Whenever I go on British TV news programs for interviews about President Trump’s efforts to stop the fighting in Ukraine, I am usually asked two leading questions by condescending British TV hosts: “Do you think President Trump’s Ukraine policy has failed?” and “Do you think Russian President Putin is playing President Trump?’
I always answer that these are biased questions that misrepresent how the war in Ukraine started and Trump’s efforts to end it.
Indeed, President Trump has not yet succeeded in ending this brutal war. Russian President Putin has indeed been difficult to deal with, has failed to abide by his commitments with Trump and his officials, and has escalated the war despite Trump’s peace efforts.
It is unfair to portray these potentially temporary outcomes as failures of Trump’s Ukraine policy, as they ignore that his peace efforts aim to address an enormous foreign policy crisis caused by his predecessor that may not be easily fixed or solved.
Biden emboldened Putin to invade Ukraine by ignoring the Russian leader’s fear of Ukraine moving closer to the West and joining NATO. Although Biden and his senior officials never explicitly called for Ukraine to join NATO, they dangled NATO membership before Ukrainian President Zelensky and repeatedly said this decision was up to Ukraine. Biden further confused the situation by stating several times in 2021 that the United States and NATO would stand behind Ukraine’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity,” statements that sounded like Biden offered Ukraine security guarantees. In addition, during a June 2021 NATO Summit, NATO reaffirmed the commitment made at the 2008 NATO Bucharest Summit that Ukraine would one day become a member.
Biden also encouraged Putin to invade Ukraine with extraordinarily weak American national security policies. The most notorious was the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Putin was emboldened to invade by other cases of Biden’s foreign policy incompetence, especially Biden’s statement weeks before Russian troops crossed into Ukraine when he said the U.S. and its allies might be divided on how to respond if a Russian invasion was a “minor incursion.”
In addition, Biden destroyed U.S. relations with Russia after the start of the war by repeatedly demonizing Putin and failing to engage in diplomacy with the Russian leader to end the war. Biden never spoke with Putin after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Instead, he repeatedly harshly criticized Putin, often calling him a war criminal. Biden also likened Putin to Hamas after the horrific October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack against Israel.
Biden and European leaders also pursued policies that caused the war to become a stalemate, which Ukraine will eventually lose. They refused to give Ukraine the weapons it requested in mid-2022 that probably would have enabled it to repel Russian forces from most of its territory. This refusal allowed the Russian army to recover and regroup after suffering heavy losses at the beginning of the invasion. Biden followed this mistake with a policy to arm Ukraine “for as long as it takes” with no strategy either for a Ukrainian victory or to negotiate an end to the war.
Therefore, to say that Trump came to the war in Ukraine as president with the deck stacked against him is an understatement. Although Putin is ultimately responsible for this deadly and unprovoked war, it would not have happened if Biden had not antagonized Putin and ignored his sensitivities about Ukraine. U.S. and European policies also made it impossible for Ukraine to win the war in 2022, made the war worse, and discouraged diplomacy to end the conflict.
In addition, this conflict was made more complex after Biden’s mishandling of U.S.-Russia relations drove Putin into the arms of Chinese President Xi, causing Russia and China to declare a “no limits” partnership and create a new anti-Western axis. Iran and North Korea are at least informal members of this axis.
Trump finds the Ukraine war difficult to end because Biden’s foreign policy failures were so severe. This does not mean the war is unsolvable. But it may mean that the Ukraine mess Biden left for Trump will be far more difficult to clean up than anyone thought.
It is possible that Biden’s Ukraine mess can’t be cleaned up, and the Russian leader will refuse to reach a peaceful settlement on any terms short of Ukrainian capitulation. I also believe the odds are long for a peace agreement right now and that it might take months or years of negotiations to reach a possible peace agreement acceptable to Ukraine.
The next time I am on the BBC and am asked about this issue, I plan to stress that I believe President Trump is ready for the possibility that the Ukraine War is unsolvable and will make clear, if he concludes that the war cannot be ended, that the failure lies with Biden. I will also say that Trump will probably take steps if the Ukraine War cannot be ended to ensure that similar conflicts do not break out in the future and to keep the United States out of similar wars.
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Fred Fleitz previously served as National Security Council chief of staff, a CIA analyst, and a House Intelligence Committee staff member. He is the Vice Chair of the America First Policy Institute’s Center for American Security.
If I talked to any member of the world’s anti-American press and the subject was brought up about ‘America’s responsibilities’ to other countries, I would stress the usefulness of a Golden Dome defense and call it a day.
That Biden and his “Intelligence” Community made a hash of the beginning of the war is incontrovertible. However, President Trump’s apparent “Peace at Any Price” position is also indefensible.
So what perchance is your position on the Ukrainian war with Russia?
It is my opinion that between lingering–but quite active–remnants of the CIA (unfortunately, neither Trump nor Ratcliffe have total control over the rogue agency), Western European governments, an obstreperous Zelenskyy, and a Machiavellian Putin, there won’t be peace between Ukraine and Russia anytime soon.
Zelenskyy is doggedly determined to remove Russia from all of Ukraine, and is supported in his Quixotic quest by the CIA and Western European governments. Western Europe thinks it can bleed Russia dry in its war of attrition against Ukraine, thus defanging their mortal enemy. And Putin is determined to absorb as much of Ukraine as possible, thus fulfilling his revanchist ambitions.
And Trump…well, he’s probably close to washing his hands of the dumpster fire and telling European governments its their mess to handle.
Meanwhile, the eastern dragon watches and waits.