by Alexander J. Motyl
April 25, 2025
The Hill
It must hurt to be hoist with one’s own petard. President Trump would know.
Having appropriated the Russo-Ukrainian War with his boastful claim in 2024 that he could settle it in 24 hours, Trump is in the unenviable position of owning it. Biden’s war is now Trump’s war, regardless of the awkwardly expressed, embarrassingly unpersuasive and shamefully mendacious disclaimer he voiced in an interview with Time Magazine. “Well, I said that figuratively, and I said that as an exaggeration, because to make a point, and you know, it gets, of course, by the fake news,” Trump said. “Obviously, people know that when I said that, it was said in jest, but it was also said that it will be ended.”
The timing of Trump’s claim undermines its veracity. After all, why wait for months to say it was all a joke? Why wait until it’s become perfectly evident to everybody, including the White House, that the president and his team of mostly incompetent sycophants clearly have no clue about how to end the three-year conflict? They still blame Ukraine for “starting” the Russian invasion. They still consider Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to be the primary obstacle to peace. They still regard the Kremlin’s bloodthirsty ruler, the illegitimately elected President Vladimir Putin, as a friend and ally.
And they still don’t understand the reasons behind Putin’s decision to embark on a genocidal war on Feb. 24, 2022. Their inability to comprehend the complexity of the war is a function of their ignorance of Russia and Ukraine.
Not surprisingly, the Trump team appears recently to have become exasperated by the unwillingness of reality to bend to their misconceptions. Some have intimated that, should a peace not be achieved quickly, the U.S. will simply walk away.
Unfortunately for Trump and his entourage, walking away from a war you own is the equivalent of cutting and running. It would be a sign of rank cowardice, irresponsibility and lack of credibility. Only a terrified tyro would run from a mess he has already claimed as his own. Only an irresponsible policymaker would raise expectations and exact commitments, only to junk them at the first sign of difficulty. Only an untrustworthy blowhard would beat his chest and boast, then run for the nearest exit.
Since the Ukraine War is Trump’s, he risks losing face both at home and abroad if he fails to deliver. Naturally, he and his team will insist they inherited the war from Biden, that the mess is his and not theirs. And they would have been right — had not Trump said those fateful words about 24 hours. There’s no going back.
Trump’s desire to cut and run matters enormously. For starters, it makes him look like a weak loser with the American public in general and his political support base in particular. Presidents who have a direct line to God should be bold, not timorous.
Worse, the administration is considering whether to cut and run at a time when things aren’t quite going the its way. Defense Secretary Hegseth is embroiled in another Signal scandal. Elon Musk
and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent are at odds. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is clearly playing third fiddle in foreign policy. And to top it all off, Trump’s tariffs have roiled the stock market, wiped out the savings of millions of Americans and made him look wishy-washy. Playing a game of chicken with China is also a losing strategy that will compel Trump, not Xi Jinping, to give in.
The international consequences are just as portentous. Trump has already alienated much of the world and managed to transform a globally connected state into an isolated island that, to quote the comedian Rodney Dangerfield, “gets no respect.” And indeed, why respect, trust or believe a country that seems determined to upend the world with no clear goal in mind? Why trust a leader who is willing to stab his allies in the back and who feels most comfortable with such human rights abusers as the leaders of El Salvador and Russia?
While cutting and running will do great damage to Trump and America, it could prove to be a boon for his twin nemeses, Zelensky and Ukraine. The Ukrainian president is sure to see his ratings rise if he serves as Trump’s scapegoat. And America’s potential departure from the bargaining table would mean that a pro-Putin, anti-Ukrainian “dishonest broker” unwilling to regard Ukraine as a sovereign state with legitimate interests would be out of the picture. If the Europeans were to rise to the occasion and serve as honest brokers, a real peace might actually be possible.
Cutting and running could also inconvenience Putin. Having Trump on his side in the negotiations gave him a two-to-one edge. Were Trump to make good on his willingness to walk away, Putin would lose a pal and be forced to deal with Ukraine and Europe on his own.
Ironically, none of these dire consequences would have materialized if the American president had not been mesmerized by the possibility of a Nobel Peace Prize and said nothing. But saying nothing just isn’t in the cards with Trump.
Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”