By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Trump, Ukraine, and the Limits of Presidential Peacemaking

As the U.S. president was trying to end an exceptionally violent war between Russia and its neighbor. He also had clear preferences on which side he admired more. “I like the Russians,” the president wrote. But the American people favored the other side, and, as a result, he noted, Washington needed to be “scrupulous in its impartiality between the combatants.” The president was Theodore Roosevelt, and the war was between Russia and Japan. U.S. neutrality, combined with Russia’s and Japan’s respect for Roosevelt and American power, allowed the White House to mediate an end to that bloody war in 1905. For his efforts, Roosevelt would become the first U.S. president to earn a Nobel Peace Prize.

More than a century later, another U.S. president is seeking to end another bloody war involving Russia and a neighboring country. Even more than Roosevelt, President Donald Trump favors the Russians in this war, while again most Americans support the other side. Trump has also made clear that he regards ending the war in Ukraine as a crucial goal for his presidency and that in bringing the two sides together, he, too, hopes to win a Nobel Peace Prize—adding to a hallowed U.S. tradition of presidential peacemaking. But this time, the path forward is far less certain. During his campaign, Trump promised he could end the war in 24 hours. Despite much maneuvering by the White House, however, the first hundred days of Trump’s second administration have come and gone with little prospect of the fighting ending soon. The administration has reached a separate deal with Ukraine, announced on April 30, to give the United States a stake in Ukraine’s mineral resources, but although the agreement is meant to signal U.S. investment in Ukraine’s future, it appears largely unrelated to the more pressing question of its war-torn present. All of which suggests that Trump has taken a very different approach to mediation from that of his predecessors.

Despite Roosevelt’s early example, U.S. mediation of foreign conflicts did not become a staple of American foreign policy until the Cold War, when Washington’s concerns became global instead of merely regional. Ever since, however, presidents have often found that the act of committing the prestige of the world’s strongest superpower to a peace process, although no guarantee of success, can significantly increase the odds. The United States played a central role, for example, in reaching a cease-fire and partial Israeli withdrawal in the Sinai after the Yom Kippur War in 1973, in securing a peace in Bosnia in 1995, and in solving the Northern Ireland dispute in 1998. And when they have involved themselves personally in the negotiations, U.S. presidents have usually succeeded, albeit with some notable exceptions. Richard Nixon couldn’t make peace between Syria and Israel in 1974; Bill Clinton managed to get Israel and Jordan to sign a historic peace treaty in 1994, but fell short of his far more ambitious goal to establish a more comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. Even when successful, however, not every president-diplomat has been rewarded for his efforts by the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Although historical parallels must be drawn with caution, three presidential mediations provide useful standards by which to judge Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine. Along with Roosevelt’s negotiation with Russia and Japan in 1905, John F. Kennedy’s tough experience with the Netherlands and Indonesia in 1962, and Jimmy Carter’s triumph with Egypt and Israel at Camp David in 1978 suggest conditions needed for success but also potential sources of disappointment.

 

Half An Island

Roosevelt said no when the idea of mediating the Russo-Japanese War was first raised with him in 1904. The suggestion came from Baron Kentaro Kaneko, a Japanese diplomat who had overlapped with Roosevelt at Harvard, a few months after Japan launched a surprise attack on the Russian-controlled port of Lushun (Port Arthur) in Manchuria. Although the president recognized that the United States had an interest in the outcome of this faraway imperial competition, he was focused on his reelection campaign and doubted that the war would alter the balance of power in East Asia.

When the Japanese unexpectedly routed the Russian Baltic Fleet in May 1905, however, Roosevelt changed his mind. As he later explained, he wanted to prevent “Japan from driving Russia completely out of East Asia.” At this point, Tsar Nicholas II was in no rush to pursue peace, but Roosevelt found another way to persuade him. Through his friend Kaneko, the president encouraged the Japanese to invade Sakhalin Island, which had once been divided between Japan and Russia before Russia gained full control of it in 1875. Roosevelt correctly assumed that the loss of Russian territory would alter Nicholas’s calculations. Meanwhile, he also advised the Japanese to halt further offensives, aware that the Japanese were riding waves of debt to British shipbuilders and could not afford a forever war. Soon after the invasion of Sakhalin, Japan and Russia agreed to meet in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, under U.S. mediation.

After the talks began in August 1905, two sticking points quickly emerged: reparations and the future of Sakhalin. The Japanese offered to withdraw from Manchuria if Tokyo could inherit Russia’s special economic position in the Chinese province, where it controlled the main port and had built and operated the Chinese Eastern Railway. But they intended to keep Sakhalin and expected Russia to pay them an indemnity of $7 billion (approximately $251 billion today) for the cost of the war. The Russians were willing to concede to the Japanese what they wanted in China, as long as Japan withdrew from Sakhalin and dropped the demand for an indemnity.

This left Roosevelt struggling to whittle the distance between the two sides, reducing the Japanese demands for money and the Russian designs on all of Sakhalin. In the end, with the talks on the verge of collapse, the Imperial Court in Japan accepted the tsar’s final offer: half an island and no money. The tsar had likely been impressed with an argument made by Roosevelt’s envoy in St. Petersburg that since the island had long been divided, Nicholas wasn’t giving up Russian land. Tokyo had learned of the tsar’s willingness to accept half of Sakhalin through the British, whom the Americans had kept informed of Roosevelt’s backchannel. Faced with the prospect of continuing to fight at great expense or agreeing to a peace that gave it most of what it wanted, Tokyo chose the latter, accepting even less than what Roosevelt had been advocating all along. The two sides signed the Treaty of Portsmouth in September.

Roosevelt’s success laid down a few markers for later presidents. His key contribution had been to keep the two sides negotiating until they reached a formula they both could accept, a process that involved mutual concessions on the main sticking points. Worn down by the negotiations, the Russians and the Japanese came to agree with the president that prolonging the war would not serve their respective interests. This breakthrough was largely possible because neither St. Petersburg nor Tokyo saw Roosevelt as favoring the other side.

By this measure, Trump has already failed. In advance of direct talks, he and his representatives have offered major concessions to Moscow, including U.S. recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and acknowledgment of Russian sovereignty over other occupied areas. Meanwhile, he has publicly berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and even falsely accused him of starting the war. Given this lopsided approach, Trump has done little to build the reputation for neutrality needed to be a credible mediator for both sides.

 

More Islands

Some presidential mediations can end badly even when they initially achieve the desired result. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy deployed his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, to resolve a vestigial colonial dispute in Southeast Asia. Under its strongman leader, Sukarno, Indonesia was claiming the western half of the island of New Guinea (now Irian Jaya), which had remained a Dutch colony after Indonesia won its independence from the Netherlands in 1949. But the Netherlands wanted the approximately 500,000 Papuans who inhabited the territory—a largely Christian people who did not want unification with Muslim Indonesia—to achieve self-determination, charging Sukarno with being neo-imperialist. Both The Hague and Djakarta were willing to fight to defend their positions.

Kennedy had entered office hoping to alter Washington’s reputation in the developing world by encouraging reform movements and decolonization as a way to outflank Moscow. Despite the demographics of Dutch New Guinea, the president believed the optics of siding with the Netherlands against Sukarno’s land grab would undermine U.S. influence in the region. It would also likely push Sukarno into the arms of the Soviets, who were already courting Indonesia. Moreover, Washington could ill afford another conflict in Southeast Asia, given the challenges it was already facing in Laos and the growing trouble in South Vietnam.

In early 1962, after the U.S. standoff with the Soviets over the status of Berlin seemed to have briefly settled down, Kennedy believed it was time to pressure the Netherlands to cede West New Guinea to Indonesia. In February, the president dispatched his attorney general as his envoy to calm and flatter Sukarno into engaging in face-saving negotiations for the Dutch and then speak bluntly to the Dutch about how the process had to end. Neither side was happy to see the president’s brother, and Sukarno refused to negotiate unless the Dutch promised him in advance to transfer their colony directly to Indonesian control. When Robert Kennedy pointed out that such a concession in advance was impossible, Sukarno threatened to revoke his earlier promise to free a CIA operative, who had been sentenced to death in Indonesia for involvement in a covert operation during the Eisenhower administration.

Meanwhile, the Dutch insisted they needed guarantees for the Papuan people. “We were not dealing with completely reasonable men on either side of this controversy,” Robert Kennedy later wrote. Nevertheless, direct U.S. engagement altered both sides’ calculations. Following the attorney general’s visits to the two capitals, the two sides agreed to meet, without preconditions, if the Kennedy administration provided the mediation. In March, the delegations arrived in Middleburg, Virginia, to begin negotiations.

Robert Kennedy and his wife meeting with Sukarno, Jakarta, February 1962

Almost immediately, however, the talks broke down, and by May, U.S. intelligence was reporting that Sukarno was putting his forces into West New Guinea to coerce the Dutch. The president now faced a crucial decision: as National Security Council member Robert Komer put it, “Do our larger interests in Southeast Asia demand a peaceful settlement (even if this forces us to lean toward Indo side to get one), or should we preserve a more even-handed approach, based on the merits of the issue, as Secretary [Dean] Rusk seems to favor?” The president prodded the two capitals for action and convinced them to return to Middleburg in July. Although not yet directly involved in the talks, the president also signed off on a new U.S. formula for peace, which included a transitional administration and the promise of a plebiscite for the Papuans.

But Sukarno continued to stonewall. He accepted that, to allow the Dutch to save face, the former colony could be transferred to the United Nations, but only very briefly, before being transferred to Indonesia; but he agreed to nothing else. The president lost his patience. In a dressing down in the Oval Office, he reminded Indonesian Foreign Minister Subandrio that he, Kennedy, had consistently favored the Indonesians in this dispute, and vowed to side with the Dutch if Sukarno chose a full invasion of New Guinea over a diplomatic solution. Subandrio, taken aback, suggested that Kennedy appeal directly to Sukarno. On July 30, Kennedy signed a letter that Komer, its drafter, called “a flowery appeal to Sukarno’s ego,” and the next day, Indonesia reached an agreement with the Netherlands that roughly followed the final U.S. proposal.

Yet far from increasing stability and enhancing U.S. influence in a strategic region, as Kennedy hoped, the deal only emboldened Sukarno, who a year later employed the same pressure tactics to break apart the new state of Malaysia. Sukarno coveted the former British colonies of North Borneo and Sarawak, which had been incorporated into independent Malaysia. Indonesia’s war on Malaysia would not end until Sukarno’s overthrow in 1965. And when the Indonesian government carried out the plebiscite mandated in the agreement, it permitted only a limited number of Papuans to participate in a vote that was designed to ensure that Indonesia won.

For the Trump administration today, the outcome of Kennedy’s mediation provides a cautionary tale. Putin and Sukarno aren’t twins, but their worldviews share a burning dislike of the status quo. Any deal that concedes too much to a heavily armed power with designs on its neighbors may only lay the ground for future aggression.

 

Threatening Candor

Jimmy Carter would have a different takeaway about a U.S. president’s role in mediation. Whereas Roosevelt and Kennedy had largely overseen peace talks from the margins, Carter was front and center in the Camp David negotiations of 1978. During 13 days of secret negotiations, the president became the human link between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, meeting separately with each leader and their aides, and having a hand in each of the 23 drafts as the final settlement took shape.

Although Carter had the advantage that both Jerusalem and Cairo wanted a settlement, the two sides strongly disagreed over the extent of any Israeli pullback from the Sinai, which Israel had occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War. Sadat wanted a complete withdrawal, including the dismantling of the settlements Israel had created there. But for Begin, although he understood that an agreement with Egypt over the Sinai would relieve international pressure to end the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, he and many members of his cabinet did not envision removing the Sinai settlements.

Along with Israeli opposition to a full withdrawal, the American president also faced the difficulty of maneuvering in a region of multiple conflicts. Cairo needed—and the Carter administration wanted—the Israeli-Egyptian agreement to be tied to some kind of process toward self-rule for the millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Although Carter didn’t seek an independent Palestinian state, he hoped to achieve, as he wrote in shorthand notes on the eve of the Camp David meetings, “Palestine auth[ority] in all areas.”

Like Roosevelt and Kennedy, Carter was more sympathetic to one side in the negotiations—in this case, Egypt. Nonetheless, he, too, took great pains to act as an honest broker. Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, counseled the president to suggest to Sadat that he not accept U.S. proposals too quickly. “It will help our credibility if we are seen to be pressing both sides for concessions,” Brzezinski said.

A week into the negotiations, the prospects for a deal looked dim. Begin informed Carter privately that he couldn’t compromise on the settlements; meanwhile, the Israeli delegation was pushing for separating the Sinai negotiation from any discussion of Palestinian aspirations. For his part, Carter refused to drop the Palestinian issue, but he did see that the question of Israel’s Sinai settlements might be finessed. He proposed to both parties that the issue be left out of a preliminary accord, making it instead the focus of subsequent negotiations toward a final agreement.

By trying to meet the Israelis halfway, Carter caused a crisis with the Egyptians. On September 15, Sadat told the president privately that he would walk away. Carter then laid it on the line. “If you leave,” he told the Egyptian leader, “it will mean first of all an end to the relationship between the United States and Egypt.” He added: “It would probably mean the end of my presidency…. [A]nd last but not least, it will mean the end of something very precious to me: my friendship with you.” Moved by Carter’s candor and the implied threat, Sadat agreed to stay the weekend.

Carter then went to Begin, and after a seemingly endless discussion, Begin agreed to dismantle the settlements and pull out completely from the peninsula, but only if the Israeli Knesset ratified the withdrawal first. Perhaps Begin expected the parliament to veto a full withdrawal, but it didn’t matter to Carter: Begin had lifted his veto, and the Egyptians could be told that the Israeli leader had agreed in principle to a full withdrawal. (The Knesset approved the plan a week later.)

Why did Begin relent? Begin’s biographer, Avi Shilon, credits a call to Ariel Sharon, the Israeli general and future prime minister, who, as Begin’s minister of agriculture, was the driving force behind the Israeli settlements. Like the U.S. envoy who assured the tsar in 1905 that Southern Sakhalin wasn’t Russia, Sharon assured Begin that a tactical concession on settlements in an area that was not historically viewed as Israel would not affect settlement activity in the West Bank. Ehud Olmert, another future Israeli prime minister, who was then a rising star in the Likud Party, later told the former U.S. ambassador and historian Stuart Eizenstat that the key issue for Begin and his government was that Carter threatened to publicly blame Israel if the talks collapsed.

In the end, Carter even managed to achieve something on the Palestinian question, with the two sides agreeing to work for “full autonomy” for the Palestinian people. It was a vague formulation, but neither side wanted the Palestinian issue to be the ultimate roadblock to a peace agreement. This concession was greater for Egypt, which under Sadat’s predecessor Gamal Abdel Nasser had positioned itself as the great defender of the Palestinians; ultimately, Sadat, who was assassinated by Islamists in 1981, gave his life for it. In the waning moments of the weekend, however, it was Begin who suffered an attack of buyer’s remorse and threatened to walk away. With success for all parties now within easy reach, Carter used a softer approach with Begin. As Begin was preparing to leave Camp David, the president had albums of photographs of the Camp David summit prepared for each of Begin’s grandchildren, inscribing each one to each grandchild, which he delivered to Begin himself. Profoundly touched, Begin’s resistance melted away, and he followed through on the deal after all.

Like Roosevelt, Carter succeeded largely because of the reputation for fairness he had developed with both sides. Trump has not invested in building a similar reputation, especially with Kyiv. Carter’s likely use of the additional tactic of threatening to pressure Begin publicly has no analog in a presidential mediation that has already involved threats, mainly aimed at Ukraine, on social media. The pressure points available to Trump are the U.S. sanctions on Russia and the U.S. weapons that Ukraine needs.

 

Sukarno’s Ghost

Trump’s campaign to secure a deal between Russia and Ukraine is cut from a different cloth from these three earlier cases—and, indeed, different from that of all other presidential efforts to resolve third-party conflicts. In none of these previous cases did the United States seek something for itself other than the goal of regional peace and security. There were no side deals sought for U.S. economic exploitation of Manchuria, West New Guinea, or the Sinai, as the Trump administration has done in seeking to exploit Ukraine’s mineral wealth. And although each had to use threats to nudge the parties along, Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Carter were not signaling a desire for one of the sides to undergo regime change, as Trump has done by demanding elections in Ukraine.

In each of the cases, the mediating president could have done more for the people who were affected by the arrangements in question, including the Chinese (in the case of Russo-Japanese peace), the Papuans, and the Palestinians. Nevertheless, all three U.S. leaders understood that these groups had legitimate interests. By contrast, the Trump negotiating team acts as if it is unaware of the existence, much less the interests, of the several million Ukrainians who remain in the 20 percent of the country now occupied by Russia.

When viewed as a whole, Trump’s initiative appears less a neutral mediation of a third-party dispute than a means to achieve a diminished U.S. commitment to Ukrainian sovereignty and curry favor with Moscow. Instead of looking for sources of compromise on both sides and then narrowing the areas of disagreement, Trump has preemptively endorsed the main Russian interpretation of the war—that modern Ukraine included territories that rightfully belonged to Russia, that Kyiv is a more provocative regional player than Moscow, and that Moscow’s efforts at regional peace have been undermined by NATO overreach. Trump has also sought to delegitimize the effort of his predecessor, Joe Biden, to assemble and lead a Western coalition to support Ukraine’s defense, suggesting that the American people were somehow duped and now deserve repayment. Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Carter knew the United States would benefit from a successful mediation but didn’t seek to use their mediations to extract material benefits or stir domestic politics.

Despite Trump’s apparently cordial conversation with Zelensky at the Vatican on the margins of Pope Francis’ funeral last week, and the minerals deal that soon followed, a photograph of Putin and Zelensky shaking hands on the White House lawn is unlikely. The prospect that Trump’s negotiations will earn him the Nobel he so publicly covets seems highly remote. To the extent that the president cares about Putin’s next steps in Europe, he should bear in mind a lesson from the least known of these three cases: the appetites of imperialists grow with the eating.

 

 

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