President Trump meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Helsinki Summit in 2018. Trump has promised if he wins re-election he will convene a summit with Putin right after he is inaugurated in January to negotiate a peace deal ending the war in Ukraine.

Breaking News July 13th Update: President Trump has been shot by a 20-year old leftwing assassin using a high-power rifle at a rally in Butler, PA in his last rally before the Republican National Convention. Trump suffered relatively minor injuries to his right ear. However, had he not turned his head right before the shot was fired he would likely be dead now. This was a massive Biden administration Secret Service failure as they should have seen the shooter on top of the building but didn’t until it was too late. Today is a dark day for America but thankfully he is safe. May God bless President Trump and protect him from those who are trying to assassinate him for championing peace.

Due to the foolish decisions of past U.S. leaders to expand NATO along most of the length of Russia’s western frontier for the first time in history as well as to fight decades long wars of choice in Afghanistan, Syria and especially in Iraq, the U.S. today finds itself seriously overextended militarily. Meanwhile Russia and its ally, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) continue to engage in a massive nuclear missile buildup while the U.S. nuclear arsenal has remained stagnant in size and increasingly obsolescent, arguably insufficient to deter two allied nuclear superpowers with a much larger combined nuclear arsenal. This increasing nuclear imbalance between the U.S. and the Russian Federation, along with the reckless, provocative, and unnecessarily confrontational policy of the Biden administration against Russia has increased the risk of a nuclear war to a level not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis as President Joe Biden conceded in October 2022.

The war in Ukraine has now been going on for over twenty-eight months with no end in sight. Contrary to the liberal media disinformation narrative, it has proven to be an unmitigated geostrategic disaster for the West. Thus far, the PRC has emerged as the biggest winner of the war with Ukraine the biggest loser. While claiming to “support Ukraine”, the Biden administration has pursued a policy designed to veto all Ukrainian attempts to negotiate a fair peace with Russia and prolong the war indefinitely, exponentially increasing the death and destruction in that war-torn country in the process while threatening to transform Ukraine into a failed state. Since the war began, Ukraine has lost nearly thirty percent of its GDP and nearly one-third of its population to date including approximately 300,000 soldiers killed in action, hundreds of thousands more wounded and over 10,000 dead civilians. Supporters of the war in Ukraine refuse to recognize the fact that it is far worse off now than it would have been had it implemented its tentative peace agreement it reached with Russia at the end of March 2022 in Istanbul only five weeks after it invaded Ukraine.

Biden’s policy of attempting to weaken Russia with massive economic sanctions and fighting an indefinite proxy war to the last Ukrainian has backfired badly with his policy instead serving to “Make Russia Great Again” with its economy growing at its highest rate in decades. In fact, just last month, the World Bank upgraded Russia’s rating from the sixth largest to the fourth largest economy in the world, vaulting ahead of Germany and Japan, while upgrading its per capita rating to “high-income” which is the same one it accords to the US. No longer can neoconservative politicians dismiss Russia as “a gas station with nuclear weapons” as the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) did years ago.

Far from weakening Russia militarily, Biden’s war of choice in Ukraine has caused Russia to increase the size of their armed forces by 50% from their prewar size to Soviet-era levels, expand the size of their army by nearly three times and more than double the percentage of their GDP that they spend on their military to Cold War levels. Putin has fully mobilized Russia’s economy for war and Russian factories are on track to churning out 1,500 T-90M main battle tanks this year, thousands more armored fighting vehicles and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of missiles and combat drones as well as millions more heavy artillery shells for which Russia can now produce more a year than the US and its NATO allies combined.  Moreover, Russia has broken out of the New START nuclear arms control treaty limits of 1,550 Treaty-accountable warheads with a recently leaked Ukrainian report estimating Russia has increased the size of its nuclear arsenal to 6,000 strategic and 10,000 non-strategic warheads, a level far in excess of America’s operational nuclear stockpile.

The war in Ukraine has served to accomplish Russia’s objective of “demilitarizing” and weakening, not just Ukraine by killing and wounding up to one million troops, but the US and its NATO allies as well as the administration has unilaterally disarmed the US military of vast amounts of our modern weapons and ammunition to give to Ukraine, making the US far less able to fight let alone win a great power war with Russia and China. It is estimated that it will take the US several years to replenish these lost weapon systems while a clash with China over Taiwan could materialize much sooner than that. Biden’s decision to unnecessarily prolong America’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine has been very much in furtherance of China’s interests. This is due to the fact that Chinese President Xi Jinping may assess that conditions are right for the PRC to stage a blockade and/or invasion of Taiwan as early as this fall with US and NATO military resources tied up fighting a proxy war against Russia in Eastern Europe at the same time we are fighting a proxy war against Iran in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration continues to provoke Russia by continuing to escalate the war by authorizing Ukraine to use long-range US missiles against any military target in Russia which Ukraine claims is necessary to forestall an attack bringing America and Europe closer to nuclear war than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis over six decades ago. The administration’s actions are in flagrant violation of a reported pre-war bilateral agreement in which the US agreed not to directly attack Russia and committed not to provide Ukraine with any weapons enabling them to attack Russia in exchange for a Russian promise not to attack any NATO member states, meaning that Putin is now freed from his commitment and may attack NATO at will. In addition, the Biden administration just announced it will deploy 3,000 kilometer range, nuclear capable Long-Range Hypersonic Weapons to Germany in 2026 rather than to the Western Pacific where they are most needed to deter the PRC, causing Russia to promise a military response. Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Elbridge Colby, reportedly one of two front runners for National Security Advisor in a second Trump administration declared, “I am very worried about that and the possibility that we might get chain-ganged into a larger war with Russia by such imprudent steps.”

Earlier this week, French President Emannuel Macron revealed that the US was one of two major NATO countries opposing Ukraine’s membership in NATO which seems ironic given that it was the Biden administration’s refusal to guarantee Ukraine would never join NATO before the war that provoked Russia to invade in the first place. Notably, the administration has failed to explain why risking a thermonuclear war with the Russian Federation which could result in the entire destruction of the United States and the deaths of a quarter billion Americans is worth fighting over a war of choice being fought over the NATO membership of a country on the furthest fringes of Eastern Europe over a country in which the US has no discernible national security interest.

In truth, there is only one US vital national security imperative in Ukraine and that is to do whatever is necessary to avert an unnecessary world war with Russia, which would likely include China and quickly escalate to the nuclear level, potentially ending with the destruction of the entire Western world. Tragically, all the realist lessons of the Cold War practiced by US Presidents from Harry Truman to George HW Bush concerning peaceful co-existence, reciprocal agreements, and peaceful accommodations without adversaries the importance of providing a face-saving diplomatic exit for our enemies to avert nuclear confrontations have been thrown out the window by the increasingly irrational Biden administration. Rather than pursue an America First national security strategy, the Biden administration has opted to pursue a “China first” and “Ukraine first” foreign policy that puts the national security interests of foreign powers above our own, placing the lives of 285 million American citizens at an unprecedented, existential risk.

The pursuit of a failed strategy of liberal hegemony by the United States over the past few decades has provoked both opposing nuclear superpowers–Russia and China–to ally together against the United States, posing the greatest existential threat  America has ever faced in its history far in excess of the threat we faced from the Axis Powers during World War Two. Russia and China now lead a military alliance that includes nearly seventy percent of the landmass of Eurasia, forty-three prevent of the world’s population, and nearly one-third of the world’s GDP with many times more operational nuclear weapons than the US. There has been a tremendous dearth of critical strategic thinking in US leadership circles in both major political parties in terms of how we might replace this disastrous national security strategy with one that serves to enhance US national security and make our citizens safer and more secure rather than serve to multiply the existential threats we are now facing and potentially invite nuclear conflict as the current one has.

As I have been arguing since the turn of the century, the foremost objective of US national security policy should be to pursue a strategy designed to divide and disrupt the Sino-Russian alliance and seriously weaken the People’s Republic of China without war to deter Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific.  During a press conference on July 11^th, President Biden was asked if he had a second-term plan to “disrupt the partnership” between Russia and China and whether he would be willing to hold a summit meeting with Putin presumably in furtherance of such a strategy. He replied he had a secret plan to do so but was not prepared to talk about it in public and that he was “not ready to talk to Putin unless Putin changes his behavior” continuing the administration’s nearly two and a half year long diplomatic temper tantrum against Russia for invading Ukraine. The administration has previously made clear their plan is to improve US relations with Communist China to stop supporting and allying with Russia when they should be doing the exact opposite by making peace with Russia to incentivize it to negate its increasing military alliance with China.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, America’s foremost realist foreign policy theorist, Dr. John Mearsheimer, has been calling for the US to align with Russia to balance against the much more pressing and existential threat posed by the People’s Republic of China rather than pushing it further into Beijing’s arms but to date no elected US leader has been wise enough to follow his admonition. Mearsheimer has denounced the US decision to build up China into the world’s strongest economic and industrial superpower over the past two decades as a major blunder that has backfired badly as the US and China may soon find themselves on the brink of war over Taiwan with the US at a severe disadvantage given the fact that we depend on the PRC for nearly all of the vital components we need to build advance weapon systems.

Strangely, there have been few US national security strategists that have given any serious thought to how disrupting the Sino-Russian Axis might be accomplished, generally dismissing it as an impossibility, given they are unwilling to revise America’s national security strategy to one that is based on foreign policy realism and far less maximalist and unachievable objectives. Former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has been the only major figure to articulate such a grand strategy which he did in an article he published in June 2023. With the People’s Republic of Chinas as the greatest threat to the US, the only way we can hope to neutralize this alliance between America’s two nuclear superpower adversaries would be to greatly improve relations with Russia. Doing so would minimally require the US negotiating an immediate end to the war in Ukraine, terminating all pre-2014 economic sanctions against Russia, restoring Most Favored Nation trade status as well as signing a mutual security agreement with Russia withdrawing all US and Russian military forces from Eastern Europe.

Ultimately, the US must replace its unnecessarily reckless and provocative strategy of liberal hegemony, which has resulted in imperial overstretch, with a strategy of offshore balancing in areas of secondary importance to US interests such as Europe and the Middle East allowing us to focus on discouraging Communist Chinese aggression. Such a strategy would be designed to minimize the risks of the outbreak of an unnecessary war with Russia and China while ensuring our vital national interests, foremost of which is America’s continued existence, are safeguarded. 

To break America’s strategic ‘encirclement’ by the Sino-Russian Axis powers, there is a pressing need for a new detente, if not an entente, with Russia, like the Entente Cordiale of 1904 that ended centuries of great power competition between Britain and France with a sphere of influence agreement clearly delineating the lines between both great powers to prevent unnecessary conflicts. Such a Russo-American entente might induce a grand strategic realignment that would leave China increasingly isolated without its nuclear superpower ally, potentially making it easier to dissuade it from attempting to unilaterally change the Taiwan status quo by military force.

In January 2022, President Donald Trump described the escalating Russia-Ukraine crisis as “a NATO problem” that President Joe Biden had turned into a potential “World War III,” rightly emphasizing the importance of our European allies taking the lead in helping to resolve it diplomatically. Since Russia engaged in its illegal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Biden administration has rejected all Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offers to negotiate a compromise peace settlement to end the war, including one which would have constituted a huge victory for a Ukraine in April 2022 opting instead to fight the war to the indefinitely with no achievable war aims and no plan for victory. Biden has also blocked all Ukrainian attempts to negotiate an end to the conflict preferring to fight the war indefinitely to the last Ukrainian, costing the lives of approximately 300,000 brave Ukrainian patriots to date. Thanks to the massive Chinese strategic industrial support to Russia in furtherance of their “no-limits partnership” as well as the fact that Russia greatly overmatches Ukraine in every category of military power, the war is unwinnable for Ukraine which is continuing to lose ground with appealing troop losses reportedly as high as 1,000-2,000 troops per day.

On June 14^th, Putin offered a new peace offer demanding more Ukrainian territory as the price for Russia agreeing to a cease-fire for the first time ever. On July 4^th, Putin doubled down at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit Meeting in Kazakhstan when he demanded Ukraine’s “irreversible demilitarization” prior to any cease fire while peace negotiations are underway. Putin’s decision to harden his peace terms for the first time in nearly two years strongly suggest that his patience has grown thin with Ukraine’s continued refusal to return to the negotiating table since peace talks broke down in April 2022. This peace offer may be his last prior to a massive Russian northern offensive conducted with 200,000 troops that could overrun much of northern Ukraine and bring Russian troops back to the gates of Kyiv. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić warned earlier this week that we are three or four months away from the outbreak of World War Three between NATO and Russia as Putin’s patience with the West’s refusal to negotiate a diplomatic end to the war is running thin and Russia is approaching the point of no return. Accordingly, Ukraine appears to be running out of time to negotiate a compromise peace agreement enabling it to avoid being forced to capitulate following additional largescale territorial losses to Moscow. The longer Ukraine waits to make peace with Russia the worse the final peace deal ending the war will end up being.

During his June 27^th CNN debate with President Joe Biden, President Donald J. Trump rightly stated that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was provoked by Biden’s foolish push to expand NATO into Ukraine which Biden knew to be one of Russia’s most major red lines. In December 2021, Biden rejected Putin’s offer to guarantee Russia would not invade Ukraine in exchange for the US issuing a written guarantee to Russia that Ukraine would never join NATO. Trump stated Russia would never have invaded NATO if he had been President implying that he would have guaranteed Ukraine would never join NATO. In contrast to Biden’s stated strategy of fighting an unwinnable war to the last Ukrainian, Trump has repeatedly argued for ending the administration’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine as quickly as possible both on national security and humanitarian grounds with his statements that “we have to stop the killing in Ukraine.” In September 2022, he even offered to serve as a Special Envoy to lead a US delegation to meet with the Russians to negotiate an end to the war to prevent the outbreak of a Third World War that would likely quickly escalate to the nuclear level. During the debate, Trump again promised he would end the war in twenty-four hours after becoming President by negotiating a peace deal in a face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Late last month, it was reported by Axios that two of President Trump’s top military advisors, Lt General Keith Kellogg (USA Ret) and Fred Fleitz, who served as Chief of Staff to National Security Advisor John Bolton, briefed him regarding a laud worthy, yet straightforward cease-fire proposal he could use to implement his pledge to end the war immediately after he is inaugurated President. The plan reportedly calls for the US to pressure Zelensky to agree to a permanent cease-fire agreement and begin negotiations for an armistice or peace agreement ending America’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine with a just and lasting peace that would represent a “win-win” outcome for Ukraine, Russia, and NATO or at worst a Wilsonian “peace without victory” for all parties to the conflict.  The aim would be to end the war on realistic terms along the current line of control. Notably, under this proposal, Ukraine would not cede a single square inch of its territory to Russia which would ensure Ukraine kept all its hard-won battlefield gains in largely Russian forces from half of the eight Ukrainian provinces it previously occupied. However, Ukraine would have to acknowledge continued Russian control of the annexed terrorist including Crimea in something resembling a Korean-style armistice/peace agreement while leaving the door open to negotiating their future status. Axios reported that Trump appeared favorably disposed to the plan but made no commitments that he would implement it.

This proposal is very similar to one that I helped former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy formulate over a year ago while serving as his Defense and Foreign Policy Advisor which he published last June. As Vivek stated and as Trump has implied with his response at a CNN townhall, the US objective with regards to the war in Ukraine should not be for Putin to lose. Rather, “our goal should be for America to win,” recognizing the fact that US and Ukraine’s national security interests are not the same and are in many ways divergent. The objective of Vivek’s peace proposal was to use Putin’s long-expressed desire to end the war in Ukraine along the current line of control as leverage to induce Russia to effectively end its military alliance with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), thus enabling an end America’s Cold War with Russia to free the US to focus on the threat from America’s most dangerous adversary which is the PRC. His proposal included various tradeoffs including a withdrawal of all allied troops from eastern Europe returning NATO to its pre-July 2016 Warsaw Summit status quo. Former NATO Supreme Commander, Admiral James Stavridis, responded favorably to Vivek’s proposal, stating he is “all for creative ideas in international diplomacy” and “would love to be able to say that there is a chance of this type of settlement occurring.” I agree with Admiral Stavridis that the chances of persuading Russia to formally end its military alliance with Communist China would be slim. However, it would not be necessary to end the Sino-Russian military alliance to advance US strategic objectives, only to neutralize it, thus seriously weakening China without war.

The main difference between Vivek’s peace plan and the Kellogg-Fleitz peace plan is that while Vivek’s comprehensive peace proposal is for a just, lasting, and permanent peace, the Kellogg proposal is essentially a plan for a temporary armistice only with no incentive for Ukraine to agree to a peace agreement ending the war at all. One issue with their plan is that Zelensky would have little incentive to negotiate a deal with Putin so long as the US continues to provide largescale military and financial aid to Ukraine. The US should only threaten to suspend all aid to Ukraine if Zelensky refuses to agree to a permanent cease-fire or if he refuses to sign the peace agreement that Trump negotiates on Ukraine’s behalf. President Trump shouldn’t just mediate peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine as the Kellog peace proposal suggests. He should negotiate directly with Putin to negotiate the best possible deal for Ukraine because if he leaves it to Zelensky a peace settlement could take many months whereas if Trump meets with Putin in a summit and negotiates with him directly, they could reach a peace deal within a few days. President Trump is America’s best negotiator so it would be a mistake not to utilize his negotiation skills to negotiate a better deal with Russia than Zelensky possibly could.

During his presidency, President Trump championed a Reaganite policy of peace through strength and proved to be a stalwart opponent of America’s forever wars in the Middle East, laudably seeking to withdraw all US troops from Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. In 2016, he campaigned on negotiating a comprehensive peace agreement with Russia, potentially transforming Russia from an adversary to a strategic partner. When Trump first became President in 2017, he was only prevented from concluding a just and lasting peace with Russia by the Obama Deep State intelligence agencies which invented the fake Trump-Russia collusion narrative starting with the smear against America First conservative hero LTG Mike Flynn (USA-Ret), which the Mueller investigation proved to be a hoax. This was followed by his impeachment by House Democrats for essentially refusing to provoke World War Three with Russia. If Trump were to cleanse the FBI and US intelligence agencies of all their Obama-Biden-era appointees and with the US House of Representatives under continued Republican control, he would be free to proceed with his plan to put America First and negotiate a peace deal with Russia without fear the Deep State +might succeed in undermining him.

Just as Reagan ended the Cold War with the Soviet Union over three decades ago, sparing the world from an unnecessary nuclear war with the Soviet Union, a newly re-elected President Trump will have a unique and historic opportunity to end America’s Second Cold War with Russia as he sought to do when he ran for President eight years ago, with a comprehensive peace agreement with Moscow. Many forget that Reagan ended the Cold War, not with a crushing military victory and Russia’s surrender, but rather with a series of negotiated agreements and verbal assurances that gave Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev the confidence and trust to collapse the Soviet Union without fear that the US would exploit it, however misplaced that trust proved to be. Just like Reagan had with Gorbachev, Trump would have a willing partner for peace in Russian President Vladimir Putin, who despite engaging in an illegal invasion of Ukraine and annexing four Ukrainian oblasts in 2022, has proven sincere in his desire to end the war since March 2022 with his offer to withdraw all Russian troops to their pre-war positions in exchange for permanent Ukrainian neutrality outside of NATO which Biden unwisely rejected.

The question US leaders should be asking is how to transform Russia from an adversary into a strategic partner committed to the peace and stability of Europe and open to countering China’s growing global economic hegemony. Putin has long sought to have Russia accepted into the security architecture of Europe. The path to accomplishing that is relatively simple, though it might be politically challenging given the prevailing Russophobia in the West. Negotiating an immediate end to the war in Ukraine along the lines outlined below could serve as the centerpiece for a grand bargain with Russia as I have been advocating for over the past fifteen years to divide and disrupt the Sino-Russian alliance. Such a compromise peace agreement would serve to recognize Russia’s legitimate security interests, formally end NATO’s expansion eastward and normalize all diplomatic and trade ties with Moscow restoring our bilateral relationship to its pre-2014 level.

Here is an outline for a ten-point peace proposal which Trump could employ to end the war in Ukraine immediately after he is re-elected President:

Ten Point Peace Plan

1.      In exchange for Ukraine pledging to never join NATO and to modify its constitution accordingly, Russia agrees to drop its demand for permanent Ukrainian neutrality and allow Ukraine to become a Major Non-NATO Ally of the United States. Russia recognizes Ukraine’s right to retain its security agreements with the EU and its bilateral security agreements with Western countries and continue its strategic partnership agreement with the U.S.  In return for Russia accepting NATO’s existing borders, the US pledges that NATO will never expand eastward into any additional former Soviet republics.

2.      Ukraine commits to prohibit the presence of any allied troops, aircraft, missiles, or bases, including those used for intelligence collection, on its territory for any period or purpose other than embassy security, except in the case of invasion of its territory by a foreign power. Ukraine may continue to have its army trained by NATO military trainers and engage in joint military exercises with NATO providing such training or exercises do not occur on Ukrainian territory. Furthermore, the Russian Federation agrees that Ukraine will be allowed to join the European Union.

3.      Ukraine recognizes Russian control of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia along the current line of control as well as Crimea and renounces any attempt to retake them by military force while leaving the door open to negotiating their final status. In return, the Russian Federation pledges to guarantee Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

4.      A four-kilometer-wide demilitarized zone, policed by UN and OSCE peacekeepers, shall be created along the entire length of Ukraine’s border with the Russian controlled oblasts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia to provide increased security for both parties against the possible resumption of military conflict. Both parties pledge to resolve any future disputes peacefully through international mediation if necessary. All Prisoners of War will be returned to their respective countries. Both Ukraine and Russia will terminate their claims of war crimes committed by the other side. Neither party to the conflict will be required to pay reparations of any kind to the other. Ukrainian reconstruction assistance shall be provided by its Western partners under subsequent agreements with them.

5.      The number of active-duty Ukrainian military servicemen including National Guard shall be reduced to a level fifty percent lower than they were before the war began with a maximum of 500,000 reserve troops. The size of the Border Guards shall be reduced to its pre-war size. Both the National Guard and the SBGS may be equipped with armored personnel carriers but may not possess any heavy weapons such as tanks, combat aircraft and artillery systems.

6.       The number of Ukraine’s tanks, armored vehicles, heavy mortars, howitzers, multiple rocket launch systems and air defense systems shall not exceed the number of those weapon systems currently possessed by the German Army. Ukraine’s ‘strike systems’ including howitzers, heavy mortars, multiple rocket launch systems, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and combat drones shall be limited to a range of no more than forty kilometers while its air defense missile systems shall be limited in range to seventy-five kilometers. The number of Ukraine’s combat aircraft (fixed and rotary wing) aircraft shall be reduced to 100 while the number of its combat ships shall be limited to 24 including up to four light frigates or corvettes. Furthermore, Ukraine commits to refrain from producing or possessing weapons of mass destruction and to close all its foreign biological labs.

7.       Full diplomatic relations between the Russian Federation and Ukraine will be restored following the signing of this agreement along with the normalization of trade ties, ending all sanctions, prohibitions and restrictions imposed against each another since 2014. All US economic sanctions against the Russian Federation enacted from 2014 onward shall be immediately rescinded upon the execution of this peace agreement by both parties and all seized public and private Russian financial and economic assets from the US shall be restored to their proper owners. If any Russian financial assets have been liquidated, the government responsible for seizing them shall pay back the Russian government for the value of all assets which they have appropriated. The US shall encourage its western allies to lift all economic and trade sanctions against Russia and restore confiscated Russian assets as well.

8.      All Ukrainian far right and ultra-nationalist political parties shall be permanently banned from participation in the Ukrainian government and all such militias shall be permanently disbanded. The Russian language shall be restored as one of the two official languages of Ukraine with equal status to the Ukrainian language. The rights of Ukraine’s Russian minority population as well as the rights of Ukraine’s Orthodox Christian church members shall be guaranteed.

9.       The United States and the Russian Federation agree to begin negotiating a New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) II Treaty with a 3,500 operational strategic nuclear weapons cap based on never ratified START II Treaty levels. In exchange for Russia removing all its air and land-based nuclear weapons from Kaliningrad, Belarus and its annexed territories of Ukraine, the US will relocate its 150 B-61 nuclear gravity bombs from Western Europe to the Western Pacific. The US and Russia shall refrain from flying heavy bombers or deploying surface warships within two-hundred kilometers of the other’s territory, except for the Bering Strait.

10.   The US shall ensure that NATO shall not establish military bases in any former Soviet republics which do not belong to the Western alliance, use their infrastructure for any military activities or develop bilateral military cooperation with them apart from the provisions of Article Two of this agreement. Russia agrees not to establish military bases in the Western Hemisphere, use their infrastructure for any military activities or develop bilateral military cooperation with them. In return for Russia agreeing to allow Ukraine to remain aligned with the West, all US troops shall be withdrawn from the territory of NATO member states which joined in 1999 or thereafter. Both sides agree to work towards implementing additional reciprocal troop reductions in Eastern Europe by both Russia and NATO as part of a Conventional Forces in Europe II Treaty. Furthermore, the US and Russia agree solemnly pledge to one another that neither side will go to war against each other in the event they are attacked by a third party.

Explaining the terms

Understanding the principal aims of the US and Russia in fighting the war in Ukraine, a workable peace could be realized that would satisfy the minimum requirements of both sides. The proposed peace plan above would serve to accomplish the primary US goal of keeping Ukraine as a US protectorate dependent on the US and its NATO allies for its security with Major Non-NATO Ally status while continuing to be independent from Russia with control of over four-fifths of its internationally recognized territory. It would also achieve Russia’s main goals of Ukraine pledging to never become a NATO member state, having all NATO troops withdrawn from Ukraine and eliminating all Ukrainian ‘strike system’ with ranges of over forty kilometers to establish a ‘sanitary zone’ to protect Russia from attack. Such a peace agreement would “recognize the reality on the ground” as Russia has outlined as being one of its requirements by ending the war along the current line of control.

As part of this agreement, Putin would have to give up his objectives of achieving neutrality for Ukraine and getting Ukraine to surrender additional territories in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson oblasts in exchange for achieving the other objectives of Russia’s limited invasion of Ukraine. A US military withdrawal from Eastern Europe would be a core part of the peace plan to reduce our perceived threat to Russia and greatly improve bilateral relations with Moscow. Russia would also achieve its objectives of obtaining a major reduction in the size of the Ukrainian armed forces and achieving “a sanitary zone” along its borders with a forty-kilometer range limit for Ukrainian missile, drone and artillery systems, thus satisfying its legitimate security interests.

If President Trump is re-elected, he would be wise to rescind the ten-year US security agreement with Ukraine as it infringes on his presidential prerogative to conduct foreign policy in the way he sees fit and obligates him to continue providing Ukraine with massive amounts of military assistance which would not be warranted under this peace agreement with the war ended and Ukraine agreeing to strict arms limitations on the quantity and types of various weapon systems. A Democratically controlled Congress could potentially impeach him a third time if he were to suspend aid to Ukraine even temporarily as they did in 2019 using our obligations under the security agreement as a pretext.

In return for Russia dropping its demand for neutrality, the US would replace its ten-year security agreement with Ukraine with a pledge to resume large-scale direct military aid in the event Ukraine were again invaded by a foreign power and agree to Russia’s insistence for a reduction in the size of the Ukrainian armed forces. However, the US-Ukraine Strategic Partnership Agreements of August and November 2021 could remain in force as part of the compromise. The provision that neither the US, nor Russia may send combat troops, ships or aircraft or drones within two-hundred kilometers of the other’s territory, except for the Bering Strait given the eighty-five kilometer distance between our two countries would match our respective Exclusive Economic Zones under international law and would not only provide increased security to both sides but would significantly contribute to eliminating the chances of miscalculation leading to accidental war.

Benefits of this agreement

Before his tragic passing, Dr. Peter Pry, longtime Executive Director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, called for the US to negotiate a comprehensive peace agreement with Russia to split the Sino-Russian alliance using Russia’s December 2021 draft mutual security treaty as a starting point. This agreement would be historic as it would be the first time since NATO expansion began that Russia signed a treaty accepting NATOs current boundaries, limiting future NATO expansion and NATO troops deployments in Eastern Europe thus accepting Russia into the security architecture of Europe for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It would be a mutual security agreement between the US and Russia that would accomplish the same purpose as what Russia proposed in December 2021–namely to reduce to the absolute minimum the chance that the US ever went to war with the Russian Federation by satisfying the legitimate security interests of both sides. Thus, this agreement would largely achieve Russia’s longtime goal of Russia being incorporated into the security infrastructure of the West in a way that would serve to greatly enhance rather than diminish the security of the US and its European allies. This negotiated compromise peace agreement would also be very much in Ukraine’s interest to save it from further death, destruction, potential military collapse, and largescale territorial losses while ensuring its continued security and independence from Russia.

The additional steps in the last two points of the above peace proposal, involving bilateral arms control agreements with reciprocal concessions, would serve to revolutionize US-Russian relations and bring a complete and final end to America’s Second Cold War with Russia. It would essentially eliminate the Russian conventional military threat to Europe and the Russian nuclear threat to both the US and its NATO, allies transforming Russia from an adversary into a strategic partner and effectively neutralizing Russia’s military alliance with China, thus enabling us to better discourage Communist Chinese aggression. The elimination of the Russian military threat would enable the US to finally implement its much-trumpeted national security pivot to Asia. Under such an agreement, Russia could remain part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization but the core economic and security aspects of its alliance with the PRC would be effectively neutered. Meanwhile, the provision for the US and Russia to negotiate a New START II Treaty with the same arms limitations as the START II Treaty of 1993 would serve as a powerful impetus for the US to rebuild its nuclear arsenal to a level sufficient to restore the credibility of the US strategic nuclear deterrent.

This agreement would commit the US to a policy of non-interference in non-NATO former Soviet republics while Russia committed not to interfere in NATO member states or the Western Hemisphere with an arrangement very much reminiscent of the Anglo-Entente of 1904. The last clause of the proposed peace agreement would serve much the same purpose as the Reinsurance Treaty of 1887 did for Imperial Germany until it foolishly decided not to renew it in 1890 leading to the formation of the Franco-Russian military alliance four years later, leading to the outbreak of the First World War which proved so disastrous for Germany and the world. It would essentially be a non-aggression pact in which both the US and Russia would pledge to never attack or wage war against the other including via proxy wars such as the war in Ukraine. Russia would commit to remain neutral in the event China attacked the US. This would represent a major improvement to America’s strategic dilemma in the event of a war with the PRC over Taiwan that would otherwise be likely to be fought not just in the Indo-Pacific but likely in Europe and potentially the Middle East with Iran as well.

Without such an agreement and particularly without a negotiated end to the US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, Russia would be likely to respond to a US war with the People’s Republic of China by either conducting joint massive cyberattacks and counterspace attacks to disrupt US military operations and deployments. Alternatively, Russia could mass hundreds of thousands of troops in Belarus and Kaliningrad to threaten the Baltics and Poland with invasion, forcing the US to deploy additional military forces to Europe that could otherwise be used to fight China as Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines recently warned in her testimony to Congress. 

With Russia increasingly aligned with the West, it might be possible to get India, a longtime Russian ally, to join Russia in leaving the Chinese-led BRICS trade bloc and join a Western trade bloc (perhaps modeled on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement) potentially consisting of the US, Canada, the European Union, Japan and Australia as a counterweight to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). An incoming Trump administration would also be wise to consider would be to conclude a US-Russia Free Trade Treaty, greatly increase US investment in Russia including dual-use military technology sharing and cooperating with Russia to develop a joint missile defense system as Putin proposed over two decades ago. Such measures would serve to greatly solidify a US-Russia strategic partnership which would completely overturn Chinese assumptions of assured Russian military support in any potential future conflict with the US in the Indo-Pacific.

Politico reports that as part of his campaign’s “Agenda 47” platform, Trump said in a video posted in March that “we have to finish the process we began under my administration of fundamentally reevaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission.”  One of the principle aims of this proposed comprehensive peace agreement with Russia would be to further Trump’s objective of restructuring NATO by implementing a proposal published in February 2023 by Sumatra Maitra, who serves as a Senior Editor at the American Conservative, for a ‘dormant NATO.’ Maitra describes how the US decision to carry most of the burden for its European allies’ defense has transformed them into US protectorates unwilling to invest sufficiently in their own self-defense from the presumed threat from a resurgent Russia. Like Elbridge Colby, he warns that with US troops positioned as nuclear tripwires along Russia’s borders in eastern Europe, the Baltic states, Poland or Finland could ‘chain gang’ the US into a direct war with Russia.  

To resolve this security dilemma, Maitra recommends the US end NATO’s ‘out of area’ operations like the war in Ukraine, close the door on further NATO expansion eastward and then withdraw its troops from NATO’s frontline states while continuing its nuclear umbrella over NATO members, to force our European allies to assume the burden for their own defense. He also recommends that a German, French or British Supreme Allied Commander Europe be appointed to replace the American one to transform NATO into a European-led alliance as I have long advocated. Under his proposal, the US Sixth Fleet would continue to shoulder the burden of the defense of the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, but the US would withdraw most of its ground troops and combat aircraft from Europe.

As Maitra notes, the population of the European Union is over 3.5 times higher than Russia’s and its Gross Domestic Product s nearly five times higher than Russia’s in terms of purchase power parity while its members have 515 nuclear weapons so there is no reason it shouldn’t be able to defend itself from potential future Russian aggression.  It is time for the US to transfer primary responsibility for the defense of Europe to our European NATO allies to free up the US to focus its military resources for homeland defense and deterrence against the far more pressing threat of Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific. As Vivek noted in his foreign policy treatise which he published in the American Conservative last year:  “European manpower should be the primary defense of Europe’s frontiers, with America as a balancer of last resort. Since about 1960, the United States has averaged about 36 percent of allied GDP but more than 60 percent of allied defense spending.”

The best way to accomplish this objective would be to reach an accommodation with Russia to eliminate the Russian threat to NATO with a comprehensive, negotiated peace settlement along the lines I have outlined above which respects the vital interests of both our great nations and resolves all our outstanding disputes in a mutually acceptable manner that removes any incentives for Russia to ever resort to war against its neighbors in the future. In accordance with Trump’s reported plan to restructure NATO, all 20,000 US troops would be withdrawn from eastern Europe to their pre-July 2016 Warsaw summit positions with US military forces only remaining in the UK, Germany and Turkey. This withdrawal would force NATOs European members to take up the burden for Europe’s defense and take charge of military deployments along NATO’s eastern frontier with Russia.

Under this agreement, all 150 B-61 nuclear bombs would be withdrawn from Western Europe and redeployed to US aircraft carriers in the Western Pacific where they are needed most to restore our theater nuclear capabilities to enable us to deter Chinese aggression more effectively. The presence of these nuclear weapons in Europe constitutes the single greatest incentivize for NATO members to depend on the US for their security rather than upon themselves in the belief that the US will defend them under all circumstances in the event they are attacked regardless of whether they have spent sufficiently on their armed forces to enable them to contribute to their own defense. Furthermore, their presence in Europe would be unnecessary to deter Russia that is at peace with its neighbors, and which is welcomed into the security architecture of Europe under the terms of this agreement.

The net effect of this agreement would be to in Trumpian terms–‘Make Europe Great Again’–by forcing them to provide for their own defense. Encouraging our NATO allies to restore their ability to defend themselves while the US maintains its nuclear guarantee over NATO member states at the same time we negotiate an end to the Cold War with Russia to minimize the threat they face would serve to greatly enhance America’s strategic autonomy in terms of our ability to focus on dissuading Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific region. What the US needs most right now are allies, not protectorates entirely dependent on the US for their security which contribute little to nothing to America’s own security and that is exactly what this proposed strategy would accomplish.

Even if Russia were to return to its former belligerent stance against NATO, US strategic nuclear weapons as well as British and French intermediate-range ballistic missiles would provide a hedge against such a contingency. Germany would be encouraged to build nuclear missiles to bolster NATO’s deterrent capabilities following the transfer of US non-strategic nuclear weapons from western Europe to the Western Pacific. The recent difficulties in getting Germany to increase its military spending to two percent of its GDP suggest that only if it is welcomed into the ranks of the great (nuclear) powers will Germany have any real incentive to increase its defense spending to sufficient levels to return it to being a major contributor to the collective security of NATO member states.

Implementation of this comprehensive peace proposal would effectively serve to take Russia off the geostrategic chessboard in the ongoing great power competition being waged between the US and China by transforming it from a close Chinese military ally into a non-belligerent power.

It would replace the bipolar international order in which the US is facing two allied nuclear superpowers with a tripolar international order in which none of the superpowers are allied against each other thus revolutionizing the geopolitical balance of power in America’s favor. By satisfying Russia’s legitimate security interests, it would also seek to transform Russia from a revisionist power to a satisfied power committed to upholding the new international order.

As previously noted, following the effective neutralization of its military alliance with Russia by the signing of this agreement, China might be more effectively deterred from risking war with the US over Taiwan without the assurance of Russian military support in such a nuclear superpower conflict. Furthermore, implementation of this peace plan could help us begin to replenish the huge number of advanced weapon systems we would need to deter Chinese aggression as we would no longer be supplying them to Ukraine.

While this proposal would not be without political risks, President Trump has made a name for himself as a renowned negotiator and skilled dealmaker and is exceptionally-well suited to negotiate such a comprehensive peace agreement with Russia that safeguards U.S. national security along with that of our allies. In so doing, he could secure his presidential legacy as one of the greatest transformational peace Presidents in US history, In addition, he could be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, not just for ending the war in Ukraine and potentially saving the US and Europe from an unnecessary direct war with Russia, but for creating the necessary conditions for an enduring peace, for which future generations of Americans would be deeply grateful.

Source: The Real War