A 3-Step Strategy for Trump on Ukraine

Jeffrey Burt, James Hitch, Peter Pettibone, Thomas Shillinglaw

Security, Eurasia

Trump is ideally positioned to construct an entirely new U.S.-Russian relationship.

There are few higher foreign policy priorities for the new Trump Administration than addressing the highly disruptive and potentially catastrophic conflict brewing sinisterly in Ukraine. The annexation of Crimea, as well as Russia’s continuing military initiatives in the eastern Ukrainian Donbas region, represent egregious violations of international law. These actions have had a devastating impact on U.S.-Russian relations which have reverted to Cold War levels, undermining all constructive discourse.

Trump’s election campaign promised that, as President, he would initiate an entirely new approach to Russia, and deal with Putin and his inner circle by relying on his negotiating skills honed during his career in business. We believe that now is the time for Trump to take advantage of the opening afforded by his stunning election, and to approach Putin with a game changing proposal to deescalate the Ukrainian crisis, as well as to lay the foundation for a constructive program of reconciliation between the United States and Russia. The alternative — a continuation of the current policy — will only lead to further destabilizing rhetoric, a costly and dangerous arms build-up on both sides, and escalating military confrontations between NATO members and Russia.

The new Trump Administration can legitimately disavow prior U.S. policies which have so antagonized Putin, and which have been construed by Putin and his cohorts as threatening Russia’s vital national security interests. These include, in particular, NATO’s substantial eastern expansion since the end of the Cold War — increasing from 16 nations to 29 — as well as the foreign policy initiatives of the United States under the Clinton, Bush II and Obama Administrations. Actions in Serbia/Kosovo in 1999, in Iraq beginning in 2003, and in Libya in 2011, together with the “color revolutions” in former Soviet republics have been perceived by Putin as intended, directly or indirectly, to destabilize the current regime in Moscow. The prospect of Ukraine joining NATO was especially unsettling. Putin's address to the Russian Parliament on March 19, 2014, justifying the Crimean annexation, explained: “It would have meant that NATO's navy would be right there in this city [Sevastopol] of Russia's military glory and this would have created not an illusory, but a perfectly real threat to the whole of southern Russia.”