“What kind of diplomacy, J.D., [are you] speaking about?”
That was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky interrupting the question-and-answer portion of a Feb. 28 Oval Office meeting with President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other senior officials that was to precede Zelensky signing a rare earth minerals agreement with the U.S. as Zelensky rejected any peace talks with Russia.
In perhaps one of the oddest head of state visits to the White House in recent memory — Zelensky was questioning aloud what kind of diplomacy there was to be had in the middle of a diplomatic meeting to which he was a party to an international agreement that was about to be signed — everyone in the world was clearly under the impression that Zelensky was there to sign the minerals deal, which Trump believes will help the U.S. have more of a future, long-term interest in the peace and stability of the country and create more of a deterrent against Russian aggression if the U.S. is more invested in the country’s critical resources with people on the ground.
By all accounts, although the text of the deal has not been made public, it included no language of a ceasefire or anything else. Nothing on the present or future borders of Ukraine. Just a “let’s do business” between the U.S. and Ukraine on rare earth minerals. Certainly, there was no military guarantee, that much we can glean from public statements.
Zelensky was responding to Vice President Vance’s statement to the press emphasizing the importance of U.S. leadership and diplomacy, where Vance said, “for four years in the United States of America, we had a president who stood up at press conferences and talked tough about Vladimir Putin and then Putin invaded Ukraine and destroyed a significant chunk of the country. The path to peace and the path to prosperity is maybe engaging in diplomacy. We tried the pathway of Joe Biden, of thumping our chest and pretending that the President of the United States’ words mattered more than the President of the United States’s actions.”
Vance added, “What makes America a good country is America engaging in diplomacy. That’s what President Trump is doing,” which touched off the tense exchange as Zelensky outlined reasons he thought there was no reason whatsoever to speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin, citing previous ceasefires that were broken, prisoner exchanges not fully carried out and of course the 2022 invasion by Russia.
Except none of that was at stake with rare earth minerals economic deal that was about to be signed, which was just the first stage of Trump’s peace initiative by creating a new U.S. interest in developing Ukraine. All of the details Zelensky sought are (or were) still to be negotiated, if they can even be negotiated.
Now, whether Trump’s proposed rare earth minerals deal would actually create a deterrent against Russia is prospective — since the deal wasn’t signed we may never know. But if Zelensky had no intention of signing or even negotiating without his long-sought preconditional induction into NATO — i.e. the security guarantee he seeks or its equivalent that Trump has already refused (Biden refused it too) — or if believes there can be no peace so long as Putin is President of Russia (it’s likely Zelensky still seeks regime change as an endgame), then he shouldn’t have agreed to go to Washington, D.C. to sign the deal.
If anything, Zelensky should have just signed the deal when he met with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant or Secretary of State Rubio and Vice President Vance in Europe recently, but refused, so in hindsight, it is unsurprising that the meeting was instead used to grandstand and continue to insist on new terms for the agreement publicly that had never been negotiated.
Zelensky’s long term goal is to cement a military alliance with NATO and the U.S., which he believes will stop the fighting because he thinks Russia would never attack NATO.
Simultaneously, Zelensky argued that NATO is next, that if Ukraine isn’t protected, then NATO is no protection for the U.S. or Europe against the onslaught of Russia. We’ll “feel” it soon, he promised, stating, “You have nice ocean and don’t feel [it]now but you will feel it in the future.”
Which is it? Does NATO expansion make the U.S. safer, or does it just create more trip wires for war?
President Trump for his part, campaigning in 2016 and again in 2024 against the idea, affirmed his position, telling Zelensky directly, “You’re not in a good position. You don’t have the cards. Right now, with us, you start having cards… You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people. You’re gambling with World War III.”
Here, Trump has a point to make. Trump has long taken the position that Ukraine in NATO, especially with Russia in active hostilities with Ukraine, would automatically trigger the treaty and pit NATO against Russia in a direct conflict that presumably goes nuclear within minutes — a fate we have managed to avoid for about 70 years or so.
So, maybe what was and is really dangerous was starting NATO accession for Ukraine in 2008, seeing to the overthrow of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 to get an EU trade deal signed — former President Joe Biden bragged about it in his 2017 book — that catalyzed Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the eastern provinces.
In the process, the onset of war made Ukraine the single most important aspect of our politics, including staging Russiagate and later the Ukraine impeachment when Trump considered removing arms from Ukraine, all to insure that Trump would not have leverage to act in the region in his first term.
In hindsight, Ukraine’s induction into NATO is nowhere closer and accelerating the 2012 trade deal’s approval, finalized in March 2014 after Yanukovych was overthrown, was counterproductive. All proponents perhaps had to do was wait a few years for another Ukrainian election and eventually they might have gotten what they wanted. Who knows?
In any event, the question of the Ukraine war is clearly that of NATO expansion. Putin said so in his Feb. 22, 2022 speech two days prior to the full invasion: “Ukraine joining NATO is a direct threat to Russia’s security.”
So, does NATO expansion make wars more or less likely? Zelensky says they become less likely, and Putin in 2022 said more likely and sought to prove it by invading.
It seems like math. The more members of a trip-wire attack on one is an attack on all military alliance there are, and the more precarious their security, the more likely the alliance is to be tested. Why tempt fate in this manner?
Minimally, if Ukraine wants to continue to receive military aid it appears Zelensky needs some deal with the U.S. But does Zelensky want to do business? Zelensky was questioning Vance directly of what kind of diplomacy Vance is referring to in the peace process, implicating that there could be no diplomacy. No peace process. Not ever. Certainly that was disrespectful, as Trump and Vance told Zelensky, but it also undermined the purpose of the mineral deal and the meeting itself.
Now, following the meeting, Zelensky is once again inviting Europe to come and fight his war for him if we won’t do it, as he gathered with European leaders in London for a conference on March 2, with United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer demanding “boots on the ground” as a part of any peace deal. That is, if Zelensky cannot get the measured escalation that Biden was providing, then he might be willing to risk everything to provoke uncontrolled escalation, hoping that the U.S. will still be forced to save his country in the end.
Here, Europe seems to be stating that in order for any peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia to be credible, there would need to be deterrent force on the ground in the aftermath. So the thinking goes, South Korea has a U.S. deterrent force stationed there, and there’s still a South Korea. Whereas, following the Vietnam War, there was no deterrent force in South Vietnam, and after 1975 there was no more South Vietnam. Similarly, in Afghanistan in 2021, Biden withdrew U.S. forces entirely including from Bagram air base, and the U.S.-backed government in Kabul fell within days.
On one hand, this could show progress for the Trump-initiated process, where there is a willingness on the part of the Europeans to participate, given certain conditions. On the other, if Russia says the war started because of the process of bringing Ukraine into NATO, would Moscow accept an outcome where instead NATO was brought into Ukraine? Maybe not. Alternatively, there might still be a peacekeeping mission from non-aligned countries in demilitarized areas, but this is all speculative.
Clearly, the Europeans want to know: Will this look like the fall of South Vietnam or Afghanistan, or more like the armistice in Korea? Ukraine might want to negotiate while there’s still something to negotiate. It could be a dangerous fantasy that the war would end with the prior borders restored or Putin out of power. If South Korea or West Germany were good enough, then West Ukraine might have to be good enough. Half a loaf is better than no loaf at all. If Zelensky maintains an all or nothing posture, he could risk losing it all.
The Korean War ended in 1953 without surrender but with an armistice, signed by the U.S., China and North Korea. South Korea refused to sign it having failed to “win” the war and reclaim all of its lost territory, but it was still in everyone’s best interests that it occur. It was imposed on South Korea.
Similarly, although ultimately signed by South Vietnam, the 1973 Paris Peace Accords were negotiated bilaterally and secretly by the U.S. and North Vietnam. At the end of the day, South Vietnam was handed the agreement it had no role in negotiating. It complained loudly, but ultimately signed it. But it wasn’t necessary they sign it. Nixon was pulling the U.S. out of Vietnam either way as he had promised in 1968.
Now, maybe that wasn’t a great deal for South Vietnam. And maybe Ukraine hopes to get a better deal. Apparently, their choices are to work through the U.S. or to take their chances. If Zelensky doesn’t want to negotiate, that might be just fine, as it was in Korea and Vietnam.
The 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty (now withdrawn), negotiated by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, although it deeply impacted Europe as it took all the intermediate missiles off the continent, was not negotiated directly with Europe. Same with the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) and later New START with Russia in 2010, but also the 1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) and Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (also withdrawn), the latter of which banned the development of missile defense systems in Europe.
Certainly, the U.S. consulted with allies who were all deeply impacted by these agreements and some of those who were undoubtedly upset (as South Korea was) but at the end of the day, the U.S. has always made the call when it came to these détente policies.
Meaning, even if the Ukraine war is settled with direct talks with Moscow, the U.S. leverage remains continued U.S. military support of Ukraine, and the subject of talks appears to be negotiating a ceasefire.
Without U.S. targeting satellites and more missiles, can Ukraine keep up the current fight? For three years, the American people have been told by the U.S. administration, Congress and Zelensky that without this critical support, Ukraine would be unable to continue fighting. I believe them.
If that is the case, Trump and Rubio can just negotiate with Russia directly, with the U.S. in a position to direct the ceasefire from the western side by discontinuing the military support in exchange for a cessation of hostilities from the east. Then, the shooting stops. Similarly, the U.S. is under no obligation to later allow the Europeans to use those same satellite targeting systems in Ukraine as a proxy in lieu of our direct support, if the threat of Europe’s “boots on the ground” were to later come into play.
The President has said his goal is to stop the war, end the killing, prevent further escalation and to deescalate and begin to normalize East-West relations. At best, that might still look like the tense standoff that stood in Germany for more than 40 years. So, it’s not as simple as, say, just pull out U.S. assets and let God sort it out. Leaving Europe to its own devices — again, they’re already saying to put “boots on the ground” — has been a boomerang with an ever-increasing body count of tens of millions of people. Power abhors a vacuum.
Indeed, that is why NATO (and the United Nations for that matter) were established in the first place after World War II. Nuclear weapons make the situation all the more dangerous.
If Zelensky doesn’t want a seat at the table, that’s fine, but he also doesn’t get to command the continuation of that support let alone lecture the President and Vice President in the White House, and the U.S. is under no obligation to include them in any future discussions if Kiev has no intention of being helpful. And
NATO does not function without U.S. support. The idea behind the alliance was to protect Europe from the Soviet Union by providing a U.S. deterrent. The idea was not to provide Europe with a tripwire means of dragging the U.S. into an unwanted war, or a license to engage in offensive wars without U.S. assent.
Really, not too much has changed since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis about the danger we’re all in. People discuss a world war like it’s ancient history, could never happen, not risky, etc. But really it’s every minute of every day in the nuclear age.
To discount the possibility is foolish when the U.S. ally is telling the President directly what the global implications of the war are. Zelensky says the war will go global. “You will feel it” he says. Soon. Maybe we should listen to him.
During the Cold War, Poland and other Soviet satellites lived under Soviet aggression and occupation for decades without any imperative to expand NATO to those countries or to start World War III to take back the lands that were conquered by the communists. Heck, World War II started to liberate Poland from the Germans only to let the Russians have it in the end.
In fact, the moral imperative since 1962, and articulated by every single president since 1946 has been to avoid and prevent nuclear war with Russia no matter how evil and wicked communism were because such a war itself was (and remains) an existential threat not just to the U.S. but to all of humanity. Mutually assured destruction has been the standing reality since the 1950s. This imperative was perhaps best stated by Ronald Reagan when he suggested that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. Every president has agreed such a war cannot be won.
And so, we are generationally called upon to never start that war including through all possible means of diplomacy — the diplomacy Vance spoke of — again, no matter how much the other party violates human rights, imprisons and murders political opponents, invades its satellites or seizes private property. None of those were ever deemed worth everyone dying over.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved by Kennedy and Khruschev with the first ever strategic arms reductions: we pulled missiles out of Turkey, they pulled theirs out of Cuba. There were no demands they or the Cubans cease being communist, the Russians empty their gulags or stop threatening their neighbors. Just end the nuclear standoff. At that moment, very little else mattered, and set the stage for future arms talks that clearly enhanced national security.
During the Bill Clinton administration, NATO was expanded into the former Soviet satellites but not Ukraine, which had a separate deal in 1993 to denuclearize it, with presumed neutrality all the way until 2008 when George W. Bush opened the door for the beginning of Ukraine’s accession process into NATO.
During the 2000s, the arms agreements also began fraying, with Bush pulling out of ABM and Trump later withdrawing from INF. Only START and New START remain from that old order. Arguably, we had better relations with the Soviets than we do with present day Russia.
Was the Cold War about defeating communism? Or our own human inclinations to destroy one another? It wasn’t until the nuclear era where further international arrangements were made absolutely necessary to contain the greater powers from directly engaging one another militarily — an informal but also rather unprecedented arrangement — which apparently humanity may only ever get one chance to mess up.
Nobody wants to live under foreign occupation ideally, but reality continues to differ with our best aspirations for a world where billions of people can live in liberty and peace.
Unfortunately, avoiding the larger war is still the greater imperative. Sometimes that has meant placing U.S. soldiers in harm’s way, as in West Germany or South Korea. And sometimes, it has meant not doing so, like rescuing Poland during the Soviet era, which we never did. And sometimes, like in 1962, it has required urgent diplomacy to come back from the brink when a little war almost became the last war.
What sort of diplomacy, Mr. Zelensky? The sort of diplomacy that might be the only reason we’re all still alive today.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
