Donald Trump's Plan to End Ukraine War Dismissed by Military Analysts

Former President Donald Trump's plan to end the war in Ukraine quickly has been dismissed by military analysts who have told Newsweek that bringing the conflict to a close will be complex and take time.

Trump said in a recent interview that he could end the war in 24 hours and expressed support for assisting Ukraine as it battles Russia. The former president has argued he could bring the conflict to a conclusion in a single day in the past, garnering criticism from other Republicans and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

"This war has now gone on so long and with such ferocity that there will be no easy path to peace," said Sarah Kreps, a professor in the Department of Government as well as adjunct professor of law at Cornell University.

Trump's comments come amid evidence that his position on Ukraine appears at odds with many Republican voters. A straw poll conducted at a Turning Point Action conference in Florida on Sunday found that 95.8 percent of attendees were opposed to U.S. involvement in the war.

"I know Zelensky very well. I felt he was very honorable because when they asked him about the perfect phone call that I made [in reference to a conversation with the Ukrainian president that led to his first impeachment], he said it was indeed, he said it was. He didn't even know what they were talking about. He could have grandstanded," Trump said on Fox News' Sunday Morning Futures, hosted by Maria Bartiromo, before she interjected.

"That's not going to be enough for Putin to stop bombing," Bartiromo said.

"I know Zelensky very well, and I know Putin very well, even better," Trump said.

"And I had a good relationship, very good with both of them. I would tell Zelensky, no more. You got to make a deal. I would tell Putin, if you don't make a deal, we're going to give him a lot. We're going to [give Ukraine] more than they ever got if we have to. I will have the deal done in one day. One day," he said.

Newsweek has reached out to former President Trump's office via email for comment, as well as to the Ukrainian and Russian foreign ministries.

The former president's solution was met with skepticism and strongly criticized by former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

Christie, a Republican who is seeking the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, took aim at the former president's comments on Twitter.

"Donald Trump has released his Top-Secret plan for ending the war in Ukraine in 24 hours," Christie tweeted on Monday. "The Plan: He knows Putin and Zelensky 'very well' and will make a couple calls. Move over Churchill, Trump is here to save the day."

Former Vice President Mike Pence, who is also seeking the Republican presidential nomination, appeared to criticize Trump for making the same claim earlier in July.

"Well, the only way you could end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours would be by giving Vladimir Putin what he wants. And that's the last thing the United States should ever call upon Ukraine to do," Pence told CNN.

Experts who spoke to Newsweek suggested Trump was being too ambitious.

A Complicated Process

Despite former President Trump's repeated claim that he could end the war in 24 hours, a solution to the conflict is likely to be more complex, according to Barry Posen, a professor of political science at MIT and the author of Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy.

"Former President Trump has two important insights into how the Russia-Ukraine war might be brought to an end," Posen told Newsweek. "First, both sides will need to see major costs of insisting on a continuation of the war."

"Indeed, the two sides will both need also to see a set of special benefits for ending the war," he said. "And second, the United States is in the best position of any country to muster and promise a set of major costs and benefits that might influence the inclination of the two sides to settle."

"That said, this is a complicated diplomatic process, not doable in 24 hours or even 24 days, but perhaps in 24 weeks," Posen went on.

Ending the War

"Both sides now have deep scars and antipathy and distrust toward the other. It's doubtful that a solution will come from exchanging money and redrawing lines on territory that both sides claim as theirs," said Sarah Kreps, author of Taxing Wars: The American Way of War Finance and the Decline of Democracy, and Drones: What Everyone Needs to Know.

"Thus far, events in the war have shown that neither side has a decisive advantage and that the war will continue as a bloody war of attrition that might only end when resources are exhausted," she said.

"While Trump's claim about the speed of resolution is absurd on its face, ironically, in typical grandiose fashion, Trump has stumbled upon a stranger truth: why have the parties to this conflict not come to terms?" added Corri Zoli.

Zoli is an assistant research professor with the Forensic and National Security Sciences Institute at Syracuse University College of Law. Part of her research investigates the changing nature of the U.S. military force structure and the challenges of asymmetric warfare for military personnel.

"Since at least the post-9/11 wars, scholars have critiqued the 'militarization' of U.S. foreign policy in which the Pentagon has expanded its role far beyond traditional core military operations," she told Newsweek.

Zoli pointed to scholarship that has argued that "the U.S. has accelerated its rate of military interventions, escalating its use of force abroad and using a 'whack-a-mole' approach to any and all security threats—rather than adopting a deliberative, conflict-resolution, diplomatic approach."

"The result? Mission creep, the eclipse of the State Department in budget and personnel, drawn-out interventions with little to show for them (Afghanistan was the longest war in U.S. history), wasted American 'blood and treasure' on foreign 'wars of choice' —all with little public 'buy in' or understanding about which vital national interests are at stake," she went on.

"If all you have in the foreign policy toolkit is a big DOD hammer, then every security issue looks like a nail," Zoli said.

Planning for Peace

Zoli was also critical of the Biden administration's approach to the end of the war and argued for better planning.

"All conflicts end, and negotiations are part of that process," Zoli said. "Inexplicably, the current administration has prioritized defeating and deposing Putin rather than prepping for peace."

"Because 'neither side has a realistic expectation of military victory or unconditional surrender,' as [former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations] Thomas Pickering notes in Foreign Affairs, planning for peace in Ukraine requires all the more thought and preparation," she said.

"If the U.S. fails to shape the post-war landscape to serve its interests and the interests of global cooperation and peaceful conflict resolution, other actors will seize the opportunity instead," Zoli added.

Trump's Role

It remains to be seen whether the war in Ukraine will have ended by the next presidential term.

President Joe Biden is running for re-election and could be facing Trump again but even if the Republican wins, he may have less ability to influence the conflict than his comments suggest.

"Donald Trump still seems not to have learned from experience that the president of the United States does not have the same authority as the owner of a privately held corporation, nor does the U.S. have the authority simply to knock the rest of the world into line," Posen told Newsweek.

Thomas Gift, founding director of the Center on U.S. Politics at University College London, expressed skepticism that Trump could find a quick diplomatic solution.

"It's hard to know why Trump is being so uncharacteristically modest in saying he could end the war in 24 hours. What would take him so long?" Gift told Newsweek.

"Much like the declassification of documents at Mar-a-Lago, you'd imagine he'd just be able to think about a truce, and telepathically Putin and Zelensky would know to strike a deal within seconds," he said.

Gift was referring to Trump's previous claim that a president can declassify documents merely by thinking about it.

The former president seems likely to continue claiming he can end the war in 24 hours despite the fact that Ukraine's president has previously criticized him for it.

"It seems to me that the sole desire to bring the war to an end is beautiful," Zelensky told ABC's This Week in July through a translator.

"But this desire should be based on some real-life experience. Well, it looks as if Donald Trump had already these 24 hours once in his time. We were at war, not a full-scale war, but we were at war [namely, since 2014, in the eastern Donbas region], and as I assume, he had that time at his disposal, but he must have had some other priorities," he said

"If we are talking about ending the war at the cost of Ukraine, in other words to make us give up our territories, well, I think, in this way, Biden could have brought it to an end even in five minutes, but we would not agree," Zelensky said.

Update 07/19/23 9:25 a.m. ET: This article has been updated to note that former President Trump discussed ending the war on Fox News' Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.