How Congress Can Help Ukraine
How Congress Can Help Ukraine
The Taiwan Relations Act Should Serve as a Model
Brendan Simms and Edward Siddle
April 14, 2026
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Since the beginning of his second term, U.S. President Donald Trump has taken a contradictory approach to the war in Ukraine and how it should end. In September 2025, Trump said that Ukrainians should “get their land back” and that Russia was “a paper tiger.” Just two months later, however, he presented a 28-point peace plan widely seen as favorable to Russia, saying that Ukraine would “lose in a short period of time” if it did not agree to the plan. Since then, Trump has continued his efforts to end the war as quickly as possible, even if that path results in a bad deal for Ukraine. Such an approach is insufficient to ensure that Ukraine can maintain its sovereignty and remain intact.
But Ukraine’s survival is not up to Trump alone. Congress has the tools to shape U.S. policy toward Kyiv regardless of the president’s position. It also has historical models for action: the Taiwan Relations Act and the bill to lift the Bosnian arms embargo. In 1979, after President Jimmy Carter withdrew diplomatic recognition of Taipei in favor of Beijing, Congress intervened to preserve U.S. links to the island. Through the Taiwan Relations Act, Congress used its authority to regulate U.S. commerce, cooperate on security measures, and sell arms for defensive purposes, ensuring that Washington and Taipei maintained relations, albeit informally. The act committed the United States to a position of strategic ambiguity that required it to maintain the ability to defend Taiwan militarily but without definitively committing U.S. forces. This legislative commitment to Taiwan enabled Congress to constrain the executive’s policymaking flexibility without trespassing on its diplomatic authority.
Nearly 15 years later, in July 1995, Congress acted again to shape the president’s foreign policy, voting to lift an arms embargo on Bosnia and Herzegovina. President Bill Clinton had supported the embargo as a means to limit violence in the country’s civil war, whereas Congress saw it as limiting Bosnian Muslims’ ability to protect themselves from violence by Bosnian Serbs. Although Clinton vetoed the bill, its passage sent a message to the president that Congress was watching. Just two weeks later, the president backed a NATO bombing campaign targeting Bosnian Serb positions.
Congress can apply these models of action to Ukraine by advancing a bipartisan “Ukraine Relations Act” that affirms U.S. support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and provides strong security guarantees against future Russian aggression. It would maximize the power and influence Congress has over foreign policy by shaping the conditions under which territorial disputes are negotiated and enforced. When it comes to ending the war, the passage of such an act would strengthen Ukraine’s position in negotiations and make it harder for Trump to unilaterally force Kyiv to assent to Russian demands.
Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have already vocally rebuked Trump’s efforts to push any peace deal—including the 28-point plan—that would not sufficiently help Kyiv. Moving forward, they can and must take matters into their own hands, even if the president is hesitant. The Taiwan Relations Act, after all, was signed only reluctantly by Carter after it passed the House and the Senate almost unanimously, and the vote on the Bosnian arms embargo pressured Clinton to change his approach. Even if a Ukraine Relations Act failed to pass, the congressional effort to set it up could apply pressure on the Trump administration to give Ukraine more support in its quest for an end to the war that does not leave it at Russia’s mercy. Kyiv may not have many cards to play in negotiations over a cease-fire, as Trump himself has said. But Congress can step up and give it a better hand.
AN ACT OF CONGRESS
A Ukraine Relations Act would first and foremost affirm that the United States would not tolerate any concessions of Ukrainian territory to Russia. This would constrain both the president and U.S. adversaries. Because the executive branch controls matters of territorial recognition, Trump could, in theory, endorse a peace deal that recognized Russia’s occupation of Ukrainian territory as legitimate (although the occupation would still be illegal under international law). But Congress retains the practical authority over sanctions, trade, appropriations, and security assistance that could strengthen Ukraine’s hand at the negotiating table. A statutory congressional commitment to Ukraine modeled on the Taiwan Relations Act could pressure Russia by affirming Washington’s support of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and outlining the consequences Congress could unleash on Russia for coercive attempts to permanently occupy Ukrainian lands.
Such an act should outline clear provisions for deterrence, clarifying that future Russian aggression against Ukraine would be a substantial threat to regional stability and would automatically trigger U.S. military assistance. But the law for Taiwan, a Ukraine Relations Act could remain ambiguous as to whether the United States must deploy troops in response to an act of aggression. It should, however, establish Ukraine as a major non-NATO security partner, which would expand Kyiv’s access to U.S. military partnerships, including those involving training exercises and intelligence sharing. It should also mandate that Ukraine be included in any U.S.-supported peace settlement and that Congress be notified of any possible peace deal that would affect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and security.
There are already echoes of this model in U.S. policy toward Ukraine. In 2017, during his first administration, Trump signed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, which declared that it was U.S. policy “to never recognize the illegal annexation of Crimea by the Government of the Russian Federation or the separation of any portion of Ukrainian territory through the use of military force.”Crucially, the act characterized this nonrecognition as a form of sanction, a commercial designation over which Congress has constitutional authority, rather than as a military or foreign policy directive that would fall under the president’s jurisdiction. The act also requires the president to notify Congress if he wants to relieve Russia of certain sanctions, and it gives Congress the power to reject that proposal if majorities in both the House and the Senate disapprove. In other words, if Trump were to try to remove major sanctions on Russia during peace negotiations, lawmakers could block him.
Congress also has more recent precedent for legislative action to support Ukraine. The latest National Defense Authorization Act, passed in December, included an $800 million financial package for Ukraine to be distributed over the next two years, despite Trump’s waffling on the issue of aid since the beginning of his second term. The NDAA also requires that the number of U.S. forces stationed in Europe not fall below 76,000 without proper assessment and consultation with NATO and Congress. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, for its part, has continued to introduce legislation to hold Russia to greater account for its aggression, including bills to designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism, to confiscate billions of dollars’ worth of frozen Russian assets to repurpose as aid to Ukraine, and to sanction Chinese entities that have aided Russia’s military.
LEADING WITH LAW
With the NDAA cycle already finished for this year, the best path forward for a Ukraine Relations Act is as a standalone bill. Bipartisan support would be essential for this bill to pass quickly enough to give Ukraine the leverage it needs in negotiations over the war’s end. If an event occurs that causes the war to escalate—such as a massacre comparable to that at Srebrenica in 1995, which hastened the Bosnian arms embargo vote, or a signal by Trump that he might recognize Russia’s claim to Ukrainian territory without Congress, similar to Carter’s move to recognize mainland China in 1979—the proposal could even take shape as a standalone joint resolution to become law more quickly.
The upcoming midterm elections, in November, could substantially improve the prospects of such a law making it through Congress. Even a small swing in favor of the Democrats could reduce Trump’s leverage over Ukraine policy by increasing the chances of a veto-proof majority for the bill. Such an electoral shift could also embolden those Republican representatives who are already skeptical of the administration’s approach to Ukraine to take a more active approach and would demonstrate to more hesitant members that resisting Trump is possible, especially given public support for Ukraine. In February polling from the Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs, for example, 67 percent of respondents agreed that it would be “unacceptable” for Russia to gain the Ukrainian territory it currently occupies, and 57 percent supported sending additional arms and military supplies to the Ukrainian government. Among Democrats, the proportions reached 83 percent and 72 percent, respectively.
Ukraine’s survival is not up to Trump alone.
The 1995 vote to lift the U.S. arms embargo on Bosnia and Herzegovina offers a guide for congressional pushback against the president. When the conflict broke out, Washington ed the policies of France and the United Kingdom in complying with a UN arms embargothat restricted the Bosnian government’s access to arms in an effort to calm the violence. But because Bosnian Serbs received arms from Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, in effect the embargo only prevented the government from protecting Bosnian Muslims against the Serbs’ persecution. This culminated in the mass violence in Srebrenica, in July 1995, when more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed by Bosnian Serb forces. The massacre drove Republican Senator Bob Dole and Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman to lead an effort against Clinton’s embargo.
Clinton vetoed the bill because he believed it would only escalate the conflict, but the legislation and the broader congressional effort to take a stand on the war helped push him to take more decisive action. Just two weeks after the veto, Washington backed a NATO bombing campaign against Bosnian Serb positions, which ultimately forced Milosevic and the Bosnian Serbs to the negotiating table and led to the Dayton Peace Accords.
the Taiwan Relations Act, the Congressional effort to lift the arms embargo on Bosnia demonstrated that bipartisan congressional action could influence the president’s foreign-policy making. Today, a similar congressional push to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to Ukraine and support its territorial integrity could provide the political pressure needed to force a shift in the Trump administration’s posture toward Russia.
Congress has the political support to make such a move and precedent to . Sending a strong message that Congress stands with Ukraine could go a long way toward strengthening Kyiv’s hand in the peace process and mark an important step on the road to its long-term security.
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