LONDON, U.K.— If you are getting tired of the on-again/off-again Ukraine “peace deal” that has been hogging the headlines for the past few months, relief is at hand. The Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 will be announced on Oct. 10, but Donald Trump will not get it. This will enrage the American president, but the topic of peace talks will then recede into the background until further notice.

There was no good reason to have peace talks at this point because neither side is ready to stop fighting. Wars generally end when both parties conclude that nothing can be gained by further fighting, and Russia has not yet reached that conclusion. Ukraine would agree to a ceasefire, but not on the terms Moscow would demand. So why bother?

Nobody had been bothering for the past three years, but then along came Trump, determined to shape a “peace deal” between two countries about which he knows little and cares less. Why? Just to win a bauble called the Nobel Peace Prize because Barack Obama got it first, and that wasn’t fair.

The United States is the world’s greatest military and economic power, and all that power is now at the disposal of a vain and ignorant man who wants the prize, so he cannot be ignored. Therefore, for the past six months, Russia and Ukraine have both been pretending that they are ready to negotiate a peace settlement, but neither of them really wants it now.

The Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin, staked everything on winning his “war of choice,” which was supposed to last only three days. His plan for a brilliant surprise attack and a speedy victory fell apart when the Ukrainians actually fought back.

Three-and-a-half years and at least a quarter-million dead Russians later, he must have a very big victory to justify the carnage, and he cannot stop until he gets it.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy cannot let Putin have that victory because it would mean the end of an independent Ukraine. The whole idea of a separate Ukrainian identity, in Putin’s mind, is an obscenity which it is his historical duty to reverse.

Indeed, the one crime for which Putin has actually been charged by the International Criminal Court is the unlawful deportation and “re-education” of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children who are forcibly indoctrinated to be Russians instead.

Coming from a real-estate background, Trump thinks the war is just about territory, but it is also about survival: national survival in Ukraine’s case, and maybe even personal survival in Putin’s case. Zelenskyy and Putin will both humour Trump up to a certain point, but they will not put his goal (the Nobel) before their own interests.

A defeated Ukraine really could disappear into a century of subjugation, like Poland under Russian rule from the late 1700s to the early 20^th century. Zelenskyy bears a heavy burden of responsibility, so he swallows his pride and smiles when Trump patronizes him. But he will not gamble Ukraine’s future to please the Don.

Russia is too big to suffer permanent defeat, and Putin doesn’t have to beg and scrape so much since Trump is (mystifyingly) in awe of him, so all the more he is unwilling to sacrifice his own goals to Trump’s whims. The conquest—“reconquest,” he would call it—of Ukraine is his heritage project, and he can still keep the war going for years if necessary.

Maybe Ukraine can, too, and it has every incentive to try. At the current snail’s pace of advance, the Russians won’t reach Kiev for about five years, and all sorts of things can change in that time. The truth is that both Putin and Zelenskyy privately view Trump with contempt, and neither will sign up to a premature peace deal to satisfy him.

Meanwhile, Trump is so obsessed with the Nobel Prize that he cold-called the Norwegian finance minister last week to press for it (and mentioned tariffs as an incentive for the Norwegians to give him what he wants). He claims to have settled six other wars in the past six months (several of which didn’t even happen).

This week Trump was caught on an open mic in the White House telling French President Emmanuel Macron: “I think he [Putin] wants to make a deal. I think he wants to make a deal for me. You understand that? As crazy as that sounds.” Completely delusional.

The man is ridiculous but very powerful, and for the moment most of the other players must dance to his tune. But the Nobel committee is mostly retired Norwegian politicians who are not in his thrall, and once it is clear that Trump is not getting the prize he will probably move on to other distractions. At least until next summer, when he may start “peacemaking” again.

Gwynne Dyer’s new book is Intervention Earth: Life-Saving Ideas from the World’s Climate Engineers. Last year’s book, The Shortest History of War, is also still available.

The Hill Times

 

See all stories BY GWYNNE DYER