After winning the election and entering the White House, many presidents sometimes end up breaking a campaign promise. Donald J. Trump won’t wait that long. He will break a key campaign promise when he is sworn into office.
While trying to return to power in the fall, Mr. Trump repeatedly made a dramatic if unlikely pledge with profound political consequences: He would end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours. And not just in 24 hours – he would do that before he was sworn in as president.
“Before I even get to the Oval Office, right after we win the presidency, I will have a terrible war between Russia and Ukraine,” vowed Mr. “I will solve it before I become president,” he said during a televised interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. “I’m going to fix Russia-Ukraine while I’m president,” he said again during a podcast in October.
This was not a negative comment, not one that he did not repeat. It was the basis of his public discourse on the biggest world war in Europe since the fall of Nazi Germany. However, he not only failed to keep his promise; and has made no known serious effort to resolve the fight since he was elected in November, and the fight will continue to rage even as early as Monday when President-elect Trump is President Trump again.
“Wars cannot be solved with bombs,” Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said in an interview. “And the missing link in his thinking is the failure to understand that the Ukrainian people will only reach a solution if they are at the negotiating table from a position of strength. In fact, he underestimates their position, which is why he has not reached a solution before his inauguration.”
Mr. Trump, of course, is no stranger to hyperbole. The casual assertion that he could easily, quickly and single-handedly stop a war with the proverbial snap of his fingers was consistent with Mr. Trump likes to introduce us to the public.
But many times in nearly a decade of national politics, rhetoric has become reality and big promises have fallen by the wayside. And while other presidents have paid a price for breaking promises (ask George HW Bush about reading his lips on taxes), Mr. Trump just plows ahead with no visible result.
He did not, for example, fully build his much-publicized border wall, let alone force Mexico to pay for it. He did not erase the federal budget deficit or reduce the national trade deficit. He did not build a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians, which he said would not be “as difficult as people thought years ago.” He also did not repeal Obamacare. He did not encourage economic growth to “4, 5 or even 6 percent.”
During this transition to the second term, Mr. Trump helped force a temporary halt to the war in Gaza that began on Sunday, sending an ambassador to pressure Israel to agree to President Biden’s long-held suspension. . While the agreement was accelerated by the team of Mr. Biden, the pressure of Mr. Trump played a key role in finally getting it established, a huge success for the incoming president.
But Ukraine is in many ways the most difficult challenge for Mr. Trump because he will be starting from scratch. Unlike Gaza, there is no existing peace plan from his predecessor, with all the complexities, timetables and formulas already in place, so that Mr.
Just this month, Keith Kellogg, the new president’s special envoy for the war in Ukraine, postponed plans to travel to Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, and other European cities to begin monitoring the situation until after the inauguration. He told Fox News he hoped to resolve it within 100 days, which would be 100 times longer than Mr.
“It was an absurd promise,” said Kathryn Stoner, senior fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. “The only person who can end the war in 24 hours is Vladimir Putin, but he could have done it years ago. Any negotiations will take more than 24 hours regardless of when Trump starts the clock.”
Michael Kimmage, author of “Collisions,” about the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and newly appointed director of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, said Mr. sending signals can be interpreted accurately.
“His intentions with this language can be as follows: to put the government on notice that his approach to Russia and the war will be different from Biden’s, that his main goal is to end the war and not for Ukraine to win” and “that he will be in charge and not a deep state that commits the US to eternal wars.”
Those signs left it unclear whether Mr. wants to be kind to Moscow. Vice President-elect JD Vance has suggested that Russia retain the 20 percent of Ukraine it has illegally seized by force and force Ukraine to accept neutrality rather than align with the West, a framework that echoes Russia’s priorities.
Asked by email why Mr. Trump did not fulfill his campaign promise to end the war before his inauguration, Caroline Leavitt, the press secretary of Mr. in his second phase.”
Since his election in November, Mr. Trump met with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and talked about meeting Mr. Putin after his inauguration.
Representative Michael Waltz, Republican of Florida, who will become Mr. Trump, on national security, insisted Sunday that ending the conflict in Ukraine remains a top priority for the new president, calling the war “a real human grudge” like World War I ending a war with “the escalating consequences of World War III.”
But the thinking of Mr. What Waltz explained during an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation” sounded like a formula for a process that could take a while: “The key elements of it: Number one, who’s coming to the table? Second, how do we drive ourselves to the table? And then three, what are the terms of the agreement?”
“President Trump is clear: This war must end,” Mr. Waltz said. “Everyone, I think, should have that.”
Even if everyone is on board with that goal – and there is room for doubt – the words of possibility remain thorny. Even assuming NATO membership is not on the cards, Ukraine wants tough security guarantees from the United States and Europe, especially if it is forced to abandon its territory, something Russia would oppose.
Then there are recovery questions and results. Who would pay to rebuild the devastated cities and rural areas of Ukraine? What will happen with the decision of the International Court of Justice to arrest Mr. Putin and other Russians for alleged war crimes? Would the United States and Europe ease the sanctions imposed after the 2022 all-out attack, and if so under what circumstances? Who can bridge the de-confliction line and what will happen if any ceasefire is violated?
Mr. Trump has not answered such questions publicly, leaving many to speculate. However, he expressed sadness over the ongoing damage in Ukraine and the urgency to find answers, whatever they may be.
“Part of the point – and this may shed some light on his administration’s eventual move – may be not having a script and therefore speaking in vague terms rather than revealing what the actual script is,” Mr. Kimmage. said. “The less we know about his circumstances, the more he can improve.”
Source link
