To End the Ukraine War, Trump Should Think Like Ike
If Trump can channel Eisenhower on Ukraine, he will be able to claim that he has achieved the peace “deal of the century.”
As President Donald Trump struggles to fulfill his campaign promise to bring an immediate end to the war in Ukraine, he and his team should review what another American president did facing a similar challenge seven decades ago. In his 1952 campaign for the White House, Dwight David Eisenhower pledged to end a bloody war that had claimed more than 3 million lives on the Korean Peninsula. Over the next six months, he actually did it. After winning the election but before he was inaugurated, he went to South Korea, overruled its leader, Syngman Rhee, who was determined to fight on to victory, and energized a process that concluded with the signing of the armistice on his 189th day in office. If Trump hopes to match Ike’s record, he has just 121 days left.
When Eisenhower became president in January 1953, the Korean War had been stuck in a stalemate for a year and a half. To remind readers of the history: the war had begun in June 1950, when Kim Il-Sung’s North Korean forces launched a surprise invasion of South Korea, advanced rapidly, and were on the cusp of taking control of the entire peninsula. President Harry Truman ordered General Douglas MacArthur and U.S. troops stationed in Japan to come to the rescue. The Americans rapidly stopped North Korea’s advance, beat it into retreat, and liberated Seoul. Without much thought about the likely consequences, MacArthur’s forces continued their march across the 38th parallel into North Korea, seized the capital Pyongyang, and were advancing toward the Chinese border. For China’s leader Mao Zedong, this posed an unacceptable threat. On November 1, MacArthur was shocked to find a 300,000-strong vanguard of the Chinese army assaulting American and allied forces. In the weeks that followed, what MacArthur and his fellow commanders had dismissed as a “peasant army” not only halted the allied advance but forced them back past the 38th parallel. Despite a U.S.-led counteroffensive, the war soon bogged down in a stalemate, though thousands of combatants continued dying each month.
Reflecting on this history, it is difficult not to hear echoes of what has happened in the past three years since Russian president Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. In February 2022, Russian forces launched their attack, advancing rapidly before stalling on the outskirts of its capital Kyiv. Then in a remarkable feat of courage and determination, Ukrainian fighters with arms and ammunition from the United States and Europe unexpectedly pushed the Russians back to retake about half of the land Russia occupied in its initial offensive. By November, eight months into the war, the rival armies found themselves stuck along a line of control that has not moved substantially since. What American military analysts call Russia’s “lava” advance has been seizing roughly 100 square miles of Ukrainian territory a month in the Donbas. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy long insisted that Ukraine will fight on until it recovers every square inch of its territory. U.S. president Joe Biden and a number of his European colleagues pledged to support Ukraine “for as long as it takes.” But while he refuses to say so publicly, Zelenskyy and his colleagues know that they are losing on the battlefield and have not been able to identify a feasible path to a better outcome.
Eisenhower’s campaign pledge to end the war in Korea struck a chord in a nation that had concluded that it made no sense to continue sending Americans to “die for a tie.” To fulfill his promises, he forged a deal that left Korea divided—but with a peace or “armistice” that was sustainable and gave South Korea an opportunity to build a new nation. As Trump is now trying to forge a sustainable peace, he can find clues from Ike’s leadership in moving from stalemate to peace.
Negotiations between the United States (operating under a U.N. flag), North Korea, and China to end the war began in July 1951—just a year after the war began. After several months of starts and stops it was agreed that the troops would essentially stay where they were, dividing Korea near the 38th parallel. Yet as Soviet leader Joseph Stalin sensed growing American discontent with casualties, he advised Mao to set a “hard line” in negotiations.
The delegations soon deadlocked on the issue of prisoner of war (POW) repatriation. The United States had captured 170,000 North Korean and Chinese combatants; China and North Korea had around 70,000 Koreans and Americans. Mao was determined to reach an “all-for-all” exchange. U.N. Command, however, had several reservations. Truman believed that POWs should not be forced to return to Communist China or North Korea against their will, especially because many were South Koreans and Nationalist Chinese who had been forced into service by the communists. The North Koreans and Chinese, and their Soviet sponsors, found that unacceptable. So, while the negotiations dragged on, so too did intense fighting for another year and into election season in the United States. While the Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson essentially supported Truman’s position on Korea, Eisenhower made this a major issue in the campaign. He pledged to use his authority and skills as a military commander to quickly end the war.
To make this happen, as soon as the election was over, Ike “went to Korea” to talk directly and candidly with South Korean leader Rhee and his military commanders. When Rhee presented to Eisenhower his plans for a new offensive to seize the North and reunify the country, Ike simply said: “no.” In March 1953, when Stalin died, Eisenhower recognized that this would mean declining Soviet support for the war. This presented a window of opportunity for an armistice that Rhee might not like but that Eisenhower believed would be good enough for the United States. In the negotiations that followed, that meant repeatedly overruling his ally—including threatening to cut off fuel from the South Korean army when Rhee threatened to fight on after the United States signed an armistice. In the final stage of negotiations, Rhee attempted to upend the talks by orchestrating a prison break of over 25,000 POWs held by U.N. forces. In response, Eisenhower warned him that “your present course of action will make it impractical for the UN Command to continue to operate jointly with you”—a threat to leave him on his own, unless he fell in line.
At the same time, Eisenhower also employed pressure to win concessions from the North Koreans and Chinese. The South Korean army expanded. The United States removed constraints on Chinese Nationalists located in Taiwan conducting attacks on the Chinese mainland. And most significantly, Eisenhower and his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, used India to signal to the Chinese and North Koreans that “in the absence of satisfactory progress, we intended to move decisively without inhibition in our use of weapons, and would no longer be responsible for confining hostilities to the Korean Peninsula.” This was a thinly-veiled threat to use nuclear weapons against both North Korea and China if the war was not brought to a rapid end. Finally, recognizing that his objective was not simply to end the war but to achieve a sustainable peace, Eisenhower crafted a Mutual Defense Treaty between the United States and South Korea that included a continuing presence of U.S. troops in a joint U.S.-South Korea command. Almost eight decades on, 28,000 American troops remain stationed there.
Ukraine is not Korea. When analyzing analogs for illumination, it is essential to consider both similarities and differences. A key factor in the resolution of the Korean War was the death of Stalin, who had continually pressured the North Koreans and Chinese to continue the war. Since the United States is not a direct party to the war in Ukraine, it has less influence in Kyiv than in Korea. While the Korean Peninsula was divided before the war, Ukraine was not. Perhaps most notably, by the time Eisenhower entered office, negotiations to end the Korean War had been ongoing for years, whereas negotiations for a ceasefire or an armistice in Ukraine have just begun.
The similarities, however, are also instructive. A new president, determined to be a peacemaker, comes to office unencumbered by the legacy of the war and is thus able to make a sharp turn. That president is less vulnerable to criticism from right-wing critics and thus has more flexibility to make concessions without being accused of being weak on communism or failing to win. On the campaign trail, promises to end a war were a winning message with an American electorate that was tired of the killing and did not care much about the details.
The key to Eisenhower’s success in fulfilling his promise will also be essential for Trump. Ike took the lead himself in a direct, focused effort to close the deal. If Trump can channel Eisenhower, using his authority to hammer out an agreement that neither Zelenskyy nor Putin will like but that will end the killing, prevent another outbreak of war, and allow Ukrainians to start rebuilding their country, he will be able to claim that he has achieved the peace “deal of the century.”
About the author: Graham Allison
Dr. Graham Allison is the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he has taught for five decades. Allison is a leading analyst of national security with special interests in nuclear weapons, Russia, China, and decision-making. Allison was the “Founding Dean” of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and, until 2017, served as Director of its Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, which is ranked the “#1 University Affiliated Think Tank” in the world.
Image: Nicole Glass Photography / Shutterstock.com
Editor’s note: This article has been updated at the author’s request to improve clarity.