Trump’s Ukraine approach is a real estate mistake

I am sure President Donald Trump and his envoys to Russia, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, sincerely want to stop the killing in Ukraine, but they are failing and will continue to fail as long as they persist in their naive view that this is just a big real estate deal and that their backgrounds in real estate give them an advantage. It is utter nonsense on multiple levels.
For starters, yes, you could say that Russian President Vladimir Putin is in the real estate business in Ukraine, but not in the way Trump or Witkoff or Kushner have been in the business. Putin is in the real estate business in Ukraine the same way Adolf Hitler was in the real estate business in Poland. Hitler coveted territory not to build a hotel or housing for profit to benefit the local residents. He, instead, coveted real estate to fulfill a nationalist fantasy. Ditto Putin. He has shown no interest in the welfare of Ukraine’s people.
In that kind of situation, having a bunch of “real estate deal guys” as America’s negotiators is a liability, not an advantage. You want a Henry Kissinger or James Baker-type statesman who understands the difference between real estate and war and peace. Real estate is a positive-sum game: Both sides can profit from a well-struck transaction. And that is the goal. In war and peace, when one side holds fascist views and is the clear aggressor, and the other side holds democratic views and is the clear victim, you are in a zero-sum game.
Or as Ronald Reagan famously put it when asked how the Cold War should end, “We win, they lose.”
Reagan understood that real estate deals are purely over value (price per square foot) and interest rates. He understood that war-and-peace deals are about advancing and preserving moral values and strategic interests. And you don’t compromise on those with a fascist aggressor.
We waged three wars, including the Cold War, alongside our allies in Europe to preserve the spread of our shared democratic values and our shared interests — namely, that no major power in Europe that did not share those values could be allowed to dominate the Continent.
I can think of no other American president who would have acted as if America’s values and interests dictated that we now be a neutral arbiter between Russia and Ukraine and, on top of that, an arbiter who tries to make a profit from each side in the process — as Trump has done. This is one of the most shameful episodes in US foreign policy, and the entire Republican Party is complicit in its perpetuation.
I also can think of no other US foreign policy leader who would have said about Putin what Witkoff said about this dictator whose political rivals often end up dead, who engages in vast corruption for himself and his cronies and who does everything he can to undermine free and fair elections in America and the West: “I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy.”
Russian Communists had a term for foreigners who held such views about their leaders: “useful idiots.” You can imagine this retort from JD Vance isolationists: “Hey, Friedman, you and your pals just want to drag America into endless wars.”
Nope, sorry, you have the wrong cowboy. I have written since the first weeks of this war, and repeatedly thereafter, that it is only going to end in, at best, a “dirty deal.” Russia is too big compared with Ukraine, and its willingness to fight on dictates that ending the war will require Ukraine to make concessions. Sad but true — and most Ukrainians will tell you the same today.
But as I wrote last month, there is a huge difference between a “filthy deal” that maximizes Putin’s interests, profits and ability to restart the war at any point of his choosing, and a “dirty deal.” A dirty deal would allow Putin to keep the territory he’s already stolen, but with Western military forces on the ground inside Ukraine that ensure he could never restart the war, except by going to war with all of the West; it would ensure that Putin’s ill-gotten gains were never blessed with formal diplomatic recognition that would reward the acquisition of territory by force; and it would ensure that Ukraine could maintain whatever size army it needed to defend itself and could become a member of the European Union whenever it was ready. That kind of dirty deal would secure Ukraine’s and America’s core interests and values.
JD Vance isolationists retort: “We don’t have the ability to pressure Putin to agree to such a dirty deal, and we don’t want to be in a nuclear war with Russia, thank you very much.” - The New York Times

Thomas Friedman
The author is reporter, and NYT columnist