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Greg Wilson served as a deputy assistant secretary of the treasury under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush from 1986 to 1989.
President Trump missed two opportunities in the span of a week to effectively leverage US power in negotiations over Ukraine with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. But he can change things at the next juncture if he plays his cards right.
Donald Trump says [ [link removed] ] that he wants Peace through Strength. “Peace through Strength” is a slogan that President Ronald Reagan [ [link removed] ]—under whose administration I served as a deputy assistant secretary of the treasury—helped to popularize.
It’s an important goal in Ukraine, but Trump needs to be mindful of the scorecard so far: He’s down, but not out.
The president missed an opportunity on August 8 [ [link removed] ] to enforce the ceasefire deadline he’d set with Putin just over a week earlier. He missed a second opportunity in Alaska on August 15 [ [link removed] ], when he seemed to back away from even his most modest ambitions for a ceasefire and deal. Trump’s White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy and European leaders earlier today—August 18—opened up his third opportunity. That meeting left things inconclusive, with a possible trilateral summit between the American, Ukrainian, and Russian leaders now on the table.
Putin, meanwhile, got his dream photo op in Alaska and bought precious time to continue his rampage in Ukraine. The Russian dictator is an indicted war criminal per the International Criminal Court [ [link removed] ]. Yet he was greeted by Trump on a red carpet, standing side-by-side on a US military base that was once part of the Russian Empire.
Putin accomplished his mission, Trump did not. No deal. No ceasefire. Horrific Russian bombings of Ukrainian civilian targets continue.
Trump already has the tools to succeed with Ukraine and Russia
It may be an uphill battle, but the US can course correct whenever the whim strikes Trump—or whenever Congress pushes the president to act. We already have some of the tools in our arsenal needed to achieve Peace through Strength in Ukraine.
With the Trump-Putin theatrics over for now, and fresh from his meeting with Zelenskyy, Trump can still be a positive force.
Of course, that means actually flexing some political muscle. With the exception of new secondary tariffs on India [ [link removed] ] and his one-year extension of existing sanctions [ [link removed] ], President Trump has yet to impose any new financial penalties on Russia.
His promise of more US weapons to aid Ukraine remains unfulfilled. Like President Joe Biden before him, President Trump has failed to transfer frozen Russian assets to Ukraine—an important measure that carries no cost for the American taxpayer. Trump has not even imposed any “beautiful” tariffs on Russia, unlike the ones placed on Ukraine and our other allies.
Because he did not follow through on his promise of sanctions if Russia did not agree to a ceasefire, Trump now needs to put in extra work to demonstrate that friends and foes should take his threats seriously.
The president’s only positive initiative to help Ukraine so far is often overlooked, yet it is foundational to ensure that the United States has a future stake in a credible, secure, and enforceable peace for Ukraine. This is the bilateral US-Ukraine minerals agreement [ [link removed] ], which creates a joint Reconstruction Investment Fund.
The minerals agreement is the only significant transaction so far in the second Trump administration directly linking US national security and economic interests to Ukrainian victory.
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Among other things, the agreement states that the US has a vested sovereign as well as commercial interest in peace and security in Ukraine, not only to protect Ukraine’s citizens and economy, but also to implicitly protect what are expected to be significant, long-term US business investments and operations in Ukraine. Article III of the deal [ [link removed] ] sets out its laudable objective as “a tangible demonstration of the United States of America's support for Ukraine's security, prosperity, reconstruction, and integration into global economic frameworks.”
This fund is designed in part as the basis for ongoing US military assistance to Ukraine. Unless Trump wants his minerals deal to suffer the same fate as the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which successive Western and Russian leaders failed to respect, the president should fully implement the agreement and enforce it to the mutual benefit of both Washington and Kyiv.
A new two-pronged strategy for real Peace through Strength in Ukraine
Building on these existing policies, Trump can strengthen his hand by developing a new two-pronged US strategy for Peace through Strength.
The first prong is to fully arm Ukraine militarily to defend its citizens and territory against the Russian invaders. This begins with keeping the public promises Trump made in the White House Oval Office [ [link removed] ] when he met with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on July 14, and then working with our allies to protect Ukraine and Europe from further Russian aggression in Europe.
Both the House [ [link removed] ] and Senate [ [link removed] ] Armed Services Committees have passed their versions of the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which contain needed additional military support for Ukraine, albeit at lower levels than under President Biden. On July 18, the House of Representatives passed its own FY 2026 defense appropriations bill [ [link removed] ], which contains $300 million in new military assistance for Ukraine. Nearly two-thirds of House Republicans voted in favor of assistance to Ukraine, soundly defeating an amendment by Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) to terminate all aid to Ukraine.
The second prong of the Peace through Strength strategy is stiffer, enforceable economic and financial sanctions, including secondary sanctions on Russia’s “Axis of Evil” [ [link removed] ] accomplices: China, Iran, and North Korea. This element of the strategy has several parts, some of which Trump can initiate via executive orders, while new proposals to reinforce his powers await congressional approval.
First, President Trump can use his existing powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA [ [link removed] ]) to impose more and tougher economic sanctions on Russia with stricter enforcement.
Second, Trump can issue an executive order tomorrow using the new authority granted to the president by Congress [ [link removed] ] last year to seize and transfer all of Russia’s frozen sovereign assets sitting idle in the US financial system. He can start with $5 billion immobilized we know is at the Federal Reserve. As much as $50 billion in Russian money [ [link removed] ] in US financial institutions could be used to help Ukraine now at no cost to taxpayers. Trump can then work with other countries to transfer the rest of the estimated $300 billion they hold to Ukraine as a downpayment on full Russian reparations after the war ends and an immediate boost to Kyiv’s war effort.
Turning to Congress: Despite a small but vocal contingent of Republican isolationists, there is strong, bipartisan support for Ukraine on Capitol Hill that can bolster any Trump initiative. For example, the House Financial Services Committee under the leadership of Chairman French Hill (R-AR) passed Rep. Zack Nunn’s (R-IA) PEACE Act [ [link removed] ] by the overwhelming vote of 53-1 on July 22. Not only does it include targeted new secondary sanctions on foreign banks and the Russian energy sector, but it also contains an expedited process to authorize the secretary of the treasury to transfer frozen Russian assets in the US financial system to the Ukraine Support Fund for both economic and military purposes. Legislation [ [link removed] ] memorializing the minerals agreement for economic security and a similar expedited Russian assets seizure provision also has been introduced by Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).
On April 1, Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) introduced the bipartisan Sanctioning Russia Act [ [link removed] ], which is pending in the Senate. It has 83 co-sponsors in the 100-member Senate. A companion bill [ [link removed] ] exists in the House, introduced by Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Mike Quigley (D-IL), which to date has 88 bipartisan co-sponsors.
Will Trump turn things around for Ukraine—or will he strike out?
President Trump missed two critical opportunities to leverage American power in serious negotiations with Putin: When he allowed his first ceasefire deadline to lapse and when he rolled out the red carpet for the Russian dictator in Alaska.
Still, all is not lost. Trump’s meeting with Zelenskyy today—mercifully less eventful than his last—left the door open to a real strategy of Peace through Strength. After his meeting with President Zelenskyy and other European leaders at the White House today, Trump has a shot at a come from behind victory if he announces a credible plan.
The president retains many potent tools for ending the war in Ukraine. If Trump sincerely wants a just peace for Ukraine, as he proclaims, then he will discover that he has the broad support of both the US Congress and the American people [ [link removed] ] to make that happen. He could then enter a prospective trilateral meeting with Putin and Zelenskyy as a decisive player. If, however, he continues to let opportunities pass him by, then his main foreign policy legacy will be one of failure. Millions of Ukrainians will continue to suffer, and that shiny Nobel Peace Prize [ [link removed] ] will remain elusive.
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