Putting aside that argument, there are certainly some diplomatic opportunities Mr. Trump can seize, though history and ominous recent warnings suggest that he may soften up his adversaries and his allies with threats of military action if he doesn’t get what he wants. (See: Iran, Greenland, Panama.)
Here is a scorecard to keep handy in the first few months.
In the fog of war, a potential Ukraine deal
There is very little evidence that Mr. Putin is eager for a deal that would extract 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 he must be looking for an off-ramp. Since his televised debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr. Trump has been promising just that — a deal “in 24 hours,” or even one completed before he takes 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 “let’s set it at 100 days” to make sure a “solution is solid, it’s sustainable, and that this war ends so that we stop the carnage.” Mr. Trump has said he will meet Mr. Putin “soon,” a notable timing, particularly because Mr. Biden has not talked to the Russian leader in nearly three years.
What might a deal look like? First, most Biden and Trump officials acknowledge, at least in private, that Russia would most likely keep its forces in the roughly 20 percent of Ukraine it now occupies — as part of an armistice similar to the one that halted, but did not end, the Korean War in 1953. The harder part of any agreement is the security accord. Who would guarantee that Mr. Putin wouldn’t use the halt in the fighting to rearm, recruit and train new forces, learn from the mistakes of the past three years, and re-invade?
Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, argues that the Biden team spent the past year “putting the architecture in place” to provide for that security. But Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, is suspicious that it’s all talk. Remembering that no one paid much attention to the 1994 security agreement that Ukraine signed with the U.S., Britain and Russia, among others, he says only NATO membership will keep Mr. Putin from attacking again.
