A hasty peace deal will see the U.S. forfeit principles and norms built over decades.
Fareed Zakaria
February 21, 2025
Washington Post
At the conclusion of talks with the Russian delegation in Saudi Arabia this week, Michael Waltz, the U.S. national security adviser, noted that “only President Trump” could have shifted the global conversation on how to end the war in Ukraine. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, determined not to be outdone, quickly noted that the first important point he wanted to make was that “the only leader in the world who can make this happen … is President Trump.” Welcome to America’s new North Korea-style diplomacy, where our diplomats are more worried about their boss than their adversary.
It is true that Donald Trump has found a lightning-fast way to end the war in Ukraine: surrender. At least when France fell in 1940, it did so in the wake of a German blitzkrieg that swept through the country. Ukraine has actually held back Russian forces for three years now, and despite fighting a much more powerful adversary, even taken some Russian land.
And yet, the Trump administration has preemptively conceded most key Russian demands before the formal negotiations have even begun. No return of all the Ukrainian territory acquired by force, no NATO membership for Ukraine, no American troops on Ukrainian soil. Oh, and Trump trashed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, calling him a dictator and saying he “better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.” It is no wonder that senior Russian officials, including former president Dmitry Medvedev, appear almost giddy with joy.
What explains Trump’s desire to sell out Ukraine and cozy up to Vladimir Putin? There have been so many theories about Trump and Russia, but I think the real story is about Trump and Zelensky. Trump views almost everything through a personal lens, and his own relationship with Zelensky has been fraught for many years.
In 2016, Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was exposed to have been on the payroll of Ukraine’s former president, Viktor Yanukovych, a pro-Russian politician who fled to safety in Russia in 2014 after national protests against him. Then came the allegations that Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election on Trump’s behalf. As a defense to those charges, some in Trump’s orbit convinced him of a strange conspiracy theory that it was actually Ukrainians pretending to be Russians who were to blame. Trump appeared convinced by this explanation. In fact, so much so that in his infamous telephone call with Zelensky in July 2019, he asked the Ukrainian leader for two favors. First, he wanted “the server” that would show these Ukrainian efforts to interfere in the U.S. elections and frame the Russians. Second, he wanted Zelensky to launch an investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
The key point here is that Zelensky did not give in to Trump’s pressure even though Trump was holding up military aid to Ukraine, apparently as leverage. Essentially, Zelensky called Trump’s bluff. This must have left Trump outraged, a personal affront to a man with a healthy ego.
Trump recently made another ask of Zelensky, a truly bizarre one even by Trump’s standards. He demanded a 50 percent share of Ukraine’s natural resources such as oil, gas, and minerals, in return for U.S. military aid. Zelensky rejected this neocolonial demand but suggested that some arrangement could be part of a discussion that included security guarantees for Ukraine. Still, it was a rejection of a Trump demand. Lev Parnas, the Ukrainian American who worked with Rudy Giuliani to pursue Trump’s agenda in Ukraine, once told Politico: “Trump hates Zelensky with passion. And Zelensky knows it.”
I would guess that, for Trump, Ukraine represents a set of bad memories and Zelensky is a foreign leader who has not gotten with the program: constant flattery and submission to Trump’s demands. The result, alas, goes well beyond the personal. It will result in a truly historic surrender of Western interests and values, built over decades.
The United States has long been at the forefront of efforts to make it illegitimate to acquire territory by force. After World War II, Washington urged that this idea be at the center of the United Nations charter. At the postwar Nuremberg trials, it required that military aggression be deemed a crime. And it actively supported this principle, sending troops to fight North Korean aggression in 1950 and Iraqi aggression in 1991.
The results are noted in “The Internationalists” by Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro. Between 1816 and 1945, there were more than 150 territorial conquests. Since 1945, with the international system of rules and norms the United States helped create, territorial “conquests have almost completely disappeared.” But thanks to Donald Trump’s personal pique, this enduring American achievement is about to be lost.
Fareed Zakaria writes a foreign affairs column for The Washington Post. He is also the host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS. Prior to his current roles, Zakaria was editor of Newsweek International, managing editor of Foreign Affairs, a columnist for Time, an analyst for ABC News and the host of Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria on PBS. He is the author of “Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World” (2020), In Defense of a Liberal Education” (2015), “The Post-American World” (2008) and “The Future of Freedom” (2003). Born in India, Zakaria received a BA from Yale College and a PhD from Harvard University. Education: Yale College, BA; Harvard University, PhD. Honors and Awards: National Magazine Award, 2010; Peabody Award, 2011. Education: School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, LLB Law; Columbia University, MS in Journalism.