Ukraine is now Trump's war
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Vladimir Putin started it. Joe Biden didn't stop it. But, no matter his efforts to the contrary, this is the week in which Russia's invasion of Ukraine becomes US President Donald Trump's war.
The most powerful office in the world doesn't always invite choices. Trump is mandated to address the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II because the United States was involved, under his predecessor, as Ukraine's key ally and sponsor.
Trump could have dropped the war entirely. But instead, he chose to impose the force of his personality, initially through the idea he could end it in 24 hours, or a revised deadline of 100 days. Then he tried to navigate its personalities, cozying up to the Russian president initially, echoing his narratives and then berating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky publicly in the Oval Office.
He hit his NATO allies hard, demanding they pay more for Europe's defense, which they did. And then the hard slog of diplomacy sputtered into gear, ultimately yielding very little.
But it is in the last fortnight that Trump's decisions – and realizations – have turned this into a problem he now owns. He has seen Putin does not want peace. He has seen Ukraine urgently needs arms, and he tried to help, albeit in a lackluster way. He made the remarkable choice of responding to the usually dismissed nuclear saber-rattling of former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, with harder nuclear threats about positioning US nuclear submarines closer to Russia. The US went from pausing military aid to Ukraine to threatening nuclear force against Russia in less than a month.
As this week ends, with Trump's shortened deadline for a peace deal coming into view, he must make perhaps the most consequential decision of the conflict yet. Does he impose penalties – secondary tariffs against Russia's energy customers – that really hurt? Does he accept the US and its allies might need to endure a little pain economically, to inflict pain?
Imposing serious secondary sanctions on India and China could roil the global energy market. Trump posted Monday he would be increasing tariffs on India because it was selling Russian crude on at a profit, and he didn't 'care how many people are being killed by the Russian War Machine,' although he did not provide details as to the new measures. India has not made it publicly clear if it intends to stop buying Russian energy products. China is utterly dependent on Russian oil and gas and simply cannot afford to stop buying it.
CNN's Nick Paton Walsh describes the riveting escape plan hatched by Ukrainian forces to save the life of an injured soldier pinned down by Russian attacks. To avoid another a 'TACO' moment – short for Trump Always Chickens Out – Trump will have to cause some discomfort and will likely feel some back. Or he can look for an off-ramp, if one is offered to his special envoy Steve Witkoff in an expected Moscow visit this week. Trump could perhaps accept a bilateral meeting with Putin as a sign of progress toward peace. But even this backing down would still mean he has left his indelible imprint on the war – that, in the words of former US Secretary of State Colin Powell regarding Iraq, if the United States breaks it, they own it.
Trump cannot have it both ways. It is in his nature to seek to be the fulcrum of all decisions, and the lightning rod of attention, on any given issue. Every turning point so far has been based around his personal choice and fancy. And with this comes a key lesson of the American presidency.
Trump does not get to choose which problems are his, and which he can ignore. MAGA's America First platform may be about reducing Washington's global footprint, but it doesn't permit Trump to own solely his successes – and not his failures. Unless Trump reduces the footprint of American power globally to zero – incompatible with a presidential personality compelled to 'do' and agitate – there will always be some problems that are America's.
He says he wants wars to stop. But that is not enough in itself. The wars have not all complied.
Former US President Barack Obama inherited wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He ducked fast out of the former, and doubled down with a surge in the latter, which did not work. Afghanistan became Obama's war, even though it was a mess he had inherited. Trump in turn was passed that mess, and he handed his quick fix to Biden to execute, in the chaotic collapse of August 2021, widely paraded by Republicans as a Democrat failing.
Trump faces the same problem of inheriting a crisis. He cannot wish or cajole the conflict to an end. The very battlefield deaths he mourns have sewn damage and grief afar, turning this into an existential war of survival for the Kremlin, and for the soul of Ukrainian society.
Ukrainians want to live in peace, without nightly air raid sirens. Putin does not want peace, and instead his most recent maximalist demands amount to something tantamount to Ukrainian surrender.
Ultimately, it is reflection of a harsh reality that this should be seen as Trump's war. It is the defining conflict of his presidency and of the post-9/11 era. Its outcome defines European security and Chinese belligerence over the next decade. China understands that and needs Russia to win. Europe understands that, and is arming itself so Russia does not see opportunity in the bloc's weakness. Whether Trump understands this and accepts discomforting, strident decisions with the consequences that follow, we will learn in the week ahead.
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