Bringing peace to Ukraine has obviously proved more difficult than President Trump imagined when he pledged to end the conflict in a day. Some six months into his term, a settlement seems far from imminent. <\/p>\n
Visibly frustrated, Trump has openly criticized Russian President Putin, revived military support for Ukraine, and threatened to intensify economic pressure on Russia<\/a>. <\/p>\n While many have cheered his toughened approach, Trump\u2019s instinct to find a diplomatic end to the war is still correct. Ukraine cannot generate enough manpower \u2014 and the West cannot produce enough weapons \u2014 for victory in what has become a war of attrition to be realistic. And although Russia cannot conquer and govern all of Ukraine, the war threatens to leave in its wake not only millions of dead and wounded combatants, but an unreconstructed and dysfunctional Ukrainian rump state<\/a> that could radiate instability into the broader region for years to come and dangerously stoke tension between Russia and the West. <\/p>\n Trump\u2019s progress toward peace has stalled, however, largely because his negotiators have insisted on an unconditional ceasefire before settling the key geopolitical issues underlying the war. That insistence has flowed from the time pressure Trump imposed on himself by promising an early end to the fighting. Since a full-fledged peace treaty would necessarily require grappling with difficult technical issues and negotiating a host of painful compromises, the Trump team has viewed a ceasefire as the fastest path to something it can call a success. <\/p>\n But Russia has little interest in an early ceasefire, and it almost certainly views Trump\u2019s threat to impose tariffs on China<\/a>, India, and others that purchase Russian energy as mostly empty. It has every incentive to continue fighting \u2013 its primary source of negotiating leverage \u2013 until it gets assurances that its core interests have been addressed. <\/p>\n What are those interests? For years, Russian officials have insisted that their biggest concerns involve the prospect that Ukraine could join NATO<\/a> or otherwise host Western military forces on its territory. The draft treaties Russia proposed to the United States and NATO prior to the invasion were focused on getting legally binding guarantees precluding such perceived threats. <\/p>\n Nonetheless, Trump\u2019s team has focused more on addressing Russia\u2019s territorial claims<\/a> than it has on offering such security guarantees, treating the conflict more as a dispute over where the Ukrainian border should lie than as a broader geopolitical conflict between Russia and the West. <\/p>\n