What Trump could do about Ukraine, Iran, China and Crises around the globe

That argument aside, there are certainly some diplomatic opportunities that Mr. Trump can seize, although history and recent ominous warnings suggest that he may be able to soften up his opponents and allies with threats of military action. He doesn’t get what he wants. (To see: Iran, Greenland, Panama.)

Here’s a scorecard to keep handy in the early months.

In the fog of war, a potential deal in Ukraine

There is very little evidence that Mr. Putin is eager for a deal that would extricate him from a war that has already cost Russia nearly 200,000 dead and more than half a million wounded. But the assumption is that you should be looking for an off-ramp. Since his televised debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr. Trump has promised just that — a deal “within 24 hours,” or even one completed before taking the oath of office.

Now, unsurprisingly, it looks a little more complicated. His special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, an 80-year-old retired general who served on Mr. Trump’s first National Security Council, told Fox recently that “we’re aiming for 100 days” to ensure that “a solution is solid, it is sustainable, and that this war will end so that we weigh the carnage. with the Russian leader in almost three years.

What could be a deal? First, most Biden and Trump officials acknowledge, at least privately, that Russia will likely keep its forces in the roughly 20 percent of Ukraine it now occupies — as part of a similar armistice the one that stops, but is not finished. the Korean War in 1953. The hardest part of any agreement is the security agreement. Who guarantees that Mr. Putin will not use the arrest in the fight to rearm, recruit and train new forces, learn from the mistakes of the last three years, and invade again?

Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, argues that Biden’s team has spent the past year “putting the architecture in place” to provide that security. But Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, is suspicious that everything is talked about. Recall that no one paid much attention to the security agreement of 1994 that Ukraine signed with the United States, Great Britain and Russia, among others, says that only NATO membership prevents the Mr. Putin to attack again.