Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.20901/pm.63.1.01
TRANSACTIONAL PEACEMAKING: AN ANALYSIS OF TRUMP’S PEACE INITIATIVE FOR UKRAINE
Petar Popović
; University of Zagreb, Faculty of Political Science
Abstract
This paper analyzes the peace initiative of Donald Trump’s administration aimed at ending the war between Russia and Ukraine in the context of the crisis of the liberal international order. The theoretical framework draws on the literature on post-liberal peace and authoritarian conflict management, with particular attention to concepts such as “revisionist conflict management”, which highlight the central role of transactional logic in contemporary peace processes. The empirical section focuses on the negotiation format employed in Trump’s peace initiative. Specifically, it examines the strategy of separate bilateral negotiations conducted by the United States in parallel with Ukraine and Russia. This format allows the mediator to combine political, security, and economic instruments of pressure, while the peace process itself becomes linked to investment and broader economic arrangements. Such an approach produces a specific form of transactional peace: in practice, a frozen conflict in which a political compromise is shaped and imposed by the dominant power.
Keywords
Trump; Russia; Ukraine; Peace; Transactional Diplomacy; Conflict Management
Hrčak ID:
347117
URI
Publication date:
12.5.2026.
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