Trump’s Ukraine Plan is a Path to World War III

Trump’s so-called peace plan for Ukraine reveals a critical misunderstanding of Vladimir Putin’s motives, ambitions, and timeline.

Licensed by the author from Envato Elements

You can sometimes trace the start of a global catastrophe to a single, avoidable decision. Sarajevo, 1914. The Sudetenland, 1938. And now, potentially, Washington, 2025.

Just when you thought the US, after a rough start earlier this year, finally got on the right path regarding Ukraine support, the administration revealed a 28-point plan that seems (on its face) very pro-Russian.

Let’s not mince words: It’s appeasement.

The reported “plan” coming out of the Trump administration is one of those Sarajevo moments. A hinge in history. A proposal so lopsided, so strategically reckless, that European analysts are openly comparing it to Munich.

Ukrainian officials are calling it capitulation. And the Kremlin is treating it like the best Christmas gift they’ve gotten since Stalin nationalized Santa.

This isn’t hyperbole.

The leaked plan, confirmed by The Atlantic and hinted at by Trump’s own envoys, demands that Ukraine surrender territory it still controls, dismantle half of its army, abandon long-range weapons, sever ties with Western militaries, and permanently bar foreign troops from its soil.

In return, it gets a vague American “security guarantee” (to be negotiated AFTER the signing) with all the strength of a handshake in a dark alley. To be clear, this enigmatic security guarantee likely wouldn’t include an Article 5-style US response.

This “plan” is a roadmap to global war.

And it’s far more dangerous than anything Trump has proposed for Ukraine before. Because it doesn’t just weaken Ukraine. It destabilizes the entire European security system and invites Vladimir Putin to do something he has always wanted to do: move on NATO without firing the first shot.

Trump’s Transactional Blind Spot

Every president brings a worldview into the Oval Office.

Trump’s is simple: everything is a deal, and every deal must have an immediate, tangible payoff. If he can’t point to a profit, a percentage, or a headline bragging about “getting something big,” the issue slides off his radar like oil on glass.

That mindset is fine in real estate; it’s lethal in geopolitics.

Trump doesn’t see Latvia, Lithuania, or Estonia as anything more than postage-stamp economies perched on Russia’s front porch. To him, they aren’t allies, they’re line items.

Their value isn’t measured in strategic depth, forward airfields, shared intelligence networks, or the fact that their membership in NATO blocks Russia from pushing its borders to the Baltic Sea.

Their value, in Trump’s frame, is measured in dollars, mineral rights, and favored trade terms. If that price tag looks small, he assumes the commitment should be small too.

That’s the blind spot.

Because for Putin, those same countries aren’t line items. They’re opportunities. Every one of them represents a chance to fracture NATO, humiliate the West, and demonstrate that America’s security guarantees are as thin as the paper they’re printed on.

If Trump pressures Ukraine into accepting a deal that leaves it defanged and defenseless, Putin will read that as open season. And the next target won’t need to be tackled in a conventional invasion.

He can move with “peacekeeping missions,” local proxies, “security inspections,” or whatever euphemism Moscow invents next.

Under this kind of peace deal, Trump could claim he ended the war. Putin could claim he restored regional stability. And while both men congratulate themselves, Latvia could suddenly find Russian forces “stabilizing” territory a few miles inside its border.

That’s where the blind spot becomes a fault line.

Trump’s instinct is to avoid foreign entanglements unless they deliver a visible benefit to him or the country as he defines it. If that logic extends to Article 5, a country like Latvia might find itself standing alone. And Putin, who has spent decades watching American politics with the patience of a man ice fishing in Texas, would seize on that hesitation instantly.

The risk isn’t that Trump wants war; he doesn’t. The risk is that he doesn’t recognize how close you can get to war by ignoring the things that prevent it.

A president who sees alliances as invoices and security guarantees as optional add-ons could walk the world straight into the kind of crisis the Cold War narrowly avoided.

It wouldn’t take a Warsaw Pact tank column rolling across Europe. All it takes is a dictator testing the limits and a US president deciding the test isn’t worth the trouble.

That’s the danger. Not aggression, but indifference.

Putin’s Dream Scenario

Putin has spent twenty-five years trying to solve the same strategic puzzle: how to break Europe’s security architecture without firing on an American soldier.

A forced “peace” in Ukraine, drafted in Washington and blessed in Moscow, gives him exactly that.

If the US pushes Ukraine into a deal that strips it of the ability to defend itself, Putin gets a defeated neighbor without paying the cost of actually defeating it. A crippled Ukrainian military. Frozen lines that Moscow can violate at will. A US security guarantee that means little because it was issued by a president who sees alliances the way accountants see subscription fees.

This is everything the Kremlin has wanted since the day it rolled into Crimea.

Under this new plan, Ukraine would be forced to give up the entire Donbas. Axios

And once Ukraine is carved up on paper, Putin finally gets what his intelligence chiefs haven’t stopped whispering about since 2014: an open field test of NATO’s credibility. Because the moment Ukraine is boxed into a treaty that forbids it from helping itself, Moscow will turn to the Baltics; the countries Putin openly calls “historical mistakes.”

He won’t need tanks in the streets of Riga on day one. All he needs is a provocation: a cyberattack pinned on “nationalists,” a border incident manufactured by Russian media, a demand to “inspect” weapons shipments meant for Ukraine.

Then he watches.

If Washington hesitates, even for a news cycle, the message is unmistakable: NATO’s shield has a wobble. Do you really believe that someone as transactional as Trump will send US troops to defend Latvia or Estonia in the event of a Russian incursion?

That single moment of doubt is what the Kremlin has been waiting for.

It tells Moscow that a small ally can be isolated, pressured, or partially occupied without triggering a US response.

Putin is getting old and he feels it. He knows his time on the clock is coming to an end sooner rather than later. For him, it’s now or never.

Putin’s generals won’t misread a Trump hesitation. They’ll interpret it the way Soviet planners once interpreted weak signals from Western capitals: as permission. And they’ll push until someone pushes back.

The real nightmare scenario is a column moving slowly and deliberately, daring NATO to respond, while Washington debates whether Latvia, population two million, is “worth” a confrontation.

That is how major wars begin: not with a surprise attack, but with a dictator discovering a vacuum where deterrence was supposed to be.

And in that vacuum, Putin’s dream becomes reality. A fractured NATO. A silenced Ukraine. A Russia that suddenly looks more like the Soviet Union than at any point since 1988.

You don’t need a crystal ball to see where the danger lies. You only need a Kremlin that never stopped believing the West would eventually talk itself out of defending the very order it built.

Trump Is Forgetting His Own Lesson

There’s a strange irony in all of this: Donald Trump already lived through a political firestorm created by abandoning an ally under pressure, yet the current Ukraine proposal carries the fingerprints of the same mistake.

The lesson was Afghanistan.

The retreat didn’t begin under Biden; it began under Trump, when his first administration struck the Doha deal with the Taliban and set the stage for withdrawal.

Biden executed it, and took the brunt of the political blast. The American public saw the scenes at Hamid Karzai International Airport and concluded that when Washington pulls the plug on a partner state, the collapse is catastrophic and the blame lands on whoever set the chain reaction in motion.

The reputational damage lasted years.

Trump is now standing on the edge of a similar trap.

If the United States pressures Ukraine into a demilitarized settlement and cuts off military support, the aftermath will be shown in real time through satellite imagery, casualty reports, and the sudden movement of Russian forces west of the Dnipro. Every mile Moscow advances will be framed as the direct consequence of an American political choice.

Trump watched the political cost of perceived abandonment once. He should understand how quickly the narrative forms: the United States pressured an ally into concessions, then watched that ally buckle under the strain.

That image is sticky. It follows administrations. It follows presidents. It becomes their legacy.

After the ridiculous Alaska summit, Trump seemed to finally get on the right track with Ukraine support. It was a political win that Trump could claim for himself, all while shifting the costs to Europe, keeping Ukraine fighting with minimal direct US expenditure, and pushing foreign governments to buy American weapons in bulk.

That approach stabilized the battlefield without pulling the US into large troop commitments. It was a solution… messy, but functional.

This new proposal nukes that entire framework from orbit.

Instead of letting Ukraine and the Europeans keep the war contained, it risks handing Russia the very thing Trump always feared: a bigger, costlier crisis that eventually drags the United States back in anyway.

Because once Ukraine is forced into a defensive crawl, Russia will test boundaries elsewhere. And if one of those boundaries happens to be NATO’s eastern flank, no US president gets to shrug and walk away.

In other words, Trump once understood the value of avoiding a high-profile collapse. He once understood the cost of appearing to abandon partners suddenly. He once understood how fragile geopolitical credibility can be, and how expensive it is to repair.

He’s now reaching for a policy that ignores every one of those hard-earned lessons.

A Strategic Miscalculation With Global Consequences

If Washington forces this blueprint onto Kyiv and calls it peace, the first domino falls immediately: Ukraine is shoved into a posture of forced neutrality.

A country that has bled for sovereignty would be asked to stand down, shrink its military, and trust that the Kremlin will respect a demilitarized buffer sitting right across from Belgorod.

History suggests the opposite.

Moscow treats weakness as an invitation, not a settlement. Ukraine would be frozen in place with no leverage, no long-range weapons, and no credible defense architecture left.

The next consequence is just as obvious. Russia would take whatever concessions it can get on paper, pocket them, and move directly into the rearm-and-rebuild phase.

Sanctions would become harder to enforce or disappear entirely under the new peace plan. Western unity would crack. And with Ukraine contained, the Russian General Staff would shift to whatever comes next; whether that means further expansion, coercion of neighbors, or pressure on NATO’s eastern members.

The Kremlin has been transparent about its long-term goals for years. It wants a veto over the security policies of former Soviet states. A forced “peace” simply accelerates that ambition.

Beijing would watch all of this with great interest.

Licensed by the author from Envato Elements

A US-endorsed capitulation in Eastern Europe sends a message that alliances and security guarantees can be bargained away if the timing is inconvenient for Washington.

That is exactly the signal China has been waiting for.

The Chinese leadership believes time favors their position on Taiwan, and an American deterrent that just crumbled under pressure in Ukraine is far less credible in the Pacific.

The People’s Liberation Army would take this as evidence that the United States speaks firmly but acts softly.

Then comes the twist no one seems to be thinking through: if the United States withdraws from Europe under the illusion that it is “focusing on China,” it will get its China fight sooner than expected, and under worse conditions.

China finally attempts to invade Taiwan.

A weakened NATO, a defeated Ukraine, and a triumphant Russia create the nightmare scenario where Washington is forced into a two-theater crisis with fewer partners and less political capital.

North Korea would not sit still either. Pyongyang has always calibrated its aggression based on how much attention it believes Washington can spare.

If the United States is scrambling to deter Beijing, Kim Jong Un may see an opening to strike the Seoul. A nuclear-armed dictatorship that senses distraction is dangerous.

One that also sees the US abandon an ally is even worse.

Meanwhile, Iran has resumed full missile and drone production. They see the US distracted and finally decide that now is the time to eliminate the state of Israel once and for all.

Now we are in a truly global war: Russia pushing into Europe proper, China invading Taiwan, the DPRK attacking South Korea, and Iran landing ground forces in the West Bank.

Implausible? You’d be surprised how quickly the dominos fall when the conditions are right.

Meanwhile, NATO would feel the full weight of the disaster. If the United States imposes a settlement that publicly abandons Ukraine’s defense, Europe will openly question whether NATO has any relevance at all.

The entire deterrence structure of the alliance depends on a belief that the US will show up when called. Undermining that belief fractures the alliance faster than any Russian disinformation campaign could. The frontline states, especially the Baltics, would be left wondering whether their security guarantees are valid or conditional.

With that fracture comes the return of a European strategic environment eerily similar to the 1930s: re-armed states, deeply anxious, operating under a mix of fear and mistrust.

Europe’s governments will hedge. Defense policies will diverge. Small states will look for bilateral protection pacts. Larger states will begin carving out security zones. Europe will once again resemble its former self from the 1920s and 1930s.

That is the opposite of what has kept Europe stable for eighty years.

This proposal is not a peace plan. It is a detour toward a far larger conflict. The idea that ending support for Ukraine will end the war misunderstands the nature of autocracies.

Wars do not end when democracies retreat. They end when aggressors are stopped.

And the next war under this framework will not be small.

Trump can still avoid this mistake. He can still hold to the strategy that was working:
A well-armed Ukraine, a strong NATO, and a Russia too exhausted to gamble again.

But if he chooses the Witkoff plan… if he chooses to break Ukraine in exchange for a diplomatic headline, then historians will mark this moment as the turning point.

The decision that made World War III imaginable.

Appeasement never buys peace. It rents it. And the bill always comes due.

Слава Україні!

Note: I’m making comments open to everybody, for now. But this is the type of piece that attracts Russian trolls. Please use the “report comment” function so I get notified. I am pro-Ukraine. I’ve been writing about Ukraine since 2014. Disagreements are fine, but Kremlin talking points on my publication will get insta-banned. Thanks for reading. W