In the disastrous meeting between Trump and Zelensky, a whiff of another Munich Agreement

Czechoslovakia was not invited to the conference. It was Sept. 30, 1938, in Munich following Adolf Hitler’s threat to start another European war. Britain, France, and Italy pressured the Czechoslovaks to surrender their German-speaking province of the Sudetenland to Germany. Sound familiar?

At the Riyadh Summit between Russia and the United States, Ukraine was on the menu, not at the table. The following week, President Donald Trump’s and Vice President JD Vance’s attempted shakedown in the Oval Office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also had the smell of another Munich Agreement in the works.

Trump is not British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Vladimir Putin is not Hitler. The world of 2025 is not 1938. But the shakedown of Ukraine replays the shameful spirit of the Munich Agreement.

Hitler had launched a propaganda campaign alleging atrocities against the German-speaking Sudetenlanders and decried Czechoslovakia as a fraudulent state, merely a client regime of France. In return, Hitler promised peace. At the Berlin Sportpalast, he declared that the Sudetenland was “the last territorial demand I have to make in Europe.”

Back in London, Chamberlain mused, “How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.” The prime minister then celebrated “peace for our time.”

One year later, Hitler told his generals: “Our enemies are men below average, not men of action, not masters. They are little worms. I saw them at Munich.” He invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia and Poland, and World War II engulfed Europe.

Zelensky came to Washington prepared to sign an agreement. It started as a gangster-style agreement ($500 billion of your minerals or your life!) and morphed into the joint development of Ukraine’s strategic minerals (someday). This was Trump’s extortion for the aid former President Joe Biden had poured into Ukraine, with the Europeans, to keep the country out of the clutches of Putin’s invasion of February 2022.

It was also somehow to be a U.S. contribution to a guarantee of peace for Ukraine. Surely, Putin wouldn’t disrupt strategic mineral mines in which the U.S. had an ownership share by invading the country again? Zelensky was further told he had to negotiate the surrender of parts of Ukraine’s territory (seemingly the full fifth — including Crimea, Kherson in the south and the Donbas in the east— Putin claimed). Disturbingly, Putin’s appetite for Ukraine goes further. As Hitler did with Czechoslovakia, he has denounced Ukraine as an “artificial state.” And Putin added that “modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia” after the communist revolution in 1917, thereby dismissing centuries of Ukrainian cultural identity.

Zelensky was prepared to talk, but only for security guarantees. Vance demanded Zelensky show respect. (Zelensky has thanked the U.S. repeatedly, and even Trump, since the inauguration.) Vance wanted a public obeisance then and there. When Zelensky asked where was the security for Ukraine, Trump bellowed that his failure to “negotiate” was provoking “World War III” — that is, that Putin would launch World War III.

What did Trump and Vance put on the table? Putin’s promise that he would not invade again. They said Zelensky should trust Putin, despite two previous broken Putin promises to keep the peace in Ukraine.

Exposing the fakery and appeasement underlying the Trump deal then got Zelensky summarily bounced from the White House. On March 4, the U.S. paused assistance to Ukraine, and the next day, the U.S. stopped sharing the intelligence Ukraine has relied on for warnings of Russian attacks.

In U.S.-Ukraine talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, last week, the Ukrainians accepted a U.S. proposal for a 30-day ceasefire, and Trump’s team announced the temporary resumption of military aid and intelligence sharing. But there is no indication the gulf between Russian imperial aims and Ukraine’s independent survival has been bridged.

Putin insists on recognition of his annexation of Crimea and the eastern and southern regions that his army has (even if only partially) occupied, He also wants a neutralized Ukraine without allies and without an armed force capable of defending itself. Ukraine appears prepared to concede territory, but only for security that could deter the next Russian invasion.

France and Britain have proposed a deterrent force of European peacekeepers on the ground in Ukraine, but only if backed by U.S. airpower. Trump, like Chamberlain in 1938, refuses, proposing instead that the Ukrainians trust the goodwill of Putin.

Winston Churchill’s prediction made just before the Munich Agreement has echoed through time: “England has been offered a choice between war and shame. She has chosen shame, and will get war.”

The Oval Office shakedown offered Zelensky a choice between “gambling with World War III” or dismembering his country without any prospect that the independence of the rest would be secure.

The other choice is American: Whose side are we on? Putin’s or Zelensky’s? An autocrat’s or a democrat’s? An aggressor’s or his victim’s?

Trump and Vance have flunked this test. The American people should not.

Michael Doyle is a professor of international affairs, law, and political science at Columbia University and the author of “Cold Peace: Avoiding the New Cold War.”