Trump's Ukraine Proposal and the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921

When people talk about "peace deals," they usually imagine cheering crowds, treaties signed in grand halls, wars ending forever. But that's not how history works.

Sometimes a treaty doesn't end a war — it simply rearranges it. Sometimes, it guarantees that the next phase will be worse, bloodier, and harder to stop.

That's exactly what we risk today with the Trump administration's Ukraine proposal — and if you want to know what it looks like to "win peace" this way, you don't have to imagine it. Ireland already lived it.

The Anglo-Irish Treaty: A Warning Written in Blood

In 1921, Britain sat across from Irish negotiators at the point of a gun. After years of rebellion, London’s political and military position was weakening. Britain could not afford another full-scale war, especially with empire-wide unrest brewing. So they offered a deal.

The Anglo-Irish Treaty created the Irish Free State — but it left Northern Ireland partitioned under British control. Irish leaders, desperate to avoid mass bloodshed, signed.

Michael Collins, the revolutionary hero who signed the Treaty, knew exactly what it meant:

"I have signed my actual death warrant." (Collins, 1921)

He was right. Ireland plunged into a civil war immediately after the treaty. Then into decades of sectarian violence, bombings, shootings, insurgencies, and repression that only ended — if it ended at all — with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, after thousands of deaths and generations of trauma.

Partition didn't solve the Irish question. It froze it and left it to rot, ensuring endless asymmetric conflict — that is, war fought not by organized armies but by guerrillas, insurgents, and underground movements against state forces.

Trump's Ukraine Plan: Partition 2.0

Now, a century later, we are looking at the same disaster unfolding again.

Trump’s proposed Ukraine "peace" offers Russia the ability to:

• Hold onto occupied Ukrainian territories — de facto recognizing Russian conquest.

• Block Ukraine from joining NATO — stripping away the only real security guarantee Ukraine could have.

• Lift sanctions on Russia — rewarding the aggressor.

• Offer vague "security guarantees" without any real commitment to defend Ukraine in the future.

This is not a peace plan. It's a surrender ceremony disguised as diplomacy.

Ukraine was promised security assurances in 1994 under the Budapest Memorandum, where the United States, United Kingdom, and Russia pledged to respect Ukraine’s borders if it gave up its Soviet nuclear arsenal (Budapest Memorandum, 1994).Breaking that agreement now sends a clear message: treaties with the West are worthless.

Putin’s Position: A Weakened Autocrat in Need of Time

This treaty proposal is not coming from a position of Russian strength — it's coming from Putin’s weakness.

Estimates suggest that up to 85% of Russia’s active military is currently committed in some form to the Ukrainian warfront (Kofman, 2025). Russia's economy is under strain, its military reserves are being scraped thin, and its political system is under increasing pressure (ISW, 2025).

But like Britain in 1921, like Hitler in 1938, like North Vietnam in 1973, Putin doesn’t need this treaty to "win" — he needs it to buy time.

• Hitler used the Munich Agreement to absorb Czechoslovakia without a fight, regroup, and then launch the invasion of Poland in 1939.

• North Vietnam used the 1973 Paris Peace Accords to get the U.S. out, rebuild, and crush South Vietnam within two years.

• Britain used the Anglo-Irish Treaty to preserve strategic interests while sowing the seeds for decades of Irish resistance.

Putin needs breathing space to rearm, recruit, and rebuild. He doesn’t want peace. He wants a pause.

The Future: Partition Means Permanent War

If Trump’s plan goes through, the occupied Ukrainian territories — Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, and potentially others — will function exactly like Northern Ireland did after 1921:

• Pro-Russian forces will dominate.

• Ukrainian partisans and nationalist forces will resist.

• Russia will back its new client states with money, weapons, and covert support.

• Ukraine will bleed slowly, year after year.

Without a complete Russian withdrawal and real sovereignty restored, there can be no true peace. Only asymmetric conflict: car bombs, assassinations, ambushes, and insurgent raids instead of tank battles and artillery duels. Brutal, personal, and unending.

As historian Charles Townshend put it after studying Ireland’s partition:

"Partition was not a solution to the problem: it was a guarantee of continuing instability." (Townshend, 1999)

Exactly the same logic applies here.

Conclusion

Trump's Ukraine plan doesn’t "end" the war — it changes its shape. It formalizes occupation. It promises endless low-level warfare. It condemns the next generation of Ukrainians to fight a dirty war in the shadows.

Just like the Anglo-Irish Treaty did.

If we want to avoid another century of bloodshed, we need to remember the real cost of "peace" signed at gunpoint.

References (APA-7)

• Budapest Memorandum. (1994). Memorandum on Security Assurances in Connection with Ukraine’s Accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. U.N. Digital Library.

• Institute for the Study of War (ISW). (2025). Russian Military Disposition in Ukraine: Spring 2025 Update. Retrieved from https://understandingwar.org

• Kofman, M. (2025). Assessment of Russia’s Military Capacity Post-2024. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

• Townshend, C. (1999). Ireland: The 20th Century. Oxford University Press.