For months, Donald Trump has promised he alone can end the war in Ukraine. On March 25, the White House announced initial areas of agreement after brokering talks between Russia and Ukraine in Saudi Arabia. The White House statement says Ukraine and Russia will agree to “ensure safe navigation, eliminate the use of force” in the Black Sea. Other news reports note the U.S. has agreed to help Russia sell grain and fertilizer.
But what does history tell us about Trump’s dealmaking? Pundits frequently bolster historically based arguments by referencing some version of George Santayana’s famous quotation, “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” Santayana’s admonition offers strong support for drawing upon historical analogies to predict policy outcomes. Yet, as much as analogies provide guidance from history, they can also mislead if we lock too easily into memories of the past. As international relations scholar Robert Jervis once cautioned, those who remember history might make the opposite mistake.
How could the past mislead us?
Cognitive psychologists provide a reason: We make connections between the present and past based on superficial details and then import analogies uncritically, as if the present were the past. The specifics can draw our attention away from underlying causal influences that should inform these connections.
It’s been three long years since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. History would seem to provide some clues on how this war might end. One analogy in history – the Munich analogy – seems to fit because the details suggest a strong resemblance between the present and past.
These details are an insufficient basis, however, for predicting whether Trump might sell out Ukraine in negotiations and leave it vulnerable to Russian aggression. Based on the details, we might make a correct prediction, but for the wrong reasons. Similar details, in other cases, could thus yield a false-positive connection between the present and past through an overuse of the Munich analogy.
A second analogy – the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact analogy – seems not to fit because the details suggest a lack of resemblance between the prewar division of Poland between Germany and Russia and a possible division of Ukrainian assets between the United States and Russia. The details might lead, then, to an incorrect prediction – a false negative – because we now reject an appropriate comparison. With either analogy, we might ignore critical influences that are common to the present and past.
The Munich analogy: Is Trump offering a naive sellout?
So is it fair to compare Trump’s recent diplomatic efforts to those of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in Munich, in September 1938? After all, that’s when Chamberlain famously surrendered to Adolph Hitler’s demands for the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, a move that in hindsight only emboldened the Nazi leader. Are the current negotiations over Ukraine another instance of “appeasement?” In the 2025 Russia-Ukraine conflict, the specific similarities seem glaring.
First, Chamberlain returned to England waving an agreement with “Herr Hitler.” The British prime minister declared (before a joyous airport crowd) his efforts would spare the world another world war. Trump, in turn, angrily claimed, in a Feb. 28 White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that a deal was required to avoid World War III.
Second, Chamberlain negotiated with Hitler directly and cut Czechoslovakia out of the deliberations. Trump, in turn, sought to negotiate a deal with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, through emissaries, expecting Ukraine to sign on to any agreement.
Third, Czechoslovakia was a roughly two-decades old democracy in Eastern Europe, carved from the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Ukraine, carved from the collapse of the Soviet Union, is a roughly three-decade young democracy.
Fourth, Hitler cloaked his ambitions in irredentist rhetoric. He laid claim to the predominantly German, western portion of Czechoslovakia. In turn, Putin initially claimed to support the independence of the largely Russian-speaking Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine. His recent demands, however, reportedly include full Russian control of these two regions (plus two regions where Russian forces made some headway – Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson).
Fifth, Hitler voiced strong grievances over Germany’s harsh treatment by the Allies at the end of World War I. Putin, in turn, has expressed strong grievances over NATO’s expansion to the Russian border, at the end of the Cold War.
Should we assume from these details that Ukraine will go the way of Czechoslovakia? Hitler took the Sudetenland, and then most of Czechoslovakia, before attacking Poland to begin his march across Europe. With or without a deal, will Putin consume Ukraine and then coerce concessions or seize territory from a significantly weakened NATO alliance? Based on the above specifics, we might think the answer is “yes.” But these tantalizingly suggestive details provide poor grounding for a useful prediction.
A betrayal: Trump’s minerals deal and the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact
By comparison, it might seem a stretch to view Trump’s proposed Ukraine minerals deal in terms of the August 1939 German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact. With the pact, Germany and Russia pledged not to attack each other or to aid each other’s military enemies for a ten-year period. In a secret protocol to the agreement, the two countries also divided Eastern European territory into German and Russian spheres of influence. Poland was divided between the two powers.
Obviously, the mineral deal is far less odious than that move – given what we, or even the parties themselves, currently know about the contours of a future agreement. Trump is proposing a deal with Ukraine, not Russia. The deal might permit equal U.S. and Ukrainian control over the proceeds from exploiting Ukrainian mineral resources, including rare earth minerals (that might, or might not, exist in the quantities that Trump envisions). Whether the resulting revenue will pay off any purported Ukrainian debts to the United States or, instead, permit Ukraine to procure more weapons remains unclear. It’s also unclear how the U.S. and Ukraine might divide the bounty – or what future security guarantees Ukraine might receive.
If we look beyond the seeming dissimilarities, however, we could reasonably view Trump’s deal through the lens of the historic Soviet-Nazi pact. That is, we can imagine a Ukraine divided between the United States and Russia to serve each of these two country’s interests. Trump and his supporters suggest that the deal will benefit Ukrainian security because the United States will want to protect U.S. interests in Ukrainian minerals (or, at least, that Russia will not want to kill Americans and will stay clear of areas under U.S. control). But why should we assume that Trump cares about protecting portions of Ukraine that are not part of the deal?
Beyond that, why should we assume that defending any part of Ukraine against Russian troops is Trump’s best option? Ukrainian assets under effective U.S. control – in a Ukraine under Russian territorial control – could become part of a bigger, better deal that includes Russian minerals, mineral deposits in the eastern part of Ukraine, the relaxing of sanctions against Russia, and a Trump hotel in Moscow. With Trump now reportedly holding out for a “bigger, better deal,” perhaps he is signaling to Russia that his administration is “open for business” and willing to consider any, and all, offers. If so, the details – the lack of a formal pact between Putin and Trump and the promise of an equitable agreement between the United States and Ukraine – have led us to an overly sanguine assessment of the situation.
What can these historical cases tell us about anecdotal reasoning?
Ultimately, the utility of either historical analogy hinges on our understanding of Putin and Trump – the two leaders involved in the bargaining. So what can we learn from the diplomatic track record of the two leaders regarding Ukraine?
What does Trump want?
Trump has expressed a strong interest in Ukrainian assets – and the “enormous economic deals” potentially ahead between the United States and Russia – but no real interest in the future of Ukraine. To the contrary, he has expressed open hostility to the Ukraine government. He held Zelenskyy responsible for the war, criticized the Ukrainian leader as a dictator, and pressed him to accept a deal (that would include Russian control of parts of Ukraine) without placing any such pressure on Putin. Indeed, he cut off military supplies and military intelligence to Ukraine, weakening its capability to resist Russian forces and U.S. diplomatic pressure. Even after a massive Russian missile and drone attack on Ukraine, Trump remarked that Russia was “doing what anybody would do” and noted that Putin (who he found “easier” to deal with) actually “wants to end the war.”
In pressing for a quick deal, then, Trump has overstated the magnitude of Putin’s concessions and understated the challenges to achieving a resolution acceptable to Russia and Ukraine. His White House has stayed on message. Before Trump’s recent phone call with Putin, the White House announced that “we are on the 10-yard line of peace.” After the call, in which Putin agreed only to a temporary halt to attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, the White House announced an energy and infrastructure ceasefire. The resulting deal was far less than that: The United States and Russian agreed only to “develop measures for implementing” an agreement to ban such strikes. Soon, Russia and Ukraine accused each other of violating the ceasefire.
What does Putin want?
Putin, for his part, invaded Ukraine employing various thinly veiled (defensive) pretenses – combating a genocidal Nazi regime in Ukraine and protecting Russia against a Ukrainian and NATO threat. He has never hidden his desire to recover the glory and territory of the former Soviet empire. He has challenged the very legitimacy of Ukraine as an independent state. He instead claims that Ukraine is part of “One Russia” – even a fictitious creation of his predecessor’s failed leadership. Militarily, he has persevered despite the costs imposed on Russia by Western sanctions, the devastating human toll on his country and Ukraine, and international condemnation and isolation.
Diplomatically, Putin has pushed “maximalist” demands, and made only minimal concessions—then, only to retract, qualify, or heavily condition them. After agreeing to a Black Sea ceasefire with Ukraine, Russia added a new condition: the ceasefire would take effect only with the lifting of sanctions on Russian banks, insurers, companies, ports and ships ostensibly to allow Russia to export more agricultural and fertilizer products. Russian demands included reacquiring access to the SWIFT system of international payments. These concessions, if accepted, could cause the sanctions against Russia to unravel.
To be sure, Trump is not Chamberlain and Putin is not Hitler. But Putin has expressed, and revealed, a desire to expand Russian territorial boundaries beyond Ukraine and Trump has shown little inclination to resist. Furthermore, we have two leaders in Trump and Putin who make deals that end up as “bad deals” for most everyone else.
Thus, the relevance of the two analogies resides in the basic proclivities and motives of these leaders. What we cannot know yet is whether the Munich or the aggression-pact analogy, if either, will best predict the eventual outcome. The Munich pact analogy places the focus on Trump’s naivete, indifference, and anxiousness for a “deal.” The aggression-pact analogy, in turn, places the focus on the avarice and self-aggrandizement of both leaders.
James H. Lebovic is a professor of political science and international affairs at The George Washington University. He is the author of The False Promise of Superiority: The United States and Nuclear Deterrence after the Cold War (Oxford University Press, 2023).
