The Volokh Conspiracy
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Trump's Shameful Attempt to Reprise the Munich Agreement With Ukraine - and What to do About it
Trump's 28-point "peace" plan for the Russia-Ukraine War is a reprise of the 1938 Munich agreement, which dismembered Czechoslovakia for the benefit of Nazi Germany. But US and European supporters of Ukraine can do much to resist it.
President Trump has presented a 28-point "peace" plan for the Russia-Ukraine war, which - in reality - is a demand for Ukrainian capitulation. The administration threatens to cut off military aid and intelligence sharing if Ukraine refuses.
Among other things, the proposal requires Ukraine to give up extensive territory to Russia - including key strategic regions that Russia does not currently control - and caps the size of the Ukrainian armed forces, while imposing no similar limitations on Russia's military. It also includes a variety of built-in excuses for Russia to renew the war (such as the ban on "Nazi" propaganda in Ukraine, which could be violated whenever some fringe Ukrainian nationalist group makes public statements that could be interpreted as Nazi-like).
There are no meaningful countervailing constraints on Russia. While the Russians are required to stop the war, this is the sort of agreement they have repeatedly violated over the last decade. And the loss of strategic territory combined with limits on Ukrainian military power would make Ukraine intensely vulnerable to any such Russian treachery, which in turn makes the treachery highly likely to occur.
The plan does apparently include an unspecified security "guarantee" for Ukraine. But, absent specific provisions for the use of US or other NATO forces in the event of Russian aggression, such guarantees have little value. Ukraine in fact already got such a guarantee from the US, Britain, and Russia in the 1994 Budapest agreement, in exchange for giving up its nuclear weapons. It failed miserably.
The obvious historical analogue for Trump's plan is the 1938 Munich agreement, under which Britain and France forced Czechoslovakia to give up a large part of its territory to Nazi Germany, in exchange for a promise of peace. The Germans broke the promise the very next year, seizing the rest of Czechoslovakia.
In one crucial way, the Trump deal is is even worse than the Munich agreement was. The latter at least did not limit the size of Czechoslovakia's military. The Trump proposal does just that, with respect to Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky seems inclined to reject the deal, and for good reason. Better to fight on with little or no US support than to accept capitulation.
There is, however, much that US and European supporters of Ukraine can do to counter the Trump plan. Europeans should finally confiscate the $300 billion in Russian state assets currently frozen in the West (mostly in Europe), and use them to fund Ukraine's war effort, thereby offsetting much of the likely decline in US assistance, and sending the Kremlin a powerful signal of allied determination.
In a November 2023 post, I rebutted a range of different objections to confiscating Russian state assets, including 1) claims that it would violate property rights protections in the US and various European constitutions, 2) sovereign immunity arguments, 3) arguments that it would be unfair to the Russian people, 4) slippery slope concerns, and 5) the danger of Russian retaliation. All of these points remain relevant today. Stephen Rademaker, former chief counsel to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, has a recent Washington Post article further addressing the retaliation issue.
In the US, Congress should pass a law granting new military assistance to Ukraine and make delivery nondiscretionary, barring the executive from withholding it. I am not optimistic that Congress will actually do any such thing. But it is worth trying. Aid for Ukraine commands broad public support, and is backed by almost all congressional Democrats, plus a substantial number of Republicans in both the House and the Senate. A concerted bipartisan effort to enact new aid probably won't be able to achieve a veto-proof majority. But it could focus attention on the issue, and make it harder for the administration to stick to its current dangerous course.
In a February 2025 post, I summarized the many moral and strategic reasons why the West should back Ukraine in this conflict, and addressed counterarguments (such as that assistance is too expensive, that it diverts resources from more important foreign policy objectives, or that Russia's war is justified by the need to "protect" the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine). Here, I will merely reiterate that appeasing Vladimir Putin is likely to prove foolish, as well as immoral. His regime has repeatedly demonstrated that it has a deep hostility to Western liberal democracy, and that it cannot be trusted to abide by any agreements, unless compelled by the threat of overwhelming force.
