It’s late May 2025 and Donald Trump looks visibly irritated – not triumphant, not calculating, just irritated. Vladimir Putin has begun making noises about peace. Volodymyr Zelensky, after three years of bloodletting, depletion, and dwindling Western patience, is flirting with negotiations.
What Will Trump Do Now on the Ukraine War?
The great war of democracy against tyranny – the one that was supposed to restore the so-called “rules-based order” – is now collapsing into the very thing it claimed to prevent: a war of exhaustion, fought for no clear purpose, prolonged by inertia.
And now that both combatants seem prepared to talk, Trump finds himself boxed in by the one thing he’s always hated: irrelevance. He wanted the war to end, yes, but only on his terms. He wanted to choreograph the endgame – to play the master of ceremonies as the fighting stopped and the cameras rolled. But here they are, Zelensky and Putin, moving toward some kind of arrangement without him.
That, more than anything, offends his instincts. He was supposed to be the dealmaker, the man who ends endless wars. Not the sidelined figure pacing Mar-a-Lago while the curtain falls on someone else’s drama.
Now he faces a choice that admits no third option. Ukraine is no longer the poster child of democratic resistance, and the war is no longer a clean morality play. It’s a quagmire. He can either fish or cut bait. There’s no room left for theatrics. He can reel in a cold, restrained peace that aligns with American interests – or keep casting into the bloodied waters of a war that no longer serves them. History rarely offers such a clear fork in the road. But this is one. If Trump walks now – on his terms, without apology – he can still plausibly claim the mantle of realist statesman. He can say he ended a war that Biden couldn’t, refocused American power on real threats, and rejected the fantasies of the foreign policy establishment. But if he dithers, if he escalates in order to later de-escalate, if he plays the strongman only to slouch into strategic confusion, then he becomes just another caretaker of empire, not its reformer. Walk – or own the war. Reap the benefit, or carry the burden. Because no one else is going to clean this up. Not the Europeans. Not the Ukrainians. And certainly not the bipartisan foreign policy machine that helped create this mess.
Some around Trump suggest he may greenlight another tranche of weapons – not out of conviction, but calculation. More HIMARS, more drones, maybe long-range strike systems. Why?
To manufacture leverage. To send a signal that only under pressure – only under his shadow – could peace be achieved. If he can’t control the outcome, he wants to control the optics. The story needs to end with his brand attached. That’s the instinct. But others – Realists, Restrainers, and even a few Reagan-era Neocons – are urging the opposite. They see this moment for what it is: a narrow window to cut the cord and pivot. To finally stop propping up a war that was never winnable on Western terms, and to walk away before the costs become irreversible. And they’re right.
A War Like No Other
The war has failed to achieve its stated aims. Russia hasn’t been rolled back. NATO hasn’t been meaningfully revitalized. Ukraine hasn’t been liberated – it’s been gutted. And the frontlines, both literal and strategic, are freezing over.
Even Zelensky, who once invoked civilizational stakes, now speaks in terms of border adjustments, tactical compromises, and ceasefire protocols. Meanwhile, Putin, confident that time is on his side, is in no hurry. This is no longer a war of momentum. It is a war of attrition. A low-boil conflict that can simmer for years – unless someone, somewhere, pulls the plug.
In principle, Trump should be the one most inclined to do just that. He has no sentimental attachment to Ukraine. No illusions about spreading democracy. No patience for Europe’s dependence dressed up as virtue. And strategically, his attention is already drifting – to Taiwan, to the Strait of Hormuz, and especially to North Korea. Because while Ukraine drags on, North Korea is preparing for something far more dangerous. Not just missile parades, but real warfighting capability. Tactical nuclear weapons. Submarine-launched missiles. Military satellites. Hardened C2 infrastructure. Kim Jong Un is not posturing – he’s preparing. And every drone sent to Ukraine, every dollar sunk into the Donbas, is one less tool available to contain or deter Pyongyang.
The Korean Peninsula is not some convenient theater of symbolic containment – it’s a flashpoint, and one with real consequences. Yet Washington continues to act as though it’s 2022, pouring money into Ukraine as if the Cold War never ended and the old liberal order can still be salvaged. Trump, at his best, understood this. He saw that American power had to be focused, not frittered away. That U.S. interests are no longer best served by subsidizing someone else’s stalemate. But knowing is one thing. Acting on it is another.
If Trump walks away now – if he cuts aid, calls the war what it is, and forces Kyiv and Moscow to come to terms – he will face fury. From the blob, of course. But also from inside his own party, where Cold War instincts still run deep. There are still hawks in the GOP who see NATO as sacred, who believe American leadership is a moral duty, not a strategic burden. Walking away won’t just be about Ukraine. It will be a declaration that the U.S. is no longer in the business of underwriting every regional war that flatters Western ideals. It will mean admitting that Europe needs to look after itself.
But the alternative is worse. If Trump escalates now – if he pours in another wave of arms and declares that America must “stay the course” – then he owns it. The war becomes his. Every failed offensive, every casualty, every drone strike and trench. He becomes Biden’s executor, not his foil. And that would mark not just a betrayal of his campaign rhetoric – but a deeper failure to meet the moment with strategic clarity.
Because let’s be honest: America’s future isn’t in Ukraine. It’s in the Indo-Pacific. It’s in deterring Chinese adventurism, managing North Korean aggression, and defending the strategic balance in the most economically vital region on Earth. The war in Ukraine, however tragic, does not advance any of those goals. It distracts from them. And the longer the United States remains mired in this proxy conflict, the more it jeopardizes its ability to shape the outcomes that actually matter.
Trump’s legacy will not be written in slogans or press conferences. It will be written in decisions. Not what he says – but what he does next. Does he cut the ribbon on another European cold war, or bury the last one? Does he perform – or does he pivot? There is no middle path here. Either he puts America’s interests first – or he proves himself no different from the globalists he claimed to oppose.
About the Author: Dr. Andrew Latham
Andrew Latham is a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities and a professor of international relations and political theory at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN. You can follow him on X: @aakatham.
The Ukraine War
waco
May 27, 2025 at 5:38 pm
Donald trump’s like a breath of fresh air after all that deadly farting by biden for ukraine.
But trump’s far from perfect, and so it’s gonna likely end up in a serious bust up between NATO and russia over ukraine in 2025 or 2026.
But would that mean a terrible disaster for trump. No.
Terrible disasters are Instead awaiting the neo-fascist regimes of western europe !
Friedrich Merz on may 26 2025 has just greenlighted use of long-range weapons against russia and eventually or likely to result in the ukros successfully killing/incapacitating putin.
With putin the fool out of the way, russia will finally at long last employ nuclear weapons against the fascists of europe.
Finito for europe and NATO.
pagar
May 27, 2025 at 7:47 pm
Trump’s like an armored train. Solid proof against anything thrown or hurled at it.
But trump is a maverick. Keeps changing or shifting stance over ukraine.
Stop that posturing, stand up, dust yer backside and bring final permanent peace to ukraine. Otherwise ww3.
Trump MUST know that to bring final peace to ukraine, it MUST be divided into two parts, western ukraine and eastern ukraine.
A physical line or barrier MUST be erected between the two.
US firms can be contracted to build it and also china (xi jinping) MUST be forbidden from doing any work connected to it. Ban xi from the area.
The future eastern ukraine MUST consists of luhansk, donetsk, zaporizhzhia, kherson and a major portion of kharkiv and dnipropetrovsk provinces or oblasts.
Crimea can be included or still remain part of russia.
Thus trump can then draw a relatively straight line from the northern border all the way to the southern reaches of the dniper river.
Who pays for the physical barrier.
All the euro fascists and nations that export Apple devices by the endless ton, like india and china.
Swamplaw Yankee
May 28, 2025 at 1:35 am
To bring peace to the Ukraine, the orc russian peasant state must be divided from the captive slave nations that compose the land mass of Siberia and the Far East. If Trump has the adroit cognitive ability to achieve this goal, then the World will remember this split and recall the man who engineered the collapse of the Communist state pretender.
The Ukrainian father who fights the aggressor orc muscovite in 2025 is the same man who fought the aggressor orc muscovite in 1615 and centuries earlier.
MAGA POTUS Trump must recognize who re-started this age old genocide of the Ukrainian people in 2013-14. Once the American people realize this war is older than America, than the Yankee will realize that the USA constitution must place the American on the side of the Ukrainian.
Back in 1615 Samual Champlain was extending the French empire out in Lake Huron, Georgian Bay. There was no inner beltway or even a United States concept.
In 1615 the Ukrainian fathers were raising taxes for the expulsion of the orc russian peasant sex trade caravans from the Ukraine. The bi-annual sex-trade caravans out of muscovite russia that were hunting + “harvesting” little Ukrainian children was a centuries old burden, a vile evil of the russian peasant.
Human trafficking was a russian tradition that brought great profit and personal deviancy to the average russian peasant. The peasant could satiate himself with pedophilia and then sell the deflowered youth for Ottoman gold to the muslim sex traders in their fort, Caffa, in Crimea.
In 1616, Ukrainian fathers built a little boat fleet and challenged the huge sex trade fleet of the Ottomon Empire. The Ukrainian fathers outfought the muslim Black Sea fleet and then pounced on the ancient muslim dungeon fort of Caffa. Again, the Ukrainian fathers outfought the muslim army, took the fort and released out of dungeons tens of thousands of Christian children sex slaves bound for the vicious life of Ottoman slavery. Then, the same Ukrainian fathers pusued the gold laden russian sex trade caravans back to their muscovite family hangouts.
Until Trump can connect 1616 in America with 1616 in Ukraine, then the genetic need of the russian peasant to attack Ukraine, it’s children, becomes vivid and morally vile. It is not a coincidence that the Nabokov “Lolita” disease had infected the minds of Russians in 1615 as much as it has infected the motivations of the peasant russians in 2025.
Ukrainian fought for a clear purpose in 1616: stop the greedy russian peasant pedophile from killing Ukrainian parents and abusing their children.
Ukrainians fight for a clear purpose in 2025. stop the greedy russian pedophile from killing Ukrainian parents, abusing the children, and shipping the abused children into Russia to undergo cultural genocide and re-identification.
That the MSM in the USA refuse to focus on + reveal this ancient russian peasant genetic deviancy, makes the role of the Putin regime making the cultural genocide in the last 11 years, much, more easier to commit.
The USA has hardly put any tax cash into stopping this cultural genocide and land grab. Now, Ukraine has the cash to purchase military hardware needed to air defend itself from the aggressive russian child traffickers. The war itself has evolved to a point where only a few military hardware items need to be purchased from the USA. But, the process of production inside the USA is mysteriously limited, or reduced, so that the replacement of spent hardware or ammunition is not possible. Meanwhile the front line meat grinder run by Putin goes on daily.
America’s Future is in Ukraine: it is not in with some other empire. The author is wrong to make that simplistic depiction. The MAGA POTUS Trump must make immediate demands for the Victory of the WEST, for the Victory of Ukraine and the return of every inch of illegally occupied Ancient Ukrainian soil.
Or, that is the open announcement to the world that the POTUS has abdicated the leadership of the WEST as he is incapable/unsuitable of being cognitive enough to handle that real, but unelected, functional position. Yeah, the POTUS can still fiddle on the local Yankee stage but has lost the respect of the WEST to run the WEST.
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