Cables From The Diplomatic Frontlines - Evaluating Mike Pompeo's Peace Plan For Ukraine

Unpacking “A Trump Peace Plan for Ukraine” - Mike Pompeo’s op-ed on Ukraine war policy.

• Back in July (and before Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk and Russia’s recent gains in Donbas), the former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo co-published an article in WSJ entitled ‘‘A Trump Peace Plan For Ukraine’’.

• Until recently, the importance of this peace was that Pompeo was seen as the likely Secretary of State or Defense in Trump’s new cabinet.

• But that has now been ruled out and Pompeo will not play any role in the next admin, and Senator Marco Rubio will now be nominated as a Secretary of State instead (and a fox news commentator Pete Hegseth will supposedly be the next Secretary of State - veering towards a clown show here..).

• But even though Pompeo himself is not going to play a part in the future admin, the ideas advanced in the peace must have been confirmed by Trump - since this is a ‘‘Trump peace plan’’ after all, and Pompeo was framing it as Trump’s future plans to end the war in Ukraine.

• And even if Trump is not known for his attention to detail, he must have approved the broad contours of this draft plan.

• (side note: and the reported phone call with Putin - where he allegedly warned the latter not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of major US troop presence in Ukraine, makes one hopeful that he won’t go full soft with Russia.)

• So this is still an instructive/indicative draft plan.

• And even if Pompeo is not returning, at least some elements of this plan are likely to feature in the next admin’s policy.

• And in future posts, we shall unpack other suggested proposals coming out of this admin.

• With all that said, let us now unpack and evaluate the main points of Pompeo’s draft ‘‘peace plan’’.

• 1) Refuting notions of abandonment.

• “Pundits claim that if Donald Trump is re-elected, he will cut off aid to Ukraine, give away its territory, and deal directly with Vladimir Putin to impose an ignominious “peace” on the country.

  There’s no evidence that such capitulation will be part of President Trump’s policy and much evidence to the contrary. It was Mr. Trump who in 2017 lifted the Obama administration’s arms embargo on Ukraine, providing it with the Javelin missiles that helped save Kyiv in the earliest days of Russia’s invasion. More recently, Mr. Trump gave political cover to House Speaker Mike Johnson when he maneuvered to pass additional military aid. Helping Ukraine while revitalizing the American defense industrial base in Alabama, Pennsylvania and Virginia is good policy—and good politics. [emphasis added]”

• First part is true and regular readers will know that for the sake of accuracy and fairness, we frequently highlighted how the Trump admin’s stance on Russia (in spite of his personal rhetoric) was much harsher than the previous Obama admin.

• More interestingly, Pompeo claims that it was Trump that gave the political cover to Mike Johnson to pass the bill: this is largely true, but also something that was previously implicit and Trump never really boasted about this.

• But Pompeo is now making this quite explicit: did Trump agree to this? Or is this a deliberate move to pin Trump to this stance? (since it would be far more politically costly for Trump now to disavow his previous support than to go along with it.)

• Pompeo is also reiterating the focus on strength - lest there is any confusion to his intent:

• “While Mr. Biden stumbled into war through weakness, Mr. Trump could re-establish peace through strength.”

• Once again, note the necessary implication/corollary: getting to peace without show of strength is naturally going to be a display of weakness (this should allay concerns that Trump would just give up on Ukraine and let Russia blast through the frontlines.)

• In addition, if Pompeo is truly willing to paint Biden’s policy as weak, then the stakes for what will be strong are now higher.

• The standard is now much higher..

• He then goes on to list specific policies (comments under each policy proposal in bold):

• • Unleash America’s energy potential. This will fire up the U.S. economy, drive down prices and shrink Mr. Putin’s war-crimes budget.

• Sounds good but this is not really different from what the Biden admin is already doing.

• Trump might claim that Biden is anti-oil/gas but this is not borne out by the facts.

• First of all, the US is now the biggest producer of crude oil under Biden - not Trump.

• In December of 2023, the US set a new monthly record of 13.3m barrels per day - amounting to 20.1% of global crude production.

• No other country produces as much oil as the US.

• And this fact has real-world commercial implications for the oil & gas industry corporations of America - they have hit their max market capitalization and revenue under the current admin.

• Secondly, Biden has granted oil drilling licenses even when facing strong pressure from the left (e.g. Willow oil drilling project in Alaska worth $8bn).

• And finally, Trump’s own billionaire oil/gas tycoon supporters admit that the industry is operating at its maximum capacity and there is little place to go further.

• Here is for example, a Trump supporter and a shale billionaire Harold Hamm saying that the industry is already producing ‘‘everything we can”.

• In other words: great! Full support to Pompeo, but realistically, there is not much more to do here.

• Any further inducements that could expand investment would most likely need to come from global conditions (where OPEC’s action has more weight), than through any specific policy that the Federal government could introduce.

  • Rebuild ties with Saudi Arabia and Israel and work together against Iran. This will stabilize the Middle East, ease the Gaza crisis, and create an opening for the Saudis to join the U.S. in squeezing Russia out of global energy markets.