Trump fails the history test on Ukraine. Time for a second draft

3 months ago 16

Opinion

November 24, 2025 — 11.29am

History classes are often full of students learning about how wars begin. Only some of them teach lessons about how wars end. Now, as Ukraine weighs up an ugly peace deal with Russia, that second field of study is more important than ever. And none of the lessons are easy.

The peace terms issued to Ukraine are monstrous, of course. The 28 points overseen by US President Donald Trump hand most of the gains to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. If the draft terms were to be made final, they would represent an American betrayal of its European friends in favour of their enemy.

Trump’s willingness to capitulate is appalling but not surprising after this jarring year of his second term. (Yes, it feels longer than 10 months.) The world, including Australia, can see that America is an unreliable ally – and that Ukraine is in an invidious position. It cannot trust Trump, it cannot trust Putin, but it cannot dismiss a chance for peace.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky might hope for a return to the ideals of honour and strength in Washington, but that means waiting for the presidential election in November 2028. Even then, he cannot be sure who will rule. He has to work with the weak, erratic and amoral occupant of the White House. And with the assassin in the Kremlin.

”A peace deal requires agreements, and you don’t make agreements with your friends, you make agreements with your enemies,” said Richard Holbrooke, a US diplomat who helped negotiate a peace in the Balkans in the 1990s. Variations of that remark are attributed to leaders as diverse as South African archbishop Desmond Tutu and former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. Because, of course, it is true.

So how should leaders end their wars? An American strategist, Fred Iklé, posed this question almost six decades ago and his research is still useful today. Looking into the files of the German military from World War I, for instance, he found that catastrophic decisions were made on false assumptions, flawed calculations or claims about glory.

The peace terms issued to Volodmyr Zelensky are monstrous. Overseen by Donald Trump, most of the gains are handed to Vladimir Putin.

“If the decision to end a war were simply to spring from a rational calculation about gains and losses for the nation as a whole, it should be no harder to get out of a war than to get into one,” he wrote. His book, All Wars Must End, is a brilliant exposition of this challenge.

One example? Germany tried to win World War I with a dramatic escalation of its naval attacks in February 1917. Where its submarines had once practised “restricted” torpedo strikes to avoid civilian casualties, they now began “unrestricted” warfare. This angered the US, which entered the war that April. The plan for victory through escalation failed.

The history is convincing, now, that all sides continued the fighting without greatly changing the final terms of the peace. The Austro-Hungarians lost an empire. What stands out in Iklé’s account is the capacity for military and political leaders to bring disaster on their nations by wearing the cloak of national honour.

Another lesson? Peace requires pragmatism. Finland brought Russia to a halt in the Winter War of November 1939 by fighting in sub-zero temperatures after Josef Stalin ordered an illegal invasion. Finnish leader Carl Gustaf Mannerheim chose to negotiate a peace deal in March 1940 while he retained bargaining power, even though this meant ceding territory.

Soon enough, after Germany invaded Russia, the Finns were at war with Russia again. The alliance with Germany was temporary, however, and Mannerheim responded wisely to the gains by Russian forces. He agreed to another armistice with Stalin in September 1944.

The terms were unfair: Finland gave up land and paid reparations worth about $9 billion in today’s money, all of it transferred by train in 140,000 carriages over eight years. But Mannerheim is a hero in Finland because he ensured its sovereignty.

Iklé, who rose to senior positions in the Pentagon, was not an advocate for peace at any price. He was an advocate for rational decisions on when to stop fighting. In his words, the goal should be a settlement to bring “greater and more lasting security” than existed before the fighting broke out.

Trump fails on that key test. His 28 points deliver so many gains to Putin that they become a reward for war. The US president says this may not be his final offer, so he is willing to give ground. Even so, issuing the draft plan with a Thursday deadline was a shameful act.

The terms state that Putin gains the Crimea and the Donbas, is freed from foreign sanctions and is restored to the G8. He secures a cap on the size of the Ukrainian army, but not one on his own, and halts any NATO expansion. While the plan includes a vague security guarantee for Ukraine, it lacks a powerful deterrent. It almost invites Putin to see if Trump will blink again.

The great cruelty is that Ukraine does not have enough time to seek a better outcome. Will the terms be any better if it fights for another year, or two, or three? How many would have to die to make that possible?

Russian forces have gained ground in Pokrovsk in the Donbas, according to the Institute for the Study of War. Poland says 99,000 young Ukrainian men aged from 18 to 22 have crossed into its country over the past two months. Close aides to Zelensky are caught up in a corruption scandal. Trump appears to be threatening to withhold weapons if Ukraine does not agree to a deal. Russia is making an incredible number of drones and missiles despite sanctions that were meant to strangle its economy.

Zelensky cannot afford to wait. Ukraine has stopped a brutal Russian takeover and kept its sovereignty, but it needs its allies to maximise pressure on Putin so the peace can be sought on terms that last.

The European response to the Trump plan is crucial because it outlines a peace plan with far greater deterrence aimed at Putin to avoid a future conflict – for instance, by allowing a larger Ukrainian army, positioning foreign troops in Ukraine and mapping out the “gradual” removal of sanctions on Russia so they only end if the peace is secure.

Trump cares little about the long-term fate of Ukraine, but Europe does. And Australia should. Moscow is using hybrid warfare against liberal democracies – for instance, by paying criminals to commit arson, or using cyberattacks, or engaging in foreign interference – and there is no rational case for suddenly halting all the pressure on Putin.

History holds the lessons about how to end wars, as Iklé and others have shown. One of the biggest is that the terms have to ensure security for both sides, so there is a chance for a settlement that holds.

Trump fails the history test with his draft plan. Perhaps he will heed the proposals from Europe. It is not too late for a second draft.

David Crowe is Europe correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald.