The wrong kind of peace leads to a new war

Benjamin Franklin once wrote to a friend: “In my opinion there never was a good war, nor a bad peace.” But for all his wisdom, the founder of American diplomacy was wrong. While the atrocities of war are never “good,” the use of force can be justified. More importantly, in a moment dominated by the self-proclaimed peacemaker, President Donald Trump, bad peace agreements do exist. That explains the urgent tone of a statement signed on November 22 by 15 leaders from Canada, Europe, and Japan, urging Trump to advocate for a “just and lasting peace” for Ukraine.

Moral and practical fears are intertwined in this appeal. America’s allies fear a peace that would be so unfairly biased in favor of Russia that the Ukrainian people would not accept it, and that would further destroy the social fabric of their already fragile democracy. They also dread a Trump-brokered ceasefire that would reward President Vladimir Putin for his aggression without deterring Russia from future attacks on Ukraine and its European neighbors.

Like a weather vane driven by the same prevailing winds, Trump’s positions are fickle but not random. He favors displays of military force and loud threats against opponents, but as a prelude to dealmaking, not war. His instincts consistently lean toward appeasement to the great powers—as when he argues that Ukraine “never should have started” a war to defend itself, but instead should have “made a deal” with its much larger invader.

Trump seems to have trouble understanding why people would go to war to defend values—he calls American veterans of foreign wars “stupid” and “losers,” according to former aides. His vice president, J.D. Vance, recently explained, approvingly, that Trump wonders why Ukrainians and Russians don’t just “stop killing each other and start trading with each other,” in part because “more peace in the world” is supposedly “good for American workers.”

In short, the guiding principles of Trump's peacemaking policy seem to include a penchant for bluffing, a worldview in which might is superior to right, and the belief that war is bad for business. Unfortunately, history is replete with examples in which precisely such principles led to doomed, failed peace agreements.

For years, the dominant view among historians was that the Treaty of Versailles, imposed on Germany after World War I by America, Britain, France, and other victorious powers, was too harsh, paving the way for Adolf Hitler and a second global conflict. This view was strongly shaped by the book The Economic Consequences of Peace, a polemical and hostile account of the Versailles Peace Conference by British delegate John Maynard Keynes. Later scholarship has produced compelling counterarguments. Keynes has been criticized for ignoring economic facts, starting with Germany’s relative prosperity at the end of the war in 1918, especially compared to the economic devastation inflicted by its military on Belgium, France, and Poland.

Even more relevant to the Trump era is that the great powers bluffed when they drafted the Treaty of Versailles. They turned a blind eye when German leaders assured their own citizens that their troops had been “stabbed in the back” by traitorous politicians and that they had not actually been defeated at the front. America and Britain did not react when Germany stopped paying war reparations and began rearming.

Honesty is important for peace agreements, as is the long-term commitment of the great powers. Margaret Macmillan, author of the monumental work “Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World,” argues in an interview that the political will to implement a peace agreement can be more important than other often-cited factors—such as the severity of the treaty ending the war or the presence of the defeated side in the armistice negotiations. After all, she points out, in 1945 Germany and Japan accepted extremely harsh peace agreements, imposed without any influence on the outcome. “The big difference was the beginning of the Cold War,” which kept America engaged in Asia and Europe. While it sought to contain global communism, American aid in rebuilding those continents “was crucial in convincing many Europeans, including those on the defeated side, that the United States was a benevolent power,” says Professor Macmillan.

History offers lessons about what it means to give in to aggressors and follow the principle that might is right. To appease Hitler, Britain and France betrayed Czechoslovakia in Munich in 1938. Unfortunately, the Nazi leader wanted war, not “peace for our time,” as British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain put it (who, incidentally, did not believe his own words and rushed to rearm Britain).

Money can't buy love.

As for putting profit before principle — that third pillar of Trump’s peacemaking — the historical record is not encouraging. A decade ago, Johannes Regenbrecht was a German diplomat who worked on the Minsk Agreements, a doomed attempt to stop Russia’s slow dismemberment of Ukraine. The negotiations were led in 2015 by France and Germany, with the support of other Western powers. Predicting Trump’s current stance, Germany saw Ukraine as a weak state that could not defend itself militarily, and hoped to expand its trade ties with Russia. The then-chancellor, Angela Merkel, “had no illusions” about Putin’s penchant for deception, the retired diplomat recalls. Her government hoped for a “frozen peace” that would limit Ukrainian losses and prevent further Russian advances into Moldova or NATO territory. Germany even increased its purchases of cheap Russian gas, arguing that the ties of interdependence could appease Russia. Intellectually, German leaders understood the risks, Regenbrecht says. But they were not ready to face the consequences of their own analysis.

Today, the great European powers are placing their faith in strong alliances, in binding agreements backed by sanctions, and in more powerful armed forces—though the build-up is slow. They fear that America is on a different path, one that does not lead to lasting peace.

Translation: NB