Trump Is Well-Positioned to Shake Up the World Balance of Power

One issue that President Trump has been especially well-positioned to make progress on is ending the war between Ukraine and Russia and improving the U.S. relationship with Russia. The recent agreement to swap prisoners, which brought home Marc Fogel, and planning for a Trump-Putin summit seems to already show that a rapprochement with Russia is in the works.

After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, President Joe Biden understandably didn’t want to acquiesce to that violation of international law; thus, U.S . (and European) relations with Russia plummeted, including the imposition of stringent economic sanctions that have strained the Russian economy but predictably have not caused it to withdraw its forces from Ukraine.

However, Biden made a huge mistake by not trying to better relations with China, thus making it more likely that China would pressure Russia on Ukraine instead of providing technology for the war and buying Russian oil. Also, an attempted rapprochement with China would have avoided what had happened: those two great powers creating an entente of convenience to oppose the United States.

Richard Nixon, the ultimate realist as president, would have turned over in his grave at this development. Despite his corruption at home, the supremely anti-communist Nixon brilliantly capitalized on a falling out between Chinese and Soviet communists by going to China to ease the longstanding hatred between the United States and China. This gambit further drove a wedge between the communist great powers and left the Soviet Union isolated. Nixon thus put pressure on the Soviets to reach the first bilateral agreement limiting strategic nuclear arms and led also to a general detente with the USSR.

Unfortunately, the United States is now faced with opposing the entente between two great powers. Unlike the late 1960s and early 1970s, China is the more powerful of the two nations. The good news is that Trump has a better relationship with Vladimir Putin than Biden did and also a better relationship with Russia than with China.

After three years of the most deadly European confl ict since World War II—with cataclysmic casualties and substantial economic damage to Ukraine and Russia—the time is ripe for a negotiated settlement of the largely stalemated conflict.

With more people, GDP, and thus more staying power, Russia is making some gains on the battlefield but has been so weakened by the war that a significant breakthrough seems unlikely. As a result, European fears that Russia could attack other nearby countries seem far-fetched.

Reports have surfaced that Trump and Putin are signaling that they want talks on ending the war, but that might also cover the broader improvement of U.S.-Russian relations, including resuming negotiations on a treaty limiting strategic nuclear arms that expires in one year. Putin has always wanted to link nuclear arms control with an agreement retaining 20 percent of Ukrainian territory occupied by his forces, keeping Ukraine out of the NATO alliance, and limiting that country’s military power. Biden refused to link nuclear arms control with the Ukraine war, but Trump seems more willing to do so.

If Trump is willing to engage in wider talks—and it would be great to solve all these issues at once—he should not give away too much to get a deal. Putin does have 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory, but with his society and much smaller economy (compared to that of the United States) substantially strained by the war, he needs to avoid a nuclear arms race more than the United States.

Trump and his secretary of defense recently clarified that Ukraine would not be admitted to NATO, that it would not get back territory out to its pre-2014 borders, and that the Europeans, not the Americans, would need to take the lead to sustain Ukraine’s long-term security. All of those outcomes would force Ukraine to accept complex realities, but it may not have been the best strategy to announce those positions ahead of any negotiations with Russia. This mild negotiating strategy vis-à-vis Russia is in marked contrast to Trump’s maximalist opening positions on tariffs with friendly countries.

Yet, it would be to the United States’ advantage to agree to Ukraine’s neutrality because admitting it into NATO would require the United States to come to Ukraine’s defense in any future war, where Russia would likely have local superiority and much shorter supply lines. Also, if Ukraine were to adopt a neutral status, it would certainly feel the need for armed neutrality—not constrained by any agreement to limit the size or capabilities of its military—to deter any future Russian aggression.

The United States should not let Vladimir Putin pretend that the U.S. needs arms control more than he does and should try to negotiate a trade of strategic arms control to get back at least some of Ukraine’s territory.

Ukraine would probably not be satisfied with this outcome, but joining NATO might provide only a false sense of security, motivating Ukraine to slack off on military spending, as many NATO allies have done.

After the end of the Cold War, under the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in ex change for security assurances from Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom. How did that turn out?

Given that tragic history, how could Ukraine, if it joined NATO, be sure that if Russia attacked or invaded again, the United States would risk nuclear annihilation from Russia to defend it in any future war. With the possible addition of a new or extended nuclear arms agreement, the bloody and fruitless Ukraine-Russia war needs to end with a peace that allows unlimited Ukrainian armament and regaining as much Ukrainian territory as negotiations permit. Most important, better relations with Russia will drive a wedge into its entente with the more powerful China.