President Donald Trump’s New Ukraine Game:

The Most Transparent Negotiator in History

With each negotiating failure, Donald Trump retreats and then returns with a new but flawed strategy. His current strategy is to look compassionate by focusing on stopping the killing, citing the tens of thousands of killed and wounded soldiers on ‘both sides’ and blaming the White House (his predecessors) for allowing the war to begin. The rationality of this move is to move away from the developing consensus that Russia started an unprovoked and illegal war by invading a sovereign nation to the position that it doesn’t matter whether Russia or Ukraine started this war, the White House is responsible for letting this happen and for stopping the killing. The president won’t even cite the proportionately greater Russian casualties as it would fuel the case that Ukraine is winning the war. 

The problem with this superficially compassionate approach is that stopping the war with Russia occupying a large proportion of Ukraine favors Russia. It is not a balanced start to negotiation. It might help restore Trump’s relationship with Putin, and possibly bring a temporary end to the fighting, and justify push by Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. However, it would dramatically undermine Ukraine and create the conditions for a forever war in Europe by rewarding Russia’s invasion. Ukraine cannot accept this seriously flawed plan.

I hope that President Zelenskyy and other European leaders are successful in demonstrating that Trump’s latest ambit is a non-starter by overwhelmingly favoring the aggressor, Russia. Russia gets land, Ukraine gets a promise of Russian aide for reconstruction (Ukraine has been given security guarantees before), and the US gets profits (50%) of rebuilding Ukraine. That is the real estate agent’s solution to the war, which will fail rapidly if actually pursued.

I’ve written about the ecology of games in Ukraine being played by a variety of actors, including President Trump, and will expand it to incorporate this latest play from Trump (Dutton 2025). Surely his selfish motives and ridiculous 28 points will be apparent to every thoughtful actor. An FT editorial (22 Nov 2025) referred to his plan as a ‘capitulation to Moscow’ but he is also thinking about himself. He truly is the most transparent negotiator in history.

Reference

Dutton, Bill (2025), ‘The War on Information in Ukraine: A Global Ecology’, pp. 62-71 in Roland A. Römhildt , ed., Reclaiming Europe: A Collection of Essays. Berlin: Young Network Trans Europe. [An earlier version online: Dutton, W. H. (2025), ‘The War on Information in Ukraine: A Global Ecology’, Ukraine Case Studies Working Paper. Washington DC: Portulans Institute. (May 14, 2025). Available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5254417]

An AI generated image of the President negotiating: