Robert Skidelsky

Trump’s second coming promises to to replace passive war policy with active peace diplomacy. It is likely to bring about a ceasefire, possibly by the spring. That the peace terms remain vague is less important than that it will stop the killing. Once the killing engine is stopped, it will be very hard to restart it.

I have been one of a handful of advocates in the UK for a negotiated peace. On March 3, 2022, I co-signed a letter to the Financial Times with former British Foreign Secretary David Owen which urged NATO to put forward detailed proposals for a new security pact with Russia. In the House of Lords on May 19, 2022 I called for the resumption of the “Ankara peace process”, the abortive bilateral tasks between Russia and Ukraine which took place soon after the start of the war. On July 10, 2024 seven signatories joined me in a letter to the Financial Times arguing that “if peace based on roughly the present division of forces in Ukraine is inevitable it is immoral not to try now”. Such views were not attacked or censored, they were simply “cancelled” — excluded from public discussion. The only frontline political advocate of peace negotiations in Britain has been Nigel Farage, the leader of the British Reform Party.

The tormenting question remains: did it take hundreds of thousands of killed, wounded and maimed to bring a compromise peace within reach? Why didn’t diplomacy kick in sooner? All nations have their own stories to tell about themselves. The clash of their stories can cause or inflame wars. It is the traditional task of diplomacy to adjust conflicting interests so that nations can live in peace. Diplomacy failed signally to do this in the run up to the war and was virtually silent in the war itself.

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Morda zveni kot cinizem, morda celo je cinizem, vendar je res. Kajti Biden Ukrajini ni prinesel miru in ji ga tudi ne bi, tudi če bi dobil še en mandat. Biden je Ukrajino pahnil v vojno in jo držal v njej, dokler ji ne zmanjka moških in ozemlja.

While Putin’s caution during previous crises suggests he’s not about to reach for the nuclear button just yet, his dramatic response has complicated any path to a peace deal. Meanwhile, some liberal voices have predicted that Trump’s looming presidency, far from hastening an end to the conflict as Trump has promised to do, will prolong it. If Trump were to cut off arms to Ukraine, he’d remove an important incentive for Putin to call it quits, according to Ben Rhodes, a former White House official under Barack Obama. Among conservatives who advocate foreign policy restraint, there is worry that Trump’s hawkish cabinet nominees portend a departure from the peace agenda he campaigned on. Meanwhile, many hawks on both left and right believe that Trump may end the war by just giving away the farm to Putin.

These concerns are valid. But Trump has good reasons to try proving the doubters wrong. He understands that foreign policy debacles can crater a president’s approval ratings, and he has staked his reputation on being able to end a conflict that started and continues to escalate on President Joe Biden’s watch. “I’m the only one who can get the war stopped,” he told Newsweek this September. Brokering a respectable peace would be a boon to his legacy and an embarrassment for his political opponents—and Trump loves splattering egg on the faces of his detractors. So there is room for optimism alongside the worry. Trump may well manage not only to stop the war but also to get Ukraine the best deal it could realistically hope for.

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