Is There a Trump Policy on Ukraine Beyond MAGA?

It is often said by supporters of Donald Trump that he plays 4-dimensional chess and that not all his statements should be taken at face-value. The thesis says that Trump is playing an advanced diplomatic game while employing his famed “art of the deal” approach.

For Ukraine, this has come in the shape of denial of Russian responsibility for the conflict, going as far as to suggest that Ukraine had been the one to start the conflict before settling for the idea that though Russia might’ve been the one who attacked the onus was on Ukraine to not let Russia do so, and calling Zelensky a dictator (despite being a democratically elected leader, unlike Putin) or salesman.

To put things into context, while it is true that there haven’t been elections in Ukraine since the start of the war, the truth is that that has been the case because the war has forced the country into martial law (keeping elections from occurring due to the country’s constitution.

As for Russia’s most recent elections, several of the people who would challenge Putin’s policy on Ukraine and other relevant issues have been kept from doing so based on last-minute technicalities that appear every bit as genuine as Disney stories. And Alexei Navalny, the Russian dictator’s prime political opponent was kept in prison in extremely precarious conditions until he eventually passed away.

But in the background to the contradictions to Trump’s approach to Ukraine (one moment he says they won’t be in the negotiation table, the next he says they will) is what could be a potentially significant deal for Ukraine’s mineral resources. If there is a strategy to end the war in Ukraine, it seems to be more focused on ensuring America gains something tangible rather than ensuring global stability (something that would favor America significantly more than any mineral deal Trump could strike).

To be fair to Trump, this transactional approach is not new. The United Nations’ Oil-for-Food Program, implemented in 1995 with strong American influence during the Clinton administration, mirrored similar tactics.

Rather than providing Iraq with the immediate humanitarian aid it needed in the aftermath of the Gulf War—waged in response to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait—the United States, through the United Nations, ensured that such aid came at the cost of Iraq’s most valuable resource: oil. This arrangement limited Iraq’s economic recovery and prolonged its dependence on external actors.

The program also proved to be an open invitation for corruption and ultimately failed in its objectives. It did not prevent the 2003 United States-led invasion of Iraq, which marked the program’s end. Saddam Hussein’s regime circumvented restrictions by smuggling oil, using kickbacks, and bribing officials—diverting billions away from the Iraqi economy and deepening the suffering of ordinary citizens.

As the 2005 Volcker Report revealed, widespread corruption tainted the program, implicating multinational corporations, foreign officials, and even United Nations personnel in illegal dealings with Iraq. This rendered the initiative ineffective and, in many ways, counterproductive to the well-being of the Iraqi people.

More tellingly, in the immediate aftermath of the Gulf War, the United States and its allies failed to act as Saddam Hussein brutally crushed uprisings in both the Kurdish north and the Shia-majority south, massacring thousands. Despite having encouraged these rebellions—strongly suggesting that the regime would not remain in power—Western powers ultimately stood by as Saddam deployed his military to suppress them with overwhelming force. Whether geopolitical calculations tied to oil interests, including later arrangements such as the Oil-for-Food Program, played a role in this inaction remains an open question. Western inaction on the other hand, doesn’t.

There are however significant differences between Ukraine’s situation and Iraq’s. Unlike Iraq, whose war was started by an invasion of their neighbor Kuwait, Ukraine’s war was started by Russia and their invasion of Ukraine.

While Iraq was a brutal dictatorship controlled by a cruel and ruthless character, Ukraine is a democracy (however imperfect) that is led by a man who had every opportunity to escape the war and leave his people for dead and refused to do so.

And the purported deal that Trump said he might be interested in isn’t a multilateral arrangement that is being pushed through the United Nations but rather a bilateral agreement that is meant to favor the United States directly (without offering anything but a cessation of hostilities that might prove temporary).

This approach might appear to American voters as smart business, but it isn’t. This wheeling and dealing ignores the fact that American and Western prosperity is dependent on political stability and that peace in the European continent is of paramount importance to American businesses.

While it’s understandable that the United States may want its interests protected, it’s important that we do not conflate geopolitical interests with material interests. Even if we are to assume a transactional approach, sometimes, a short-term gain comes at the cost of a long-term loss—Forcing Ukraine into a peace deal without significant security guarantees and with significant territorial concessions is one of such cases.

It would be in the Trump administration’s best interest to keep that in mind.