Trump Will Abandon Ukraine Just Like He Did Afghanistan

The damage he is doing to our international system of alliances is incalculable

Last week, Trump, J.D. Vance, and Pete Hegseth failed to coordinate their approach to negotiations on ending the war in Ukraine, but the overall message was unmistakably clear. The valiant Ukrainians are being sold out to the Russians. America is done sponsoring Ukraine’s effort to prevent being swallowed up by Vladimir Putin. If the Europeans want to try to protect Ukraine on their own, that is fine, but don’t expect any NATO assistance. This is the predictable but extremely sad consequence of the election in November. We may actually be witnessing the beginning of the unraveling of the U.S. alliance network that has kept the peace for eighty years in Europe and the Indo-Pacific.

We know what will happen because this is exactly what transpired when Trump “negotiated” his way out of Afghanistan.

The similarities are remarkable.

Recall that our ally in Afghanistan was the Afghan government, bolstered by an the Afghan Army and National Police force built with $83 billion of American taxpayer dollars. Yet, to “end” the war (really, our involvement in the Afghan civil war), Trump opened unilateral negotiations with the Taliban—the enemy our ally had been fighting against for the better part of 20 years at the cost of 70,000 Afghan soldiers and police and about 45,000 Afghan civilian lives.

In February 2020, Trump entered into a one-sided agreement with the Taliban in which the U.S. promised to withdraw troops according to a detailed timetable and to lift economic sanctions against the Taliban. He also committed the Afghan government, which was not even part of the negotiations or a signatory to the agreement, to start peace negotiations with the Taliban and to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners.

In exchange for all this, all the Taliban had to do was make a series of vague, unenforceable promises not to use force against the withdrawing U.S. troops (Why would they? The Taliban were getting exactly what they wanted!) and to “send a clear message to those who pose a threat against the United States” that they “have no place in Afghanistan.” So, the so-called master deal maker could not even get his counterpart in the negotiations to even use the words “al Qaeda” in the agreement, let alone create any mechanism to ensure al Qaeda would not fight with the Taliban against our ally the Afghan government. All Trump got the Taliban to agree to was “send a clear message” to the terrorist group, no more than a “Tsk, tsk.”

As much of a treachery as the agreement was, it is nothing compared to what happened next. The Taliban proceeded to violate every aspect of the agreement. Not only was there no punishment for doing so, but instead the Taliban was rewarded with speedier withdrawals of American troops than required by the agreement. The agreement stipulated that U.S. troop levels must drop to 8,600 by mid-July 2020, but Trump brought them down to 5,000 by the end of the summer and 2,500 before leaving office in January 2021, the lowest level they had been since the war began in 2001. Second, even though everyone and their brother knew that al-Qaeda was “heavily embedded” with the Taliban, Trump did nothing to punish the Taliban for this breach of the agreement or slow down the American withdrawal. Furthermore, the Taliban did not open peace negotiations with the Afghan government as the treaty required, but Trump still pressured the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban from their jails, which the Afghans did grudgingly in November 2020. The “peace negotiations” did not open until December 2020, but of course went nowhere because, with America headed for the doors, the Taliban knew victory was close at hand.

All of this has been forgotten due to the calamity that transpired when the process set in motion by Trump’s capitulation agreement with the Taliban played out and the Afghan government collapsed on Joe Biden’s watch in August 2021.

So now the pattern is playing out in Ukraine, but on a far more strategically important playing field than Central Asia. Trump opened the peace negotiations by unilaterally calling Putin, the party that engaged in naked aggression in violation of the United Nations Charter. He did not even consult with our democratic ally Ukraine about the negotiating strategy. Volodymyr Zelenskyy only received a post-hoc courtesy call. Now, face-to-face negotiations have begun in Saudi Arabia, again, without Zelenskyy and without our European allies who have been partners in supporting Ukraine against the Russian assault and have provided more funding to Ukraine than the U.S. (Keep in mind that 5 European NATO countries have land borders with Russia and 3 others border Ukraine. The Europeans certainly have a stake in how this war is resolved and the security arrangements that are put in place to protect Ukraine from further Russian aggression).

The U.S.-Russia talks in Saudi are akin to the U.S.-Taliban talks that went on for years in Qatar without the Afghans and without our NATO partners that fought side by side with us in for 20 years.

And like the negotiations with the Taliban, you can count on Trump getting taken to the cleaners by Putin during this round of talks because Trump has absolutely no skin in the game. He does not want to continue funding the Ukraine war effort and he does not care about the security of Europe, who he thinks is rich and should fend for itself. All Trump cares about is being able to claim that he ended the war because he promised to do so and wants to be perceived globally as a peacemaker. Indeed, contrary to all history since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1919, he sees America’s interests being advanced by a closer relationship with Russia rather than the democracies of Europe. Putin will be “negotiating” against an open door.

To get a “deal,” all Trump needs to do is to get Russia to make sufficient concessions on paper so that Zelenskyy is forced to accept a deeply one-sided unfavorable cease-fire. Zelenskyy has painfully admitted that Ukraine has a “low chance of survival” without continued U.S. support, so what choice will he have but to accept whatever feeble terms Trump conjures up.

But here is the rub. Putin can make all kinds of concessions on paper regarding the line of demarcation, force levels allowed near the border, cease-fire arrangements, and a host of other matters, with the knowledge that the United States will do absolutely nothing to enforce them. He can be confident of this because he watched the Taliban escape with impunity for all of its violations of its agreement with the United States as it swept to victory in Afghanistan.

The only real hope for Ukrainian long-term security is NATO membership, which Pete Hegseth publicly ruled out before negotiations even got started, a strategy akin to playing poker by first revealing your cards and then starting the betting.

The Europeans are now discussing how they can bolster Ukraine by sending their own troops into Ukraine to support a possible cease-fire. This is a noble gesture, but the key question is whether a Russian attack on these troops would be considered an event triggering the NATO Article 5 commitment to collective security. Trump would probably say, without thinking about it for a moment or consulting with anyone else, that no, the U.S. would not come to Ukraine’s aid if Russia attacked British, French or Polish troops keeping the peace in Ukraine. That would both scare off the Europeans and sap any deterrent effect of bringing those troops into Ukraine in the first place.

The sacrifice of Ukraine may take a while to unfold, as Putin will not want to embarrass his friend and useful idiot Donald Trump. Indeed, even the Taliban waited patiently for 20 months after Trump signed away the Afghan government’s interests before taking Kabul. But as sure as the sun rises in the East, Russia’s encroachments on Ukraine in violation of the cease-fire will at some point gain momentum, the U.S. will look the other way, and Putin will incrementally start to gain control of the country he believes Russia owns.

Ukraine has never been part of the West or a treaty ally of the United States. Nonetheless, it inspired countries and people around the world with its brave defense of its fledgling democracy against a brazen, unprovoked attack by its aggressive imperialist neighbor. But the coming Trump abandonment of Ukraine will have much broader consequences than the loss of a democracy in Eastern Europe. Friends and allies of the United States that depend on it for security against hostile forces such as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea will surely take note. The message will be clear – do not count on the United States to stand firm and protect you.

The Trump Administration seems to believe that it can give a cold shoulder to allies in Europe, but still rally our Pacific alliances to confront China, which is the most preeminent threat to both American security and future economic prosperity.

That, in my view, is a bad bet.

Allies in the Indo-Pacific that see us throw Ukraine under the bus may well start hedging their bets by aligning more closely with Beijing. Trump’s threats of tariffs against allies like Japan and South Korea will not help with developing the kinds of strong economic and security alliances we need to deter and compete with China. And the Trump/Musk crusade against USAID and the entire concept of foreign aid will only speed the global south’s alignment with China instead of the U.S. This disdain for alliance partners contradicts decades of bipartisan consensus on how to operate in our complex, multipolar, interdependent world.

Trump’s idiosyncratic, self-aggrandizing, antiquated view of how the world works is deeply flawed. Unfortunately, we may be feeling the consequences of his irresponsible actions for decades to come.