Trump’s Plan: War or Peace?
Terry H. Schwadron
Oct. 17, 2025
Newly heralded peacemaker Donald Trump is actively weighing sending long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine to even the military odds in what he describes as hope to pressure Russia into negotiations to end that war.
But then, just has Trump meets today Friday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House to compare “visions” for how a weapon that could strike 1,500 miles into Russia might be used, we got another curve ball.
After a two-hour conversation with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Trump agreed to meet again in person with Putin, this time in Budapest, again effectively giving Putin more time to continue bombing Ukraine, which is still seeking U.S. military help to stay alive.
Once again, it feels as if Putin is outwitting Trump to win advantage in any potential negotiation, the widely held conclusion of the Alaskan summit last month.
As always, Trump has dropped hints about deploying the weapons but had not made a decision that is public. Since he spoke last to Putin, we have a have another reason for the White House to demur — as it has done repeatedly.
Russia has an equivalent cruise missile, the Kalibr, that it has shown no hesitation to fire frequently into Ukraine, striking civilian neighborhoods and power plants as well as military targets. And this week, Russia and other countries are already thinking about new dangers and retribution, not peacemaking.
If it seems an odd way to approach ceasefire and “peace” to threaten use of cruise missiles that could trigger a response even beyond Ukraine into NATO countries, this is Donald Trump’s projected image of strength through unpredictability.
It’s exactly the kind of unrestrained violence that Trump credits for prompting Iran to pull back from warlike intentions, and indeed the kind of threat of annihilation that he made to Hamas to force this week’s hostage return and Israeli ceasefire. Trump, his supporters, maybe even some critics, see it as a formula for success — though the results seem hazier.
Indeed, as Trump already has declared peace in Gaza, he has renewed threats to Hamas over the failure so far to disarm, saying without explanation that the U.S. will force disarmament with violence. Meanwhile, Hamas is using weapons against Palestinian rivals within Gaza.
Likewise Trump is thumbing his nose at international waters laws by continuing fatal attacks on what he says without evidence are drug smuggling boats — and now publicly authorizing the CIA to run surveillance raids inside Venezuela (What happed to stealth?)
This is the same Trump who sees the need to rename the Defense Department as the War Department at the very time he wants to project the image of peacemaker in pursuit of being awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.
Are we working on war or peace? Whatever the talk of “peace” without practical solution, plan or even a willingness to have the participants in the same room, we face more immediate decisions about how much damage each side can threaten or create.
Aiming the Missiles
For Ukraine, access to Tomahawks means the ability to strike well beyond dug-in troop lines to give new fire to aggressive offensive tactics. Russian leaders already are warning that cruise missiles are hard to distinguish from nuclear weapons, and that their response might be withering.
Russia says allowing the missiles will damage relations with the U.S. and will escalate the conflict because Ukraine would need U.S. help to use the weapons. Within hours of Trump’s “maybe” on sending Tomahawks to Ukraine, Russian precision-guided missiles hit a civilian hospital with 100 patients in eastern Ukraine
Ukraine says changing the war’s standoff status could change with new weaponry, though military analysts do not all agree.
Trump’s hope apparently is that the threat alone sends a strong political signal to the Kremlin to halt the war — which Trump finally has acknowledged is an invasion at the hands of Russia. Still, Trump continues to insist that were he to have been in office in 2022, there magically would have been no invasion because he would have talked Putin out of it.
Of course, all of Trump’s efforts to intervene as a peace broker have failed. Trump has leaned unsuccessfully on Ukraine to cave to Russian territorial demands and threatened more economic sanctions against Russia that for one reason or another never seem to materialize. In the most recent sanction discussions, Trump has demanded that European nations all stop energy trade with Russia to buy American fuels.
Ukraine has built its own missiles, but they are limited in range. Allowing strikes on military-related targets further inside Russia
has been a thorny issue for years in Ukraine’s relationship with Washington, although the Biden administration finally allowed Kyiv’s use of missiles with a range of under 200 miles.
The Weapon
The average price for a single Tomahawk missile is around $1.3 million but the sales prices overseas have varied depending on the purchasing country. In some specific contracts, Japan has paid four times as much and The Netherlands more than 10 times.
Trump turned an allied-aid program with Ukraine into a contractual relationship, forcing NATO to buy American weapons for distribution as they choose in Ukraine.
The Tomahawk is an American-made, mid- and long-range, subsonic, low-altitude weapon, currently used by the U.S., Australia, Britain and The Netherlands in ship and submarine-based land-attack operations. Range can vary depending on platform, system and type of conventional — or nuclear — warhead.
The Tomahawk can use a variety of guidance systems. The missile was developed in the 1970s involving General Dynamics, McDonnell Douglas, Hughes and Raytheon.
The U.S. has at least “several thousand” Tomahawks and would likely only send a small number to Ukraine. It is unclear how much support equipment and personnel might be required to maintain a working system.
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