If you want to end a war and your enemy remains full of fight, you have to give him some of what he wants. If he has more fight in him than you, he is going to get more of what he wants — maybe all of what he wants. Americans tend to see peace treaties as matters of morality rather than what they are, namely a reflection of the balance of forces.
After three and a half years of paying for Ukrainians to kill Russians, our government has begun negotiations for a settlement. President Trump wants a way out of a war that he never signed on to and has not gone well. In this respect, Trump is more realistic than Joe Biden, who would have let the death and destruction drag on into the mumbling future.
But to reach an agreement, you need to listen to what your opponent wants. What does Vladimir Putin want? Listening to CNN, you might think he wants to conquer all of Ukraine, and then, Hitler-like, to gobble up Poland and resurrect the Warsaw Pact. But that is not what Russia is capable of doing, or what Putin has been demanding. Putin wants a Russian-aligned Ukraine, not in NATO, and with no NATO troops.
You can argue that Ukraine has the right to be as Western as it likes, and that its political choices are none of Russia’s business. Back in 1962, Fidel Castro could argue that Cuba’s choice to have Russian missiles was none of America’s business. President Kennedy didn’t see it that way, nor did most Americans. Cuba was right there, 90 miles from Key West, its missiles aimed at us. Russian missiles in Cuba were damn well our business because our Monroe Doctrine (Europeans, go away) said so. You can imagine Putin thinking the same of NATO weapons in Ukraine, aimed at the Russian heartland.
We think of NATO as defensive only. (Never mind Iraq and Afghanistan.) But to Russia, NATO has always been an anti-Russian alliance — and the eastward march of NATO’s frontier in the past 30 years feels like something more than defense. And even if a NATO-aligned Ukraine would never attack Russia, its existence would be a challenge. When Putin says Ukraine aligned with the West would be a threat, he’s right. At the very least, it would be a political threat. A cultural threat. And maybe later, a military threat.
Say things like this, and you will be charged with “parroting Russian talking points. You are taking Putin’s side!” But if we want to end the war, we have to imagine ourselves in his shoes. If we are unable to force Putin to accept what we want, we have to listen to what he wants. And show him some respect. If we invite Putin to talk, we have to roll out the red carpet, as Trump just did in Alaska. We have to shake his hand and watch what we say. If this offends your moral sense, put a cork in it! Ending a war is more important than how you feel.
So Trump was polite to Putin. Roosevelt was pals with Stalin. Nixon parleyed with Mao. Kissinger sat down with Le Duc Tho. That’s the job.
For those who prefer to fight on, consider the human cost. At the end of 2024, Ukraine admitted 43,000 dead and 370,000 wounded. As of June, Russian media identified more than 111,000 Russian dead. It’s safe to assume the true figures are higher. A year ago, the Wall Street Journal reported an estimate that the Ukrainian army, most of it conscripts, had lost 80,000 dead and 400,000 wounded. For the Russian army, most of it conscripts, recent estimates are two to three times those numbers. As of July 2025, the United Nations’ tally of Ukraine’s civilian deaths was 49,431.
True, they’re not Americans. But at some point, the pile of dead and wounded over there should be high enough so that even we take note of it.
The American “talking point” has been that Putin started the war, so that the butcher’s bill is on him. But our investment in this war is some $200 billion, depending on what you count. By continuing to “invest,” we’re saying that the dead and wounded are “worth it,” and that we’re willing to take more. Actually pushing the Russians back would cost a lot more.
The Ukrainians went on the offensive in 2023 and failed. Now Ukraine’s only hope of rolling back the Russians is to use weapons and troops that it doesn’t have now. We might ask: What weapons? Whose troops, and how many? And what should we expect a nuclear-armed Russia to do if NATO divisions approached its frontier?
At the Trump-Putin summit at Anchorage, Vladimir Putin said the talks had been “constructive” in an “atmosphere of mutual respect.” President Trump said, “I believe we had a very productive meeting. There were many, many points we agreed on, I would say most of them.” After this sweet exchange, Trump went on to meet at the White House with Volodymyr Zelensky and the European leaders, who insisted that Ukraine be given a security guarantee. That’s what NATO is. Whether a member or not, Ukraine with a security guarantee presumably would be safe behind a screen of NATO forces and NATO weapons.
Trump said this was O.K. (as long as Europe bought the weapons from us), and Russia predictably said it wasn’t O.K. Russia is determined not to be defeated at the peace table.
Putin apparently wants Ukraine to be another Belarus, safely in Russia’s orbit. Well, look at a map. Maybe that’s the way it has to be. Is that so bad for us? For NATO? The world lived with the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (with its vote in the UN) for nearly 70 years. Without Ukraine, NATO will still exist. Since our defeat of the communist world in the Cold War, NATO has added the former Marxist bastions of Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia — as well as once-neutral Western states of Sweden and Finland.
So we lose one. Not the end of the world.
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Your realpolitik approach is rational and coldly logical, but we are dealing with fantasists — one dreaming of a Noble Peace Prize to match Teddy Roosevelt’s earned one and Barack Obama’s unearned one. The other dreams of staying in office forever on a wave of popular support for restoring the grandeur and power of the USSR. Will reality and logic work? I fear not.
Where does Europe draw the line? Do they and we just stand by and watch watch Georgia fall, Moldava be occupied, Sweden’s and Finland’s and the Baltic republics infrastructure be sabotaged and their governments be bullied? When if not now will we say Stop! If we collectively don’t rally to stop creeping boundries and subversion by men in unidentified green uniforms, will not nuclear proliferation be the protection independent nations will seek? Will Germany go nuclear? Poland? Turkey or Egypt?
Perhaps that is fantasizing, too. But where do we draw the line?
Thank you for this clear-eyed and morality-embracing response. When people capitulate to tyrants they lose their freedom and self-respect, as well as many more lives to the reinvigorated aggressor.
I wonder what Ramsey would be saying in 1940.
I would say, “Stay out of the war as long as you can, and meanwhile build up your military, so that if you have to go in, you’re ready.” The American people voted in 1940 for the president who promised them he’d keep them out of war, except that FDR wasn’t exactly truthful about that. He wanted to get into the war, and he got us into it in 1941. And yes, our enemies were evil regimes, but so was our most important ally, the USSR, which put Eastern Europe into bondage for 40 years. World War II is not all glory.
Even if it were, the better question is why so many people keep referring to 1940. The “lesson” of 1940, we’re told, is that you have to stand up and fight and win. But that’s not always so. We stood up in Korea, but it was a draw, not a victory. We stood up in Vietnam for a decade, then lost. We stood up in Afghanistan for nearly two decades, then lost. Well, Vietnam is run by the Communists now, but we are friends with it. Afghanistan is run by the Taliban, and we’re not exactly friends with it, but it’s not giving us any grief. South Korea is fat and happy. So when we come to war, why is it always 1940? We compare Slobodan Milosevic to Hitler, Saddam Hussein to Hitler, Vladimir Putin to Hitler, on and on. It’s a bad habit. It justifies foreign adventures that are not in America’s best interest.
Another commenter writes that standing up is what you need to do to bullies. Well, yes, when they are bullying you. But when they are bullying someone else, you have a choice whether to get in, or to stay out. It’s not wise to go looking for bullies to confront. A country like an individual, needs to pick its battles.
Ramsey
I hope you would agree that reasonable people can disagree about the exact tactics in looking out for #1.
Not to mention that NATO (which is run by USA) is forcing Ukrainians to die or be horribly wounded in a proxy war to “weaken Russia” (Biden DOD Secy Lloyd Austin). Why? Russia has enormous natural resources. Why did Napoleon and Hitler want to conquer Russia?
Hackers got into the Ukraine military database and the number of Ukraine killed or missing is over 1,700,000. Russia’s number is probably 1/10th of that because Russia has the artillery, planes, electronic warfare, drones, etc that Ukraine cannot match.
Thank God our politicians are afraid to bring back the draft.
Pandering to Putin?
Freedom of press and expression.
That’s what I still love about my country.
Let’s hope it lasts.
That “eastward march of NATO’s frontier in the past 30 years” is all about defense. It’s countries that feel the need for help with defense of their countries from a very obvious threat. NATO isn’t a military threat to Russia, it’s a defense against Russia’s threat to its neighbors. Now including Finland and Sweden.
Cultural and political threat? Yeah, maybe, and its an excellent thing.
We will never be done with this as long as we appease that cancer.
Exactly
“Kissinger sat down with Le Duc Tho.”
More like Le Duc Tho sat down with Kissinger.
Lots of pretzel logic here, but it boils down to one statement. Give the bully what he wants and he will stop. Yeah, right.
NATO is not going to attack Russia. It’s purely defensive. Finland and Sweden joined NATO because Putin attacked it’s neighbor savagely, captured it’s children in occupied territories and sent them for “re-education”. Most of the drone attacks are on civilian targets including apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, etc. We are dealing with a war criminal that does NOT deserve a red carpet treatment. The main rebuttal in your flawed argument is that the decision is Ukraine’s whether or not to trade portions of its eastern lands for a lasting peace agreement that may be achieve via some sort of neutrality ala Austria and Switzerland. The most important thing under this scenario would be for Ukraine to join the EU and be a part of Europe economically. It sure seems like Europe will be the major “guarantee” of security for Ukraine going forward, maybe with a UN peacekeeping force for several years first along a treaty line. One more acceptable outcome for Ukraine might be to call fothe seized eastern areas of Ukraine, including Crimea, the be called Eastern Ukraine as a separate nation, admitted to the UN, and supervised elections held within one year after the peace treaty is signed. Similar free and supervised elections could also be held in Ukraine itself as Zelinsky has signaled full willingness after the Nation is no longer on a war footing. Lastly, Russian is hurting. They are spending fully 1/3 of GDP on war, inflation is over 10%, and the US is going to start supplying Europe with LNG, not gas from Russia. Between 35-50% of the Russian economy is dependent on the sale of oil and gas. Plus Russian mothers have lost 200,000 or more of their sons and the human toll is tragic. Thus this is the big bluff. Putin is not dealing from a position of strength. Yes the time to end to war is now, but not with total capitulation to a dictator and war criminal. Russia should have to give some concessions as well, such as a neutral nation vs. a puppet government as in Belarus.
I don’t agree with your framing of the issue as one of geopolitics, i.e. NATO vs. Warsaw Pact/Russia. I see that as an outdated framework that lost its relevancy with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The term “mafia state” has been applied to Russia which I believe is more accurate to describe the motives of Putin and his circle. The invasion of Ukraine is not one to regain the past glories of historical Russia, but instead reflects use force at opportune times to take control of the economy in order to extract wealth through a corrupt partnership between private industry and offices of government.
Let me give you a few examples of how/why this is the situation.
In November 1996, American businessman Paul Tatum, the owner of the Radisson Hotel, was murdered in Moscow in a targeted hit. Tatum believed that his connections to the Moscow government and his being an American insulated him from the reach of the Moscow mafia and he had refused to make arrangements.
Oleg Vladomirovovich Deripaska is a billionaire and the sole owner of the investment group Basic Element. As of 2008, he ranked as the 9th richest man in the world, but now due to sanctions on Russia is only worth $4.7 billion. Deripaska business fortitude is that he was the last person standing in the infamous aluminum wars in which it is estimated that 100 people were killed. This is typical of Russian wealth as the list of Russian billionaires in comprised of men who gained control of the USSR’s mining, steel, fertilizer, and other extractive industries. The same types of industries located in the Donbas region of Ukraine.
And lets not forget Sergei Magnitsky, the Russian lawyer whistleblower who exposed a tax fraud scheme, who was subsequently arrested and tortured to die in prison in 2009.
Although Putin is said to live modestly, those in Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation have been able to utilize Russia’s bureaucratic system to trace ownership of a myriad of yachts and properties to shell organizations and associates under Putin’s direct control.
This mindset makes entire sense when you take into consideration that Putin’s rise to power comes through his time as a St Petersburg city official who had the means to extract payments/bribes from the busy port there.
Furthermore, if you look at Russian history this is what Russia has always done. The Trans-Siberian railroad was built to bring the furs from the Russian interior to enrich the wealthy in Moscow. Even today, very little of the wealth generated by the oil and gas and mineral riches in the interior goes back to the locals.
This war is more about Putin’s inner circle seeing an opportunity to take control of regions with minimal effort and risk. The occupation of Crimea was undertaken at a time of political instability after the 2014 Revolution of Dignity. Similarly, the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk were taken by local militias/mafia factions under the military support of Russian. It is a certainty that the Malaysian airliner MH-17 was shot down in 2014 by Russian troops that had been brought across the border to support the fighting. That type of operation does not occur without approval from the highest levels, likely Putin himself.
As it stands today, Putin’s inner circle foolish initiated this war because they believed that they could overthrow the elected presidency of Ukraine due to subversion/deception, assassination, and plausible deniability. It had worked in Serbia. It had worked in Transnistria. And it had worked in Georgia. This is what happens when autocrats become insulated and surround themselves by “yes” men.
Putin uses the NATO-Warsaw Pact narrative as a tool of propaganda, which makes entire sense once one understands Soviet military and geo-political doctrine. The truth is never what is publicly stated.
Those Warsaw Pact nations were a drain on Russia. (That’s a political issue in Russia. The leaders of those countries were always bribed.). Those countries are a drain on the European union. Every one of them is a net beneficiary of aid from the EU.
Obviously the people of the eastern oblasts want to be part of Russia. Self determination is a “foundational principle in international law.” (Not to mention that the USA engineered a violent coup of the Ukrainian government in 2014.)
For heaven’s sake, Bruce, why are you making excuses for Trump’s bumbling attempts at cajoling Putin into taking baby steps toward a peace settlement.
Cutting Ukraine off from continued supplies of weaponry and intelligence when they are successfully bleeding the Russian army dry merely encourages Putin’s fever dream of snatching even more of Europe’s borderlands which once were under the heel of Tsarist and then Soviet Russia.
The Baltic states and even parts of Poland were once called Russian or Soviet territory. For that matter, Russian troops occupied half of Germany until 1994. Should Germany cough that up as well?
Bruce, you said, “Let’s get real”. OK, then, why not start by accepting the reality that peace can only achieved when both sides can agree to live in peace within their own, established borders – the ones that Russia agreed to recognize when it signed the Budapest Memorandum in 1994.
Ukraine vows it will never allow its government to negotiate away its sovereign territory, and so far they have been inventive and resilient on and off the battlefield in defense of their right to exist as an independent and democratic state.
Let Putin face reality instead: he is destroying Russia from within while he vainly fights to re-establish an empire that is now just the ghost of a memory.
Bruce should read Masha Gessen’s article today (Monday, August 24) in the New York Times.
Ramsey,
For the sake of an important discretion, I’ll agree with you that American foreign policy should be based on what’s best for America.
So could you agree that reasonable people can disagree about what “ looking out for number one” means in practice?
I think it’s perfectly plausible to say that America’s prime interest in the context of a Russian invasion is to strongly confront Putin and Putinism.
So let’s just assume we have the same goal and that we simply have a different way of approaching it. OK?
I’m not going to give you the ground to claim that the only way to further America’s best interest is to give in to Putin, which is your exact position.
But simultaneously I think it’s fairly debatable about exactly how that should be done.
Make your argument. Why is supporting Ukraine “looking out for Number One?”
Let’s start with my question:
Do you agree that there may be a number of different paths to looking out for number one?
Bruce, you asked, Why is supporting Ukraine “looking out for Number One?”
Here’s one reason: Keeping Russia from threatening western Europe, our allies and partners in NATO.
Maybe more importantly, helping Ukraine demonstrates US power. Defeating Russia & Putinism reminds the world that WE are the balance of power and WE have the ability to thwart any other nation, probably including China (in thinking of Taiwan).
Maybe Ramsey would appreciate such a realpolitik approach.
And it doesn’t require US troops.
US power in the world has been knee-capped by our current administration, which is showing the world we are not a stable, reliable ally. But the alliance we helped build is more important, and we can still help it, or at least not get in its way.
I see that comments have been cut off
— WHEN btw will POST ALLEY repair its broken and primitive comment system!!!???
— but I want to entirely agree with Donn Cave on 8/27/25 @ 4:04 AM
And the US is losing, which demonstrates for the world that the US is not strong (mostly because these wars our leaders pick are so obviously not in US national interest (the American people’s interest, that is) so overwhelmingly Americans are not going to sign up for them. 20+ years in Afghanistan and the Taliban always controlled 80% of the country.