Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has claimed that Donald Trump would be open to dramatically ramping up US support for Ukraine if elected president. Pompeo’s plan, however, contradicts Trump's stated position about the conflict to date.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published on Thursday, Pompeo and co-author Mark Urban, a neoconservative strategist, argued there is “much evidence” that Trump would give Ukraine enough aid to dictate peace terms to Russia.
The two policy hawks claimed that Trump’s supply of Javelin missiles to Ukraine in 2017 and his decision not to lobby against the passage of a $61 billion military aid package for Kiev this spring prove that he would be willing to embrace a hawkish plan to tilt the balance of power in Kiev’s favor.
Such a plan would involve ramping up sanctions on Moscow, expanding US energy production to drive down Russia’s oil and gas revenues, forcing NATO members to spend more on defense, and offering Ukraine a $500 billion “lend-lease” fund to purchase arms.
Ukraine would also be given permission to use any kind of weapons to strike targets anywhere in Russia, Pompeo and Urban wrote, claiming that this gloves-off approach would force Moscow to the negotiating table, where it would accept Ukraine joining NATO and the EU, and agree to the “demilitarization” of Crimea, where Russia’s Black Sea fleet is based.
Pompeo’s plan has not been endorsed by Trump, and the former president has repeatedly promised to deliver a more peaceful end to the conflict. Speaking to Fox News after naming Ukraine critic J.D. Vance as his running mate last week, Trump described Russia as “a war machine” that cannot be defeated by the Ukrainian military.
After a phone call with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky last Friday, Trump announced that “both sides will be able to come together and negotiate a deal that ends the violence and paves a path forward to prosperity.”
Trump has never revealed how he would force both sides to the table, telling NBC News last year that “if I tell you exactly, I lose all my bargaining chips.” According to a Bloomberg report earlier this year, Trump would consider cutting off military aid to Kiev unless Zelensky accepted the loss of some of Ukraine’s pre-conflict territory and made peace with Moscow.
However, Trump has expressed support for lending Ukraine money at a preferential rate, and for pressing NATO’s European member states to up their defense spending.
Pompeo, who served as Trump’s CIA director and then secretary of state, is one of numerous Republican figures attempting to shape the policies of a potential second Trump presidency. Last month, a group of Trump’s key advisers handed the former president a dramatically different proposal for Ukraine, which stipulated that Kiev would only get more American weapons if it agreed to a ceasefire based on current battle lines and peace talks with Moscow.