Trump Is Serious About Ukraine

The president-elect’s new pick for Ukraine envoy has a plan to end the war

Trump with retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg (right)

Donald Trump has nominated retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg to be special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, in charge of carrying out the president-elect’s campaign promise to end the war. Trump’s decision to assign the role to Kellogg, a particularly trusted advisor who has been an outspoken advocate for negotiating a peace agreement, is the clearest sign yet that his campaign rhetoric about ending the war wasn’t just talk. 

But will it work? Is Kellogg the man for the job? He is definitely on the same page as Trump. And as a former chief of staff of the National Security Council and a high-level military commander, he understands bureaucracy and the challenges in Washington. But he has no experience personally dealing with Putin, Zelenskyy or the other parties. So what we can expect is a faithful carrying out of Trump’s wishes, but also an envoy who is a follower and not a leader.

For Trump, there are three major factors: the president-elect’s ego, that only he can negotiate a peace; Trump’s focus on money, that open ended aid to Ukraine is a bad deal for America; and Trump’s resentful European outlook, that a bunch of free-loading nations are not shouldering enough responsibility for their own security.

What’s unique about Kellogg in a stable of national security picks who oppose open-ended support for Ukraine is the retired general’s willingness to get into specifics about how he’d like to see an end to the war. Kellogg co-authored a report for the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank, that provides the most detailed plan I’ve seen from any Trump nominee for how to draw the conflict to a close.

Most important, Kellogg articulates that the war has run its course, and that Washington’s commitment to what has turned into a World War I-like trench war is more about making Washington feel good than finding a diplomatic solution to end the fighting.

“Sending weapons to an endless stalemate,” Kellogg’s report says, “is expensive virtue signaling and not a constructive policy to promote peace and global stability.” 

Trump’s pick as National Security Advisor Mike Waltz agrees, calling President Biden’s vow to back Ukraine “for as long as it takes … a slogan, not a strategy.” 

Kellogg in his paper proposes a “formal U.S. policy to bring the war to a conclusion.” In short, he proposes:

• That the U.S. condition further aid to Ukraine on its willingness to negotiate with Russia;

• That Ukraine and Russia establish a ceasefire and enter into diplomatic talks; 

• That Ukraine show a willingness to sacrifice some territory in exchange for peace;

• That Ukraine agrees to table NATO membership indefinitely and accept a U.S. security agreement, including arms assistance, instead; and

• That Russia pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction through future energy levies.

Kellogg says that Ukraine will have to cede some of its territory to Russia, arguing that this will likely be difficult for Ukrainians to accept but nonetheless necessary. Per the report:

“The Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian people will have trouble accepting a negotiated peace that does not give them back all of their territory or, at least for now, hold Russia responsible for the carnage it inflicted on Ukraine. Their supporters will also. But as Donald Trump said at the CNN town hall in 2023, ‘I want everyone to stop dying.’ That’s our view, too.”

At the time that Kellogg’s report was published, in April, this kind of proposal seemed inconceivable. But since Trump’s election victory, the national security establishment has itself been pre-negotiating, seeing the writing on the wall and thus jumping on the moving train of ending the war. Retired Admiral James Stavridis, who served as NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe under the Obama administration, provides a pretty stunning illustration of this. On November 9, just four days after the election, when asked about Trump’s campaign pledge to end the Ukraine war on day one, Stavridis told CNN: “Well, if he can end that one in 24 hours, I’ll be the first one voting for his Nobel Peace Prize.”

This guy was in charge of NATO! If it sounds like he’s joking, Stavridis goes on to say that “in a real world,” Ukraine will have to give up roughly 20 percent of its territory that Russia currently occupies — calling this “not the worst outcome in the world”(!)

I’m not saying Stavridis is wrong but the thought of the former Supreme Commander of NATO saying this even just a week prior was inconceivable. It’s sort of surreal today.

Here’s Stavridis full remarks:

“What I hope he does and I think he will … is put pressure on both sides to get to the negotiating table …. Putin unfortunately but in a real world will end up with about 20 percent of Ukraine, the chunk that he currently holds, but the rest of ukraine the 80 percent all those resources vast majority of the population they stay democratic, free, path to NATO probably 3-5 years realistically, it’s not the worst outcome in the world and I think that’s how it probably ends, and if President Trump can put pressure on both sides, more power to him.”

It might seem in the Kellogg-Waltz-Starvidis orbit that they all expect that enough pressure can be put on Zelenskyy by Trump to accept less than ideal terms, with Russia withdrawing to pre-February 2022 borders. Russia thus ends up with Donbass and Crimea, which seems unlikely as a final answer to Kyiv. But as a negotiating position to stop the fighting? Perhaps.

Everything, of course, depends on what Donald Trump wants, what he sees as a good deal for America, which likely will clash with Kellogg’s prescription of stopping additional aid for Ukraine into the future. And don’t forget Trump’s other goal — getting NATO to pull more of its own weight, meaning providing a preponderance of the aid to Ukraine and a European peacekeeping army. That introduces a fourth negotiator into the mix.

Kellogg was Trump’s national security advisor in his first campaign for president in 2016 and he subsequently soldiered on at the White House in various deputy roles. Trump’s former National Security Advisor (Army general) H.R. McMaster calls Kellogg’s personality in the first term as one of “resentment and malice.” 

Now Kellogg has again been passed over as national security advisor, but as a negotiator of an end to a major war, his stature has been elevated. There’s not complete synchronicity between the two because Trump is hardly fixated on the geopolitical and strategic outcome.

“Sometimes you have to look at what we call in America the long game. And that is security guarantees, financial support and military support,” Kellogg told Voice of America in a July interview. It isn’t clear that Trump will agree to be Ukraine’s guarantor, Washington’s preference but maybe not something that “America First” Trump has in mind.

And then there’s Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin, which may or may not influence the outcome. But either way, this beats Biden’s “plan,” which was to fight forever to the last Ukrainian life and the last American dollar.

— Edited by William M. Arkin