Between Populism and Transactionalism: Four questions for the non-existent ‘Trump plan’

The burden of populism or the miracle of transactionalism?

Donald Trump’s campaign promise to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours now looms like a sword of Damocles not so much over Trump himself but over Ukraine, which would likely pay the price for such a deal.

The so-called 'Trump Plan' remains unknown to anyone, something Trump himself justifies by its transactional nature – 'deals must be struck in silence.' In reality, a fully developed document likely does not exist, and its contours seem to take shape as part of behind-the-scenes probing. European officials who have interacted with Trump also walked away with the impression that he has no clear strategy yet, to The Wall Street Journal. The closest outline of Trump's position is attributed to notes drafted by the president's future special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg (former National Security Council chief of staff during the first Trump administration), which he outlined in an article co-authored with another Trump administration official, Fred Fleitz, and published on the website of the America First Policy Institute (AFPI). Many elements of the plan, however, have been indirectly confirmed by leaks referencing Trump’s private remarks.

Trump's obscure plan, meanwhile, has paradoxically become the focus of many conflicting hopes both in Europe and in Ukraine itself. A poll conducted among Ukrainians commissioned by the New Europe Centre from 15-27 November 2024 showed that 45% of Ukrainians surveyed trust Trump. This is the highest level of trust in the new US president in Europe, compared to data from a June poll conducted by the Pew Research Centre. A year ago, 78% of Ukrainians expressed trust in Biden, while only 10% trusted Trump. Biden’s trust rating has since fallen from 82% to 55%, while Trump’s has risen sharply.

This shift can partly be attributed to the Zelensky administration’s strategy of fostering relations with the potential next US president and reassuring Ukrainians that it is successfully progressing in this. At the same time, retrospective disappointment with the Biden administration’s strategy and hope for a transactional miracle from Trump characterise many pro-Ukrainian Europeans and analysts today. However, these hopes rest largely on the lack of any known alternative to Trump’s promoted (and still hypothetical) strategy.

They are further fueled by Trump’s growing popularity as a transactional leader, whose approach prioritises mutual exchange and shows indifference to the value-based aspects of conflicts. Trump’s most celebrated transactional success is the Abraham Accords, which facilitated the normalisation of relations between Israel and several Arab countries (primarily the UAE and Bahrain).

However, it’s important to recall that Trump’s transactionalism also resulted in a complete fiasco – his negotiations with the Taliban on the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan, as President Obama's former Russia advisor Michael McFaul notes in an article for Foreign Affairs. The Doha agreement called for the gradual withdrawal of US troops and the Taliban’s commitment to political conflict resolution. Yet once significant US forces withdrew, the Taliban launched an offensive on Kabul, while pro-government troops, demoralised, were unable to resist.

The agreements were negotiated without the Afghan government's input and ignored its concerns. Moreover, the accelerated withdrawal was opposed by many experts and the US military. However, Trump played the Afghan withdrawal card during his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, framing any objections as resistance from the 'deep state' against a 'peace plan.' The situation in Ukraine has much more in common with the Afghan precedent than with the ‘Abraham Accords’, which were negotiated by Israel from a position of strength as leading Arab countries sought support from Washington in the face of the growing threat from Iran.

Four questions for Trump's non-existent plan

There is a significant gap between transactionalism and campaign populism – a gap that must be filled with concrete details. So far, many specifics of Trump’s ‘plan for Ukraine’ remain unknown or unverified, and those with higher credibility either disadvantage Ukraine or raise questions about feasibility and guarantees of implementation. The plan reportedly includes a ceasefire along the line of contact – effectively freezing the conflict and requiring territorial concessions from Ukraine; the creation of an 800-mile demilitarised zone controlled by unspecified European forces; a 10- to 20-year moratorium on Ukraine’s NATO membership; arms deliveries from Western allies to help Ukraine defend itself against future Russian attacks; and partial sanctions relief for Russia.

Summarising expert discussions around these proposals, at least four key questions emerge – questions to which Trump’s so-called plan offers no plausible answers, at least as of now.

Question One: Why would Putin want to negotiate?

'Wars typically end in one of two ways: one side wins, or there’s a stalemate. In Ukraine, neither side appears close to victory, but the war has not reached a deadlock. Russian President Vladimir Putin believes he is winning. If Trump threatens to cut aid to Ukraine, it will only embolden Putin to press forward, not stop the invasion. Advancing armies rarely halt their fight when their opponent grows weaker. If Putin senses that Trump and his new team are trying to appease the Kremlin, he will become more aggressive, not less,' writes Michael McFaul in Foreign Affairs.

A broad consensus exists that any reliable peace deal can only be achieved from a position of strength. However, there are currently no visible arguments Trump could use to compel Putin to come to the negotiating table. As analysis by Sergey Vakulenko suggests, it is unlikely to be a threat to lower oil prices (→ Re:Russia: Talk, baby, talk). It is also difficult to imagine Trump going to Congress to request expanded aid for Ukraine after spending the entire election year promising to relieve taxpayers of such burdens. Even if Trump decided to increase assistance, his administration would face the same challenges as Biden’s—insufficient surplus weapons, the inability to expedite deliveries, and the risk of escalation from Moscow. Instead of seeking leverage over Putin, Trump, in an interview with Time magazine, condemned Biden’s decision to allow US missiles to strike targets inside Russia. This statement suggests that Trump is more inclined to appease Putin than to pressure him.

Meanwhile, discussions of peace negotiations and concessions demoralise both the Ukrainian military and society. Why risk one’s life if the outcome will ultimately be determined in backroom political deals? One of the most dangerous and plausible scenarios in this context, as noted by renowned military analyst Michael Kofman on the War on the Rocks podcast, is not Putin outright refusing negotiations but rather formally agreeing to peace talks. In practice, this would simply buy him time, allowing him to use the negotiations as a cover to continue military operations while watching Ukraine’s army and political system fall into further disarray.

Question two: how to create a demilitarised zone and who will control it?

Renowned military analyst Mick Ryan points out that the proposed demilitarised zone (DMZ) in Ukraine – 800 miles (or 1200 kilometers) – would need to be five times longer than the similar zone on the Korean Peninsula, which is often cited as a successful mechanism for maintaining a ceasefire. Setting up such an extensive zone with mines and other means could take years, and maintaining it might require decades. Mark Cancian, an expert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, argues that 'demilitarised zones sound better than they work in practice,' as ensuring compliance with agreed terms is extremely difficult. The reason the Korean DMZ became successful, he explains, is that Pyongyang and Seoul were convinced that any violation of the agreement would trigger a powerful response, with each side ready to re-engage in war. Pyongyang faced a strong South Korean army, which would act with US support. However, Ryan reminds us that against the backdrop of North Korea’s nuclear program, the war in Ukraine, and declining confidence in the scope of US support, the Comprehensive Military Agreement – which envisioned transforming the DMZ into a ‘territory of peace’ – was terminated by Pyongyang in 2023.

Any peacekeeping contingent would face significant challenges in organising oversight of a peace agreement, Ryan adds. These measures involve monitoring force concentrations within a set distance from the buffer zone, controlling aircraft movements within a defined range of the buffer zone, and identifying any violations of the agreed ceasefire or truce terms, among other tasks. According to Trump’s vision, all these functions would fall to some kind of European military contingent. However, European countries have not seriously discussed such a scenario. As Politico reports, French President Emmanuel Macron attempted to discuss the deployment of peacekeeping forces in Ukraine with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, but the talks ended in embarrassment. Tusk said that Polish soldiers would not participate in such a mission because Poland already ‘bears the greatest burden of all European countries related to the war in Ukraine.’

Statements by other European politicians and diplomats on the subject are at best equally contradictory and vague. An Austrian military expert said in an interview with Deutsche Welle that Europe simply does not have enough soldiers to sustain a functioning mission along a dividing line of such length. Moreover, he expressed doubts that such a mission would gain Russia’s approval while remaining effective. It is also unclear what the mission’s role would entail: would it be purely monitoring in nature, or would European forces serve as a 'human shield' along the dividing line? Similarly, it remains unknown what would happen if the Russians violated the agreement.

Question three: how and who will arm Ukraine?

The hypothetical 'Trump plan' suggests that by denying Ukraine reliable security guarantees (such as NATO membership), the West would take on commitments to supply Ukraine with weapons that would enable it to defend itself against a new Russian invasion. However, nothing is yet known about the scope of these supplies or who will provide such weapons. To date, the Kremlin is willing to spend more on equipping and training its army than the Western allies of Ukraine are able or willing to spend on strengthening the Ukrainian military.

To change this, Europe and/or the US must take clear commitments, which currently do not exist and are not being discussed. Even if such commitments are made, as the last two years have shown, their implementation cannot be guaranteed. Ukraine's Western allies may adjust such commitments not only under the influence of elections, which change the political balance in the country, but even due to sociological surveys showing a weakening of the political figures and parties that made such promises. This flexibility will be even greater when it comes to supporting Ukraine, not in the acute phase of the conflict, but in the absence of active military operations.

Until there is a specific plan and guidelines regarding the level of combat readiness the Ukrainian army should reach and within what timeframe, who is responsible for this, and what resources will be involved, a ceasefire appears to be a comfortable scenario for Putin, providing a pause for preparations for the next stage of the invasion. Russia violated the 1994 Budapest Memorandum and broke the Minsk Agreements when it deemed itself sufficiently prepared for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Question Four: Who will pay for Ukraine's economic recovery?

To date, besides Ukraine itself, Europe appears to be the second major victim of the 'Trump plan.' Who will pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine, or at least for its return to normal economic life?

Not being prepared to give Ukraine security guarantees, Europe has decided to compensate for this by promising accelerated EU membership. However, admitting a country devastated by a three-year war into the European Union seems even less realistic than pre-war Ukraine's EU integration. The willingness of European countries to fully take on the Ukraine issue also raises questions, notes Chatham House expert Timothy Ash. The costs of restoring and rebuilding Ukraine are estimated at about $500 billion and continue to grow as Russian missiles destroy Ukraine's civilian and energy infrastructure. Experts from the Centre for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) and the Kyiv School of Economics believe the total cost of Ukraine's reconstruction up to the stage of advanced EU integration exceeds $1 trillion (→ Re:Russia: Reforms and Money), while analysts at the RAND Corporation estimated Ukraine's reconstruction project at $400-750 billion in mid-2023 (→ Re:Russia: The Great Reconstruction).

However, both expert reports agree that such a project can only be implemented using a ‘Marshall Plan’ model, which would involve providing guarantees to private investors who would invest in the country's reconstruction. But this scheme is only possible if there are reliable security guarantees that would be convincing enough for these investors. The RAND report explicitly names the creation of NATO as a key condition for the success of the Marshall Plan and emphasises that for Ukraine to replicate this scenario, it must somehow be included in the European security architecture. Otherwise, Ukraine's accession to the European Union becomes either impossible or an unbearable burden for the EU, one that could potentially crush it. For this reason, Putin has repeatedly emphasised (including during the past year at the St Petersburg Economic Forum and at the Valdai Club meeting) that Russia has no objection to Ukraine joining the EU.

Therefore, the issue of security guarantees for Ukraine is an existential question not only for Ukraine but essentially for Europe as well. By conceding the initiative to Trump in determining the parameters of the deal, the EU is cornering itself.

Until there are answers to these questions, there is no Trump plan. Moscow knows very well that in four years, Trump will leave the White House, after which personal agreements will lose their significance, and Trump will be able to blame the new administration for the failure of his ‘peace deal’, just as he currently blames it for the US military's withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.