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No modern US president has been so far out of step with public opinion on a major foreign-policy issue as Donald Trump is on Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Both Trump and most Americans oppose deep US involvement in overseas conflicts. Few want to see more US troops drawn into endless wars. But the two sides diverge sharply on what a just outcome in Ukraine looks like — who should prevail, who should lose, and what is at stake morally and strategically. Those considerations appear to matter little to Trump. To him, it is simply another war that should be halted on humanitarian grounds. If he can stop it, even at Ukraine’s expense, it becomes another argument for a Nobel Peace Prize and a place in history alongside Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Kissinger, argues Joseph Bosco, former China director at the US Defense Department.
Ordinary Americans, however, know enough about Vladimir Putin to view him as one of the world’s worst criminals. His record includes his KGB past, nostalgia for Stalin’s USSR, the brutal war in Chechnya, the broken pledge in 1997 to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty after it gave up nuclear weapons, the 2008 invasion of Georgia, the first attack on Ukraine in 2014, the full-scale invasion in 2022 and the widespread war crimes that have followed.
None of this seems to matter to Trump. He has repeatedly praised Putin as “strong” and “genius.” During their meeting in Alaska, Trump showered him with compliments as though he were a conquering hero — a stark contrast with Trump’s hostile tone toward Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, during their meeting at the White House in February. Trump’s envoys, especially Steve Witkoff, have adopted the same posture.
Trump’s peace plan would require Ukraine to give up not only Crimea and most of the eastern territories occupied by Russia since 2014, but also large parts of the Donbas that Russia has failed to seize. Ukraine would also be required to scale back its military and pledge never to seek NATO membership.
Kyiv has repeatedly rejected such demands, as have NATO and EU members that now recognize the dangers of Russian expansionism and are unwilling to repeat the appeasement mistakes of World War II and the Cold War. In exchange for these sweeping concessions imposed on Ukraine by Washington, Russia promises only not to resume its aggression — a pledge Ukraine has ample reason to doubt.
“Trump knows these facts as well as anyone, yet he continues to take Putin at his word and tolerate his dismissive attitude toward Trump’s own demands. Putin now appears to have boxed Trump in, pushing him back toward the crude, aggressive stance he and vice president JD Vance showed Zelensky in February,” Bosco writes.
According to the author, both Trump and Putin are counting on Europe to peel away from Ukraine and on a war-weary population to eventually submit. The irony, he notes, is that these developments are taking place as the US prepares to mark the 250th anniversary of its fight against another authoritarian empire. Then, too, America lacked resources but possessed the determination to fight and die for its freedom — a resolve that inspired European states to support it.
“Perhaps history can repeat itself for Ukraine, even if this time the US finds itself on the side of the tyrant,” Bosco concludes.
