Merlin Weekly Macro: Ukraine and the great game of geopolitical poker

“He’s gonna have to get on the ball and start accepting things, coz he’s losing”. Donald Trump’s blunt assessment of President Zelensky’s bleak prospects. There is a chilling pragmatism in Trump’s statement. But those fifteen words should be sending cold shivers down the spine of the free world, not just Ukrainians. They define a level of moral partisanship from Donald Trump personally and a national geostrategic delinquency on the part of the United States.

Partisanship; delinquency. 

Strong words. But harsh or unfair? Not at all (he himself pulled no linguistic punches in his excoriating critique of Europe in his new “National Security Strategy”).

There is no reason to doubt Trump’s sincerity in his humanitarian desire to see an end to the killing, the suffering and destruction in the region. If his vision is driven by a vanity that demands a Nobel Peace Prize, so be it: he would not be the first of his ilk to aspire to basking in the reflected glory of public recognition and adulation, in this case with a gold medal to go with it (and not the one awarded to him by FIFA, that well-known guardian of world peace). But Trump’s actions and his negotiating style combine those of the hard-headed businessman with, in his view, being the impatient purveyor of reality and hard truths to bring both recognition of, and closure to, a losing Ukrainian cause. With $135 billion either spent or committed to Ukraine so far from the US, he is keen also to get the American taxpayer off the hook.

His 28-point peace plan initiated a month ago and now being batted back and forth with amendments had all the hallmarks of a bilateral stitch-up between the US and Russia imposing unpalatable conditions on Ukraine. That’s bad enough. If only his partisanship in the form of appeasing Putin and his public harrying of Zelensky were his most besetting sin. But it is his driving a coach and horses through the legal obligations that he inherited with it that raise the greatest concerns.

A guarantor, not a biased broker 

Trump is most certainly not stupid. Everything is seen through his own lens; all his actions are calculated to provoke a reaction or to produce the direct result he wants. The exception seems to be with Putin by whom he remains bewitched, bemused and bewildered. Therefore it can only be that he wilfully ignores the duty imposed on him personally in the office of President, as the embodiment of the United States, to meet the country’s obligations under international treaty. In this case, it is the legal obligation of the United States (as it remains also the same responsibility explicitly agreed to by Russia and the United Kingdom) to guarantee Ukrainian sovereignty as defined by Ukraine’s borders in 1994, not as any party finds them today, and to give assurances of its national security. These were the quid pro quo terms of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum signed when Ukraine surrendered its nuclear arsenal at the end of the Cold War.

Trump can argue factually that his predecessors were the problem: President Obama did nothing when Putin annexed the Crimea in 2014; in early 2022, immediately before the full invasion, President Biden effectively gave the green light to Putin when he made the astonishing comment that a “limited Russian incursion would be acceptable”. Trump might claim that he is dealing with the position as he finds it, he is picking up the pieces and that history cannot be re-written, though his appeasing of Putin in his own first term would undermine that argument.

But where Trump opens himself up to those charges of moral partisanship is that despite being invested with the explicit role of guarantor of Ukrainian sovereignty, he has shown himself to favour the interests of the Kremlin. Russia was the aggressor; its invasion was illegal. Ukraine is the aggrieved and injured party. Trump cannot even claim to be even-handed. With Putin refusing to negotiate on anything but his own terms, Trump’s cease-fire proposals are predicated on the partition of Ukraine: Kyiv must acknowledge reality (“get on the ball”) and concede the territories it has already lost. But Putin wants more. With Trump’s connivance Putin is literally pushing the boundaries, expressly insisting that Ukraine either hands over territory in the Donbas, or cedes control over it, including land that has not even been captured by the Russians. Zelensky says even as President, he has no authority to agree to such terms; they can only be agreed via a national referendum or a general election leading to constitutional change.

Deliberate conflict of interest

Further, Trump has a history of conflating circumstances that advance the national self-interests of the United States. He wants the US to profit from the peace process. This is Trump’s opportunism that in return for some form of future security assurance (for which the details are still very obscure, even more so than in the original 1994 Memorandum whose ambiguity helped create this God-awful mess in the first place), that assistance will be conditional upon the US being granted mining rights extending across a large area of south-east Ukraine which would provide the rare earth ores and minerals of which America is otherwise strategically deficient. Trump would maintain that such an economic benefit helps offset the financial cost of 4 years’ support to the Ukrainian war effort; Kyiv and others will insist that having agreed to its nuclear weapons being surrendered, nowhere in the Memorandum does it say that not only must Ukraine be broken up but that it would be required to impoverish itself in the event of Russian aggression by paying reparations to the US.

Diminished defences

Further Russian conditions about the future size of the Ukrainian armed forces (being reduced by almost a half), Ukraine being prohibited from membership of NATO, not being able to host any foreign NATO military (e.g. members of the Coalition of the Willing) on its territory, are all still variously outstanding or are red lines for Putin.

Compulsory elections

Trump is also insisting on the resumption of Ukrainian parliamentary and presidential elections (forbidden under the Ukrainian constitution when the country has martial law, Zelensky is prepared to change the constitution to allow them), despite many people being bombed out of their devastated homes and thus with no permanent address, and millions still being abroad who fled the invasion. Are they now disenfranchised? How is a mechanism put in place that ensures a secure, complete and fair vote, free both from internal corruption and external interference by Russia or any of its bad actor allies, proxies and affiliates?

Given Zelensky’s falling domestic popularity rating thanks to his inability to control internal corruption among his senior ministers and officials, his political duration appears less than secure. Zelensky is a likely casualty in a way that Putin will not be; that suits Putin perfectly. Trump seemingly concurs. 

Threats, timelines and turkeys

Finally, as he always does when negotiations are being frustrated, Trump has stamped another final deadline on proceedings: the original 28-point plan deadline was US Thanksgiving; that came and went. Now, Zelensky must accept amended terms by Christmas or else Trump will walk away. The implicit threat is that all US military, financial and intelligence support goes with him. There is a game of bluff here: if Trump walks, he will have publicly failed to do what he said: to bring about peace in Eastern Europe. Further, he will be accused of making Ukraine’s enforced surrender and subjugation a self-fulfilling prophesy, as well as endangering the security of Europe. What price a Nobel Peace Prize? 

Moral hazard: The Spy Who Might Come in from the Cold 

Presenting Trump’s European allies with a major moral dilemma is another of Trump’s inducements to Putin (or is it Putin’s condition with Trump’s agreement?): that coming back from a diplomatic Siberia, the G8 economic group of leading nations would be restored from the current G7 with Russia’s readmission. But Putin has been indicted by the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity and the abduction of children. He has an international arrest warrant against him. Apart from Trump, what do the other G6 leaders do about Putin? Arrest him? Ignore him? Sit next to him? Shake hands with him? Dine with him? Stand in the photo shoot with him? Negotiate on equal terms with him? The propaganda opportunities for Putin at home are enormous. The political optics in European, Japanese and Canadian capitals as their heads of government treat submissively with a pariah, are awful.

Delinquency and the Strategic Deficit

And herein lies the geostrategic delinquency of Trump’s strategy. While the Russo-Ukrainian negotiations are incomplete and the shuttle diplomacy remains dynamic, as currently presented it is difficult to escape the conclusion that were an agreement reached on today’s terms, Putin’s actions would have not only been successful but would have been legitimised by America. This is pure folly.

Putin might have failed to conquer Ukraine but he would have caused it to be reduced, humbled and neutered; he would have partitioned it and would walk away with a quarter of its land mass as his own. He personally and Russia nationally would be restored to the world order and see sanctions against them lifted. All of this would be spun by Putin as a considerable victory for the Russian people. The obverse of the same coin is that with all its financial and military firepower, NATO was unable to prevail because it lacked the political will and cohesion to do so.

The global security consequences arising from Russia potentially being not only let off the hook but empowered cannot be under-estimated. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte concurs. He joins a growing list of senior NATO military officers and the German defence minister about the increasing likelihood of war with Russia within the foreseeable future.

In appeasing Russia, much as Chamberlain and French PM Daladier did in Munich with Hitler and Nazi Germany in 1938 over the Czech Sudetenland, peace-seeking Trump would in fact be raising the security stakes. In that context he himself is a threat to world peace. In this great game of geopolitical poker playing out in Ukraine, Trump the croupier has an identity crisis and thinks he’s a player; Zelensky is almost out of counters and is nearly bust; Europe has had to pool its small stash of chips but is still learning the rules and can never decide who’s calling and how much to bet; Putin is inscrutable and is holding most of the cards; the house is worried. Stick or twist? 

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