to talk to Putin further indicates that Trump would be willing to accept him as a party to the settlement.
Though Trump’s tone toward Putin appears to have soured, he stopped short of calling for him to be removed.
“Putin made a bad mistake, in my opinion,” he said during the town hall.
“What was his mistake?” Collins asked.
“His mistake was going in,” he responded. “He would have never gone in if I was president. We used to talk about it.”
Trump also has a list of foreign policy accomplishments to point to.
North Korea was so belligerent at the onset of his term, President Barack Obama reportedly called it “the most urgent problem” Trump would face during their private talk.
Trump first escalated the situation, exchanging a barrage of taunts and threats with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. He then opened negotiations and de-escalated the situation to the point where it virtually ceased to be a matter of national concern by the end of his term. Famously, he was the first President to step foot into the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea.
In another major accomplishment, his administration negotiated the Abraham Accords, agreements that normalized relations between Israel and several Arab nations. Such a feat was previously generally dismissed as unfeasible by the foreign policy establishment.
On the Russian front, Putin made few inroads in the Eastern Ukraine conflict during Trump’s four years—a fact Trump cited many times to back his claim that Putin would not have invaded Ukraine on his watch.
A significant factor, Trump managed to keep oil prices within modest levels for most of his presidency, depriving Russia of a major revenue boost.
