Gordon Adams: American University foreign policy expert on whether Trump can deliver peace in Ukraine

A foreign policy expert says it's not clear if Donald Trump can deliver peace in Ukraine.

The US President's hosted talks on ending the conflict with UK and European leaders, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Trump says he's working on holding two-and three-way talks with Russia and Ukraine. 

But American University's Gordon Adams says Trump doesn't have an actual strategy. 

"Hang on to your seatbelt if you want to know what's coming next, because the changeability of this particular President is rampant. Which means tomorrow, it could be a different approach altogether."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Afternoon following that big White House meeting overnight, it looks
like the next step could be Zelenski and Putin meeting
face to face in the next fortnight. Trump says it's
full steam ahead to bring peace to Ukraine.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
We'll see in a certain period of time, not very
far from now, a week or two weeks, we're going
to know whether or not we're going to solve this
or is this horrible fighting and to continue. We'll do
it the best to get it ended.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Doctor Gordon Adams is a professor of US foreign policy
at America University out of Washington, d C. High Gordon, Hi,
are you hopeful that what we saw today may in
fact be a step towards ending the fighting.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
It's not clear to me that it will. There's an
awful lot of things being discussed, but nothing is truly subtled.
Perhaps the only change that's really happened between Alaska and Washington,
DC today is that the President stepped firmly away from
a ceasefire, and it's prepared a lot the negotiations to

(00:58):
go towards some kind of peace agreement, but nobody truly
knows how long that is going to take. Almost nothing
is fully settled right now. So any set of issues
that you deal with in this long lasting war is
still up in the air, and the fighting continues with
the president having stepped away from a ceasefire.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Given though how much we've watched, you know, in Alaska
and here in the White House, doesn't Trump have to
deliver or he'll be humiliated?

Speaker 3 (01:26):
Yes, but it's not clear that he can because by
stepping away from a ceasefire, he has effectively put himself
behind Putin's position. You know, Putin was the one who said,
we're not going to do a ceasefire, we'll do a
peace agreement, and that's been clearly for Putin a step
away from any agreement because as long as he feels
the Russian troops are making small advances, there's no incentive

(01:49):
for him to stop firing, and really no incentive for
a peace agreement at this point. The incentives on the
Russian side are quite weak. We're dealing here, too, with
a transaction. Chief executive in the American government, you know,
hang onto your seat belt if you want to know
what's coming next, because the changeability of this particular president

(02:12):
is rampant, which means tomorrow it could be a different
approach altogether from the one that was making sense today.
He's quite good dealing one on one or in small
groups with people where he's bouncing back and forth between
what they're saying and how he responds in the moment,
but it's not a president with a strategy, so it's
not clear where he will go next and when he

(02:35):
shifts position. It makes it doubly hard for any of
the other players, the Europeans or the Ukrainians, to adjust
and cope and deal. None of the issues that stood
between Russia and Ukraine have been settled as of yet,
none of them.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
It seems to me that apart from from you know,
the board is and how much land has to be
given up, the sticking point may in fact be what
a security agreement looks like. So what does security agreement
look like for Ukraine that Putin's going to be okay with?

Speaker 3 (03:04):
That is one of the that is obviously for the
Ukrainians the key area. It's what Selensky has asked for
repeatedly in the years that these discussions have been going on,
and it's very clear that a huge gap separates the
Russians from the Ukrainians on a deal with respect to
security guarantees. The Russians have made it very very clear

(03:25):
that they do not want any option for Ukrainian membership
in NATO, and they do not want any European, non
Ukrainian troops in Ukraine providing that security guarantee. And I
can assure you that this president is unlikely to provide
American troops as a security guarantee. So from the Ukrainian perspective,

(03:45):
it's not clear what is going to make them happy
if they give up the territory that they now control
that the Russians want. They are effectively abandoning defenses that
work pretty well for them in terms of staying a
Russian advance and the rest of the Ukrainian planes wheat
planes are open for the Russians to start up again

(04:06):
at some other point in time. So this is the
security guarantee issue is the core issue now in this disagreement.
It seems like Ukrainians would be willing to seed some land,
probably the land that the Russians now occupy, but not
the remainder of the Donbas, and they want some troop presence,

(04:27):
not just words from NATO and from the United States,
in the form of a security guarantee, NATO is unlikely
to be able to put troops there, and the United States,
particularly this president, are unlikely to make anything like an
Article five commitment. If you're attack will come at your defense.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
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