On Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky faces an impossible choice. Sign the “peace plan” drafted primarily by a New York real estate developer and a Moscow financier. Or watch American military aid and intelligence support shut down.
The Thanksgiving deadline itself tells the story. Washington is asking Kyiv to give thanks for the dismemberment of its own state.
Trump has since signalled that this is not his final offer, but we should see this for what it is: the culmination of America’s estrangement from its previous Western allies in favour of a new US relationship with Russia.
Two long trajectories meet here: Vladimir Putin’s quarter-century project to rebuild the Russian Empire, and Donald Trump’s explicit promise to treat alliances as transactional deals.
Putin’s war on Ukraine did not begin with the full invasion in 2022. Nor did it begin with the annexation of Crimea in 2014. No, it began with his ascent to power in 2000. Right from the start, Putin’s “Russian World” doctrine positioned Moscow as the protector of all Russian speakers.
When I wrote about Putin’s attack in March 2022, I called it a complete miscalculation. That remains true in military terms because Russia believed this war to be over after a few days instead of dragging on for more than three years.
Despite his military miscalculation, with the new “peace plan”, Putin would win on his strategic objectives. He would establish Russia’s veto over its neighbours’ security arrangements. He would prove borders can be redrawn by force. And he would outlast Western resolve.
So, Putin has been on the same mission for his quarter century in power. Meanwhile, the US under Trump 2.0 has made a 180-degree turn on its post-World War II security positioning. It had been well signalled in advance by the selection of JD Vance as Trump’s running mate. Vance had been among the Senate’s most vocal opponents of Ukraine aid, arguing America’s interests lay elsewhere. From that moment on, it was clear what to expect from a second Trump presidency.
When Trump returned to office in late January, he wasted no time in delivering this American repositioning. On February 12, he held a 90-minute call with Putin and unilaterally announced plans to visit Moscow. NATO allies were not consulted. Nor was the Ukrainian government.
I wrote back then: the West died that day. Not as a collection of democracies, but as a system of mutual consultation and collective defence. If that needed any illustration, Trump publicly berating Zelensky in the Oval Office delivered it shortly afterwards.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin’s talking points began seeping into Western discourse, often repeated by the US administration, and Trump literally had the red carpet rolled out for Putin in Alaska.
Then came the Miami meetings in October. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, and Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, sat down to negotiate Europe’s future. The State Department and career diplomats played no role. Neither did the Europeans.
Over the weekend, some senators claimed Secretary of State Marco Rubio privately called the draft a “Russian wish list”, possibly translated from Russian. That prompted Rubio to later insist the authorship was American.
But it hardly matters who held the pen because one thing is certain: America is bending over backwards to accommodate Russian demands.
The framework is, in effect, a forced Ukrainian surrender in all but name. Ukraine must cede not only Crimea and the Donbas territories that Russia currently occupies but also withdraw from the land its soldiers still hold. They must abandon defensive lines that cost thousands of lives to keep.
Under the agreement, the Ukrainian military will be capped at 600,000 personnel. Long-range strike weapons will be prohibited. Ukraine’s NATO membership will be constitutionally ruled out. Foreign troops – including those under European security guarantees – are forbidden.
In return, Russia receives G8 rehabilitation, sanctions relief and de facto recognition of its conquests. The reconstruction fund includes a clause giving the United States 50 per cent of the profits from investing $100 billion in frozen Russian assets. Reparations become a commercial venture.
A blanket amnesty for war crimes sits alongside vague humanitarian language about returning civilian detainees and abducted children, with no mechanism for reuniting the 20,000 Ukrainian children Kyiv says Russia has taken.
And just to add insult to injury, America promises to be a mediator between NATO and Russia – as if the US was not NATO’s most important member.
The Europeans are, as always, scrambling to salvage Ukrainian sovereignty through counterproposals. Except, this time they are merely editing Washington’s text. They do not even have the strength to come up with a genuine plan of their own.
The outcome for Ukraine is a tragedy. In the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine traded its nuclear weapons for sovereignty. In the failed 2022 Istanbul talks, Ukraine then offered neutrality for territorial integrity. Now, Ukraine must surrender both for survival.
Looking at these developments from New Zealand, there are lessons for us to learn. The geopolitical system being torn down before our eyes once allowed small trading nations like ours to prosper. The previous rules-based order meant economic size did not determine political fate.
But this order no longer exists. And thus, the Ukrainian precedent extends everywhere. Consequently, all the arrangements we used to take for granted - our Exclusive Economic Zone, our Antarctic claims, our Pacific partnerships – are far less secure than they used to be.
In the short to medium term, Washington may not abandon us. However, our relationship with the US will not be the same. It will be based more on transactional deals rather than a genuine, values-based partnership.
Over the course of this year, it has become increasingly obvious that the post-1945 order is truly dead. Trump’s Thanksgiving ultimatum is only the latest confirmation.
Putin spent 25 years building toward this outcome. Trump delivered it in one.
As for New Zealand, the ramifications of this geopolitical shift are so momentous, one would expect we would talk about little else these days.
That we are not does not bode well for New Zealand’s place in the post-rules-based order we have now entered.
To read the article on the Newsroom website, click here.