OPINION: Echoes of 1938 – Real Peace or World War III?

President Donald Trump now finds himself at that same crossroads as British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was in meeting with Adolf Hitler in Munich in 1938. Fresh from his Hamas-Israel ceasefire deal, he is again in pursuit of a peace deal to end Russian President Vladimir Putin’s illegal war of aggression against Ukraine.

Team Trump, as led by Steven Witkoff, the president’s special envoy to Russia, however, is at risk of taking a wrong turning based on Sunday’s Financial Times assessment. Putin is not interested in a lasting peace. He remains solely focused on Ukraine’s complete capitulation and end as an independent state.

Defeat – not just Ukraine’s but Trump’s as well.

If we have learned anything over the last eleven years – since Putin’s first 2014 partial invasion of Ukraine and in the more than three and a half years since he began his full-scale round two on Feb. 24, 2022 – it is that Russia is incapable of conventionally defeating Ukraine.

Yet, as ever, Putin continually tries to secure that which his armies time and time again have proven they are incapable of doing – to try to seize, as a minimum, all of the Donbas at the negotiating table– never mind his desire to take Kyiv.

In their latest meeting Trump purportedly told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that unless Kyiv ceded all of Donetsk – including its strategic defensive lines in “Fortress Donbas” – that Putin would “destroy” all of Ukraine one way or the other.

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The Illusion of a Peace Deal for Ukraine

Anyone who believes Russia is serious about negotiating a peace deal with Ukraine need only look at what Moscow says to be disabused. For those who consider Zelensky to be the one who is obstreperously rejecting reasonable compromises, let them lay out a point-by-point plan of what they and Russia see as the path towards ending this war. I’ll wager nobody can.

That is not going to happen. Short of employing tactical nukes, Russia is incapable of militarily defeating Ukraine on the ground.

It was notable that once aboard Air Force One, Trump denied talking to Zelensky about the Donbas, merely reiterating the White House’s stance that, “We think that what they should do is just stop at the lines where they are – the battle lines.”

Trump is the only global leader who can destroy Ukraine. He will do just that if he abandons military aid to and intelligence sharing with Ukraine and capitulates to Putin during their upcoming Budapest summit. Ukraine cannot survive under the terms being demanded by Putin, which would severely threaten Eastern Europe’s near- and long-term security.

To do so would be inexplicable. As we argued last week, Trump holds the winning hand over Russia. Putin knows it. Europe knows it. Even Ukraine knows it and yet Team Trump refuses to play it; but why?

Many of Trump’s detractors claim it is because the president is a Putin stooge or asset. Others argue it is because he simply wants to cut to the chase and begin striking US business deals and trade agreements with Moscow. Yet others assert it is because he wants to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Is China the real reason?

Team Trump’s motivation could be more about securing Putin as a long-term ally to deter the rise of China. We may be observing a resurgence of the dangerously myopic views of Elbridge Colby, the Defense Undersecretary of Policy, that confronting Beijing must be Washington’s primary goal.

Colby is not wrong about Beijing and the growing threat that Chinese President Xi Jinping and his regime pose to US interests in the Indo-Pacific region. However, he is dead wrong that Putin can be magically won over and turn against Beijing.

There is a method to Trump’s madness – be it in the Middle East, Eastern Europe or now in Venezuela – there is a regional goal in play behind his decision-making. In the Middle East it is all about building upon the Abraham Accords. In Eastern Europe, it is about winning over Putin. And in Venezuela it is about implementing a modern-day Monroe Doctrine – and one that is geared towards saying “hands off” to Beijing, Moscow and Tehran.

A re-run of Munich, 1938?

Yet, when it comes to Ukraine, Team Trump’s present strategic approach is woefully misguided.

Witkoff, as Zelensky noted, is too accepting of Putin’s false narratives. Moscow’s illegal September 2022 referenda in in Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia were a sham that have no basis in international law.

Witkoff’s reported belief that the four regions are now permanently enshrined in Russia’s constitution is also misguided. It matters not –unless, of course, one is willing to argue that the Duma could pass a law enshrining Alaska as once again being part of Mother Russia.

If Ukraine is forced to capitulate along Witkoff’s lines, it will weaken NATO and Eastern Europe’s overall security. And, instead of deterring Xi it could embolden China sooner than later to militarily move on Taiwan.

Witkoff, wittingly or not, is sleepwalking toward a repeat of 1938 and is in danger of making the same mistake with Putin that Chamberlain did with Hitler. Peace in our time is no guarantee of peace throughout our time. Putin – twice in Chechnya, twice in Georgia and now twice in Ukraine – has proven he is not a man of lasting peace.

Given the current state of the battlefield, there is no need to go there. Ukraine has forced Putin onto the ropes: Russia’s war economy continues to implode, Moscow is increasingly dependent on Chinese and North Korean munitions and troops, while Ukraine’s armed forces continue to pummel Russia’s oil and energy infrastructure.

The war in Ukraine is more than a dispute over real estate

Contrary to Trump’s comments reported by the Financial Times: Ukraine is NOT losing the war. Far from it. To the contrary, as we have frequently argued, Ukraine has a solid pathway to victory over Russia  if only Washington and Brussels take four game-changing measures:

• Equipping Ukraine with US-made Tomahawk missiles and German-produced Taurus deep strike weapons
• NATO or a coalition of the willing finally implementing a no-fly zone over Western Ukraine
• Focused interdiction of Russia’s shadow oil & gas fleet operating in the Baltic
• Trump agreeing to and signing the Senate’s secondary Russian sanctions legislation.

In 1938, Chamberlain treated Hitler’s designs on Czechoslovakia as if it were the equivalent of a property dispute. The argument was, in effect, trade the sovereignty of a country for European peace. It worked, however briefly, until it did not work. Soon thereafter, in Poland, and eventually in France, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg, and The Netherlands as Nazi Germany came looking for even more ‘property’ or Lebensraum (living space) as it was euphemistically known.

Fast-forward to yesterday when Trump, while appearing on Fox News, referred to the war in Ukraine as, in effect, a property dispute. Trump, troublingly, argued that “[Putin’s] won certain property. He’s going to take something.”

That argument did not hold water in September 1938, nor should it in October 2025. If it does, then it will send the worst possible message to Beijing with respect to Taiwan and others who have similar designs on their neighbors – they will view it as the US giving them a green light.

Trump is right to try and avoid World War III which could turn the globe into Hollywood’s vision of mushroom clouds and day after Doomsday scenarios. Losing in Ukraine is not the way to do it – winning in Ukraine is the only way to avoid Russia and China’s war against the West rapidly spinning out of control. 

Copyright 2025. Mark C. Toth and Jonathan E. Sweet. All rights reserved.

The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.