The Ukraine war strategy Trump should embrace

Whatever one thinks of current U.S. strategy for the Ukraine war — and I tend to think it has been fairly good — President-elect Donald Trump will need a new one.

It would be natural for any new administration to conduct a strategic review, in its early months, of a topic that is so central to American security. In this case, the timing will be propitious, for 2025 is just about when current American strategy towards the war will likely reach its expiration date. Trump’s instincts to try to end this war as soon as possible are reasonable, but he will need a strategy to back up those instincts.

The Biden administration’s strategy, for almost three years now, has been to help Ukraine “as long as it takes.” (For a recent reflection on the strategy, see Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s speech in Kiev that was turned into a Foreign Affairs article.) Trump’s reported choice for national security advisor, Rep. Michael Waltz, has rightly criticized such a blank-check approach as more slogan than strategy.

Biden and his team — along with NATO allies, Japan, South Korea and other friends of Ukraine — deserve considerable credit for helping Ukraine fend off Russia’s initial attempt to seize much of the country and depose the Zelensky government. But the past two years’ fighting has trended somewhere between stalemate and modest Russian advantage, and weapons like F-16s, Abrams tanks and ATACMS missiles have done little to change the momentum. With Ukraine’s cities again bracing for a cold, dark winter under Russian bombardment, it is time to begin thinking about second-best approaches.

Trump has claimed that he could negotiate an end to this terrible war in 24 hours. Even allowing for the usual Trump hyperbole, this is unrealistic. Most importantly, Trump fails to acknowledge that Putin, having already “annexed” much more Ukrainian land than he currently holds, is unlikely to stop fighting just because a friendly American president asked him to. Trump will need more leverage on both sides in the war, and a time-phased strategy for how to use that leverage.

A new U.S. and NATO strategy for the war — to be discussed rather than imposed on Ukraine, but also unapologetically based on American interests in this conflict — should probably give Ukraine one last good chance to liberate stolen and occupied territory in 2025. Ukraine made some progress in its 2022 counteroffensives, but far less so in 2023 or 2024. It has been arming up and gearing up for another try; there is perhaps a small chance it could succeed with a different approach this time.

But after that attempted Ukrainian counteroffensive, even if Russia still holds 15 to 20 percent of pre-2014 Ukraine as it does today, the U.S. should move to an emphasis on ending the fighting and establishing a stable peace. These are America’s only core interests in this conflict. Ukraine could maintain its political claims on the Russian-occupied territories, but would agree not to pursue their liberation on the battlefield. Russia would agree to end the aggression and recognize that, because no one can trust it going forward, there will need to be strong international mechanisms to undergird Ukraine’s long-term security.

American strategy should aim to help end the fighting by the end of 2025 and include the following key elements:

First, unless it somehow achieves big success in a counteroffensive in early 2025, a different and more limited U.S. and NATO weapons assistance program for Ukraine should begin, emphasizing defensive arms. That new program should be open-ended, since no one can predict if and when Russia will stop its aggression. So should continued economic support for Kiev from Europe, Japan and to a lesser extent the U.S.

Second, tougher economic punishment against Russia that give it greater incentives to negotiate an end to the war quickly. Notably, by late 2025, Western countries might start tapping a quarter to half of Russia’s $300 billion in frozen assets per year, until a verifiable peace is reached, at which point Moscow would regain the remaining balance of its assets.

Third, a declared Western willingness to lift most other economic sanctions on Russia, over time, if it will agree to and respect a genuine peace.

Fourth, a willingness to consider other means, besides NATO membership, for ensuring Ukraine’s long-term security as a way to make a deal more palatable to Moscow. Georgetown professor Lise Howard and I have written of a concept that would deploy uniformed American and other foreign military trainers to Ukraine for years to come as a form of robust tripwire, as one example. To pressure Moscow to acquiesce, this offer might be time-limited; NATO could state its intention to offer membership to Ukraine if Russia refused to make a deal within a year from the start of negotiations.

Even this kind of more realistic strategy can hardly guarantee an end to the war, of course. Only Russia and Ukraine can make that choice. But this approach would allow the U.S. to stand by its principles, ensure its core strategic interests in eastern Europe, contain the risks of escalation and maximize the odds of a relatively rapid and durable end to the conflict.

Michael O’Hanlon is the Phil Knight Chair in Defense and Strategy at the Brookings Institution and author of “Military History for the Modern Strategist: America’s Major Wars Since 1861.”