The Dilemma of an Unwinnable War in Ukraine
Samuel Charap wrote in Foreign Affairs in 2023, during the second year of the Russia-Ukraine War that began in 2022, about war termination in the Russia-Ukraine War:
Since talks will be needed but a [political] settlement is out of the question, the most plausible ending is an armistice agreement. An armistice—essentially a durable cease-fire agreement that does not bridge political divides—would end the hot war between Russia and Ukraine but not their broader conflict. The archetypal case is the 1953 Korean armistice, which dealt exclusively with the mechanics of maintaining a cease-fire and left all political issues of the table. Although North and South Korea are still technically at war, and both claim the entirety of the peninsula as their sovereign territory, the armistice has largely held. Such an unsatisfactory outcome is the most likely way this war will end.1 [my emphasis]
The Ukrainians in 2022 were able to push the Russian army back from some of its territorial gains. In 2023 and going forward, Russia’s advantage in personnel and artillery have enabled them to take additional territory since. Despite the understandable expressions of optimism and the Ukrainians’ notable determination to fight back against the Russians, there seems to be little reasonable expectation that Ukraine can make major territorial gains in the immediate future.
Wars are emotional events and are conducted by human beings. Whether that last factor is good news or bad news from the viewpoint of AI enthusiasts is an open question.
But it means that even if the kind of resolution that Charap describes is in the Big Picture the most desirable outcome, it will be the governments of Ukraine and Russia who have to decide together when it’s time to end the war.
Biden should have been actively pursuing such an option. And it may be that we’ll find out there was more substantive diplomacy to that end going on than has been publicly confirmed.
But the Trump 2.0 Administration seems to be remarkably inept in its diplomacy. And the Orange Anomaly himself seems to have nothing that could reasonably be described as a strategic vision for resolving the Russia-Ukraine War. Or any other foreign policy issue, either, it seems. Unless we count his endless repetition of the word “tariffs,” and his description of how tariffs work sound like he doesn’t actually understand how they actually work.
Meanwhile, the often-overrated economic sanctions on Russia are eroding because they have to be continually adapted to counter evasion techniques.
But both Ukraine and Russia will expect some kind of buy-in by the US and major European nations on whatever armistice agreement they may conclude. And that includes not only economic sanctions but security guarantees, compromises on NATO and EU membership for Ukraine, agreed parameters for reconstruction, status of refugees and immigration on both sides of the Russian-occupied Ukraine, the return of children taken to Russia without the consent of their families or the Ukrainian government, and the status of Russian financial assets frozen in the West. How to proceed on the prosecution of war crimes committed during the war is likely to be a particularly complicated issue.
With Trump 2.0 and Special US Envoy to Everywhere Steve Witkoff driving the diplomatic car on the American side, it’s hard to see how the kind of armistice describing by Charap could be achieved.
Trump 2.0 came out of the election eager to seriously downgrade the quality and capabilities of US diplomacy. Robert Tait reported in December 2024:
Since last month’s election triumph, the president-elect has nominated ambassadors at a rate not recalled in recent memory – including five in a single day this week.
Some appear conspicuously unschooled in the diplomatic arts; others have business links which experts say risk conflicts of interest.
Unlike most countries, which fill ambassadors’ roles from the ranks of professional diplomats, it is customary for US presidents to reward allies and financial backers with ambassadorial jobs – with prize postings like London and Paris almost always going to friends of the man in the oval office.
But Trump has broken new ground with the sheer volume of ambassadorial nominations – and his lack of consideration of their professional suitability.
“It’s not unusual to see a lot of political appointee ambassadors named early in a presidency,” said Dennis Jett, an international relations professor at Pennsylvania State University and author of a book on the history of US ambassadors.
“But I don’t recall any president-elect announcing bunches of ambassadorships like this guy’s doing. They don’t usually dip down into the ambassadorial ranks until they actually are sitting in the White House.
“The other remarkable thing is how stunningly unqualified everyone is. I don’t see anyone there who I think, ‘Now there’s a highly qualified person.’”2
I would like to be optimistic. But Trump 2.0 diplomacy so far has been a genuine disaster and stunningly incompetent. They can’t even prevent Israel, who is heavily dependent of US support for its war-making and genocide-committing, from attacking one country after the other.
Charap, Samuel (2023): An Unwinnable War: Washington Needs an Endgame in Ukraine. Foreign Affairs July/Aug 2023, 22-35.
Tait, Robert (2025): Trump’s ‘stunningly unqualified’ diplomatic team shapes up at breakneck speed. Guardian 12/21/2024. <https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/21/trump-team-cabinet> (Accessed: 2025-17-07).