Opinion | A Trump Security Is Empty, Mr. Zelensky

After months of negotiations, the United States and Ukraine seem to be converging on a set of principles that could provide the basis for an eventual peace agreement with Russia. The core of the proposed deal appears to be the idea that Ukraine would relinquish territory in the contested Donbas region in exchange for robust U.S. security guarantees to ensure that Russia would never attack Ukraine again.

Such an arrangement would be understandable, because President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine would need some way to justify why he would be willing to make a sacrifice opposed by most of his people. But it is also strategically misguided for the simple reason that any security guarantee extended by President Trump would not be remotely credible. To genuinely ensure its security, Ukraine would be far better off demanding concrete contributions to its ability to defend itself than security assurances that no one — and certainly not President Vladimir Putin of Russia — would ever believe.

Doubts about Mr. Trump’s willingness to stand by a U.S. security guarantee for Ukraine start with the fact that despite periodic threats to do so, he has never shown the slightest willingness to directly confront Mr. Putin’s Russia, certainly not militarily. On the contrary, over the past year as president, Mr. Trump significantly curtailed U.S. military and financial support to Ukraine, embraced Russia’s narrative about the war to the point of absurdly blaming Ukraine for starting it and repeatedly held out the prospect of greater U.S.-Russia economic cooperation. If Ukraine can’t rely on Mr. Trump even to provide assistance while it is the object of outright invasion and aggression, it’s hard to see him doing so, let alone confronting Russia militarily, in some lesser contingency just because of a nominal commitment.

Nor is there much reason to believe that putting such a commitment on paper would make a difference to Mr. Trump, and not only because of his long history of allegedly reneging on contracts as a businessman and abandoning or seeking to renegotiate past agreements as a president. Mr. Trump has repeatedly said that even NATO’s Article 5 defense guarantee, which the Senate approved as a treaty, applies in his mind only if allies pay their “bills.” He has said he would encourage the Russians to “do whatever the hell they want” to a NATO member that he felt was delinquent and that the meaning of Article 5 “depends on your definition” — not exactly a categorical statement of allied solidarity.

In a draft agreement the United States has discussed with Ukrainian officials, the conditions for a new security guarantee would apply to a “significant, deliberate and sustained” armed attack by Russia, qualifiers that would allow Mr. Trump to decline to back up the guarantee if he deemed a new attack to be insignificant, accidental or temporary. Indeed, Mr. Trump’s willingness to take Mr. Putin at his word this week that Ukraine attacked one of Mr. Putin’s residences — which Ukraine says was a complete fabrication — foreshadows what could happen in the future: Russia invents a pretext to resume using force against Ukraine and Mr. Trump uses the pretext as an excuse not to support Ukraine. Mr. Trump’s statement in September that a Russian drone incursion into Poland “could have been a mistake” was another example of how easy it would be for him to find a way to avoid upholding a security commitment to Ukraine.

Given these realities, Mr. Zelensky would be naïve and negligent to trade valuable strategic territory for such a dubious guarantee. Instead, he should focus his objectives at the bargaining table on tangible assets that would help with Ukraine’s actual defense and would deter Russia far more than a paper promise.

Elements of such a package could include access to the over $200 billion in frozen Russian sovereign assets held primarily in Europe, the United States and Japan. The European Union, which holds the bulk of the cash, has been reluctant to transfer it to Ukraine, but would most likely do so if it meant ending the war.

Mr. Zelensky should also seek a major new U.S. arms package including Patriot and other air defense systems, long-range missiles, F-16 fighter jets, ammunition and artillery. Some of this weaponry could be financed with the Russian assets, some by the Europeans and other nations; some could be provided from existing U.S. stockpiles using special presidential authority; and some — if Mr. Trump gave the green light — could be funded by Congress.

Another concrete element more valuable than a security guarantee would be Ukrainian control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which Russia has seized. If turned back over to Ukraine as part of a territorial compromise, the plant could be jointly run by the United States and Ukraine, as Mr. Zelensky has proposed, providing reliable energy for mining projects that could generate profits for both the United States and Ukraine, help fund reconstruction and rearmament, and even buy off Russia with electricity.

Finally, the Ukrainian president should make U.S. investment a priority. The presence of U.S. firms and personnel not only would provide a boost to the Ukrainian economy and opportunities to U.S. industry, but also would give the United States an additional, material stake in Ukraine’s future stability and prosperity, and provide additional deterrence against Russia.

None of these steps should be out of reach if Ukraine makes them the prerequisite for any peace agreement and if Mr. Trump sees them as a path to the end of the war he rightly seeks. Nor should they be impossible for Russia to accept if they are linked to a major territorial concession that Russia could claim as the satisfaction of its primary war aim. Mr. Trump would also need to make clear that the failure to accept such terms would mean continued Russian casualties on the battlefield and maintenance of the sanctions that have hurt the Russian economy.

Mr. Zelensky’s relentless focus on getting concrete security guarantees is understandable, but will ultimately prove futile and perhaps even dangerous. It is not too late for him to change his approach. As Mr. Trump acknowledged last weekend, the details of the security guarantees are still far from finalized and he does not have deadlines for an agreement. The terms of a deal will no doubt change again once Russia weighs in.

As talks proceed, Mr. Zelensky should focus on steps that would actually help deter future Russian aggression rather than on promises of empty U.S. security guarantees.

Philip H. Gordon is a scholar at the Brookings Institution. He served as national security adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris and as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs under President Barack Obama. He is the author of “Losing the Long Game: The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East.”

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