Conceding Territory to Russia Will Only Fuel Further Aggression
History has proven the ineffectiveness of the “land for peace” principle. Attempting to appease Russian aggression by forcing Ukraine into a peace deal will only encourage further hostility. President-elect Donald Trump has claimed he will end the war in Ukraine upon returning to the Oval Office, despite no evidence of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s willingness to compromise. Trump has proposed appointing a “very high-level special envoy” to negotiate a deal. While European leaders may disdain Trump, they seem to agree on the feasibility of trading land for peace. “I think everyone has more or less come to that conclusion. It’s hard to say publicly because it means we are going to reward aggression,” said former French Ambassador to the U.S. Gérard Araud in an interview with the Washington Post. Araud is right. Rewarding Putin with territorial concessions after his brutal war against Ukraine will only lead to further aggression against Ukraine or new aggression against other Russian neighbours.
Trading territory for security guarantees is also futile, given that the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which guaranteed Ukraine’s territorial integrity in exchange for its nuclear disarmament, was itself considered a security guarantee. The core issue is that the notion of “land for peace” is fundamentally flawed.
Trading land for peace has rarely worked or protected the interests of the weak against the predation of the strong. The transcontinental expansion of the United States occurred against the backdrop of “land for peace” agreements with various Native American tribes, a few of which Washington honoured when its interests changed. In the Seventeen-Point Agreement with Tibet, the Chinese Communist authorities promised to leave Tibet’s political system unchanged. Instead of bringing peace, this agreement preluded Tibet’s annexation by the Communist Party and the destruction of its cultural heritage. History offers numerous similar examples.
Ceding the Sudetenland to Germany did not prevent World War II—in fact, it may have accelerated it, as Adolf Hitler concluded that the West lacked the backbone to resist. A notable example of “land for peace” diplomacy was the Camp David Accords, where Israel traded the Sinai Peninsula for diplomatic recognition by Egypt. This 1978 agreement earned Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat the Nobel Peace Prize. While the “land for peace” formula became a cornerstone for subsequent diplomacy, the Camp David example stands out for a simple reason: Sadat sought peace not because he received land, but because he realised after the 1973 war that conflict could not achieve his goals.
This factor eluded American and European diplomats, who quickly made “land for peace” the basis for further Arab-Israeli diplomacy. The 1993 Oslo Accords, for example, granted the Palestinian Authority control over much of the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank. The Palestine Liberation Organization turned these areas into havens for terrorism. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon exacerbated the problem by forcing Israel to withdraw completely from Gaza. The following year, Hamas took control of the territory and immediately began transforming it into a terrorist base for continued attacks on the Jewish state.
The same happened with Lebanon. Israel sought to trade its buffer zone in southern Lebanon for peace but instead received over 100,000 rockets on its border and Hezbollah tunnels beneath it. Simply put, every time Israel traded land for peace, it received war and terror. The issue, contrary to the simplified worldview of diplomats, was never a mere territorial dispute but rather the ideology and predatory nature of the enemy. This is why the “land for peace” formula for Ukraine not only fails to bring peace, but ultimately promises new conflict.
Just as Hamas seeks the destruction of Israel and the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah vowed to eradicate the Jewish people wherever they live, Putin denies any legitimacy to Ukraine’s existence. His pre-war speeches and articles assert that Ukrainians cannot exist separately from Russia.
It’s time to abandon the idea of “land for peace” and recognize that true peace comes only when military defeats force aggressors to surrender unconditionally.