The Desirability of Concluding a Grand Bargain with Russia to Neutralize the Sino-Russian Military Alliance

While the Ukrainian Kursk offensive has tempered his desire for peace, Putin has offered reasonable peace terms since the war began and even a mutual security agreement with the US and NATO

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaking after signing the Minsk II Peace Agreement with Ukraine in February 2015, which would have ensured continued Ukrainian control over all but four percent of its internationally recognized territory. Sadly, Ukraine refused to implement the peace terms. Putin continued to advocate peace with Ukraine based upon Minsk II right up until a few days before the outbreak of the war in February 2022.

Editor’s Note—I determined my last article was too lengthy and so I decided to split it up into two parts to make it more readable. Accordingly, this article is a republication of the first part of the original article I published yesterday with some minor updates. It is now the second part of my three-part series on ending the war in Ukraine. Here is a link to Part I.

Virtually from the moment Russia invaded Ukraine, it began offering peace terms to Ukraine to end the war. The day after Russian troops crossed Ukraine’s border, it provided four conditions to Ukraine including a cease-fire, demilitarization (defined by the Russians as a reduction in the size of Ukraine’s active-duty troops and the number of weapon systems it possessed), denazification (banning right-wing neo-Nazi groups from further participation in the Ukrainian government and military) and an agreement to return to permanent neutrality outside of NATO. In exchange Russia promised an end to the fighting and a full Russian military withdrawal from all of Ukraine’s prewar controlled territory.

On February 26^th, just two days after the war began, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accepted Russia’s offer to engage in peace negotiations aimed at swiftly ending the conflict. Putin’s desire to end the war quickly is underlined by his nearly successful attempt to end the war in early April 2022 with the Istanbul Agreement between Russia and Ukraine that was to be finalized at a summit between Russian President Vladmir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, committing Russia to withdraw from all eight Ukrainian oblasts it had invaded mere weeks earlier. Sadly, this outstanding peace agreement for Ukraine was subsequently vetoed by President Joe Biden for reasons that will detailed subsequently in this article. Russia has presented innumerable peace offers since yet the Biden administration has repeatedly claimed that Putin doesn’t want peace. The facts of history prove otherwise.

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Putin Was “Salivating at the Prospect of Peace” with Ukraine in April 2022

On June 15^th, the New York Times published a blockbuster news article including copies of draft Russo-Ukrainian peace agreements which served as the basis of their peace negotiations from March-April 2022. The article reported that a US official believed Putin was “salivating” at the prospect of a peace deal in which Russia would essentially agree to withdraw its troops to their pre-war positions mere weeks after they succeeded in partially surrounding Kyiv and occupying nearly thirty percent of Ukraine's internationally recognized territory. In exchange, Ukrainia would agree to neutrality, demilitarization and its expulsion of Western forces to the point where Putin jumped the gun and withdrew all Russian troops from three northern Ukrainian oblasts, including Kyiv, causing Zelensky to abandon the deal entirely. It presents a very different picture of the Russian President whom the Biden administration has misleadingly claimed is bent on the conquest and subjugation of all of Ukraine as the prelude to an invasion of Poland and the Baltic states. Here is an excellent analysis of the article provided by one expert:

Russia’s bid for permanent Ukrainian neutrality was not an outlandish demand. It was a request to revert to Ukraine’s July 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty, which affirmed Ukraine’s “intention of becoming a permanently neutral state that does not participate in military blocs.” This also happened to be the position of elected Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych before he was ousted in the US-backed Maidan coup of February 2014, as well as the plurality if not majority opinion inside Ukraine over many years. As F. Stephen Larrabee, a former Soviet specialist on the U.S. National Security Council wrote in 2011, “the main obstacle” to Ukraine's ascension to NATO “is not Russian opposition… but low public support for membership in Ukraine itself.”

In seeking to override both Ukraine’s founding constitution and popular opinion, the Biden administration was therefore not “alarmed” that Ukraine’s neutrality meant “unilateral disarmament.” Instead, it wanted to preserve the US-led militarization of Ukraine as a de-facto NATO proxy on Russia’s border – a project that has led to Ukraine’s unilateral decimation.

The former US official also claimed that White House officials debated Putin’s “intentions”, and questioned whether he was really interested in making peace. “We didn’t know if Putin was serious. We couldn’t tell on either side of the fence, whether these people who were talking were empowered.” Yet the same US official believed Putin was “salivating” at the prospect of peace. The Times also acknowledges that the Russian president appeared to be “micromanaging” the talks from Moscow – which would seemingly bolster the case that he was indeed serious.  

Two Ukrainian negotiators also told the Times that they saw the Russians as serious, with one noting that Putin “reduced his demands” over time. For example, after initially insisting that Ukraine recognize Crimea “as an integral part of the Russian Federation,” Moscow dropped that request.

Accordingly, as Ukrainian negotiator Oleksandr Chalyi later admitted, the two sides “managed to find a very real compromise” and “were very close in the middle of April 2022... to finalize the war with some peace settlement.” Putin, he said, “tried to do everything possible to conclude [an] agreement with Ukraine.”

The two sides indeed made so much progress that the Istanbul Communiqué’s final item foresees the possibility of convening a meeting “between the presidents of Ukraine and Russia with the aim of signing an agreement and/or making political decisions regarding the remaining unresolved issues.” 

The Times, conveniently, does not mention [UK Prime Minister Boris] Johnson’s visit, nor the West’s open refusal to provide the security guarantees that Kyiv sought to underpin an agreement with Russia. Just as NATO proxy warriors have not been prepared to accept a neutral Ukraine in exchange for peace, US establishment media is not yet prepared to acknowledge their decisive role in sabotaging an early opportunity to end the war.

The great irony that Russia’s primary stated objective has not been to subject Ukraine to Russian domination as Western leaders have misleadingly claimed but rather to make Ukraine neutral, sovereign and independent outside of either America's or Russia's sphere of influence/military bloc is lost on most Western policymakers. Meanwhile, the Biden administration desires to keep fighting the war indefinitely to preserve the gains of the CIA backed Maidan coup in expanding America’s liberal empire into Ukraine which would seem to be a much more expansive goal than Russia’s more limited objectives. The administration’s principal objective in prolonging the war is to make Ukraine a permanent US military protectorate as dependent on the US for its security as possible given that were Western military assistance to dry up it would be forced to accept Russia’s demand for neutrality.

Putin’s March 2022 offer to withdraw all Russian troops from Ukraine’s pre-war controlled territories in exchange for Ukrainian neutrality and demilitarization remained on the table until late September 2022. At that time, Russia annexed four Ukrainian oblasts and offered a permanent cease-fire and peace agreement along the current line of control which was Putin’s standing offer until June 14th of this year when he demanded Ukraine withdraw from all four of those oblasts in exchange for peace.

Each time Putin’s peace offers have gotten worse for Ukraine, however, no Western policymaker or national security analyst can credibly claim Putin does not want peace or they had no idea what Russia’s peace terms were. Biden, Zelensky and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson were unwise to reject Russia’s Istanbul peace agreement at the beginning of the war. They were further mistaken in rejecting Putin’s September 2022 Korean-style armistice offer along the line of control and they are foolish now to reject Putin’s latest peace offer which he outlined on June 14^th as Russia’s peace terms will only worsen with time as Ukraine begins to run out of troops necessary to stop Russia from overrunning much if not most of eastern Ukraine and partially surround Kyiv again. On the other hand, there has not been a single serious, viable peace offer presented by Ukraine or the West to Russia since April 2022. Not one. Yet Biden and Zelensky continue to falsely claim, in an exercise in cognitive dissidence, that it is Putin, rather than themselves, that doesn’t want peace.

Biden’s Never-Ending Military Escalation Spiral

In virtually all prior nuclear superpower conflicts between the US and Russia during the Cold War, US Presidents chose diplomacy to resolve potential conflicts that they knew had the potential to escalate to the nuclear level. The most notable case of this was during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 when President John F. Kennedy chose to provide more concessions to the Soviets than the US received back, pledging not to attack Communist Cuba, thereby renouncing the Monroe Doctrine for the first time in nearly 140 years while also withdrawing US nuclear missiles from Turkey and Italy. He did so in exchange for the Soviets withdrawing the nuclear missiles from Cuba in order to save the lives of tens of millions of Americans who would have perished in a nuclear war with Russia. Similarly, when the Soviets crushed freedom fighters in Hungary in 1956 and when they invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, Presidents Eisenhower and Johnson wisely chose not to respond militarily in recognition of the spheres of influence agreed to under the Yalta Agreement at the end of the Second World War, refusing to send so much as a single bullet to help either enslaved nation defend themselves against an onslaught by the Red Army. Not even President Ronald Reagan made any attempt to liberate East Germany militarily even though it was positioned in the heart of Central Europe.

President John F. Kennedy meeting with Soviet General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev at the Vienna Summit in June 1961. When faced with the prospect of a nuclear war over Soviet nuclear MRBM’s deployed in Cuba, JFK chose to negotiate a diplomatic agreement with the Soviets to avert a potential nuclear exchange and save the lives of tens of millions of American citizens.

Since the war in Ukraine began nearly two and a half years ago, Putin has been doing everything he can do to limit the war in Ukraine both in terms of severity and duration, while also trying to contain the war to Ukraine to prevent it from spreading to a full-scale war between Russia and NATO in accordance with the terms of an agreement with the US back in November 2021. In contrast to Putin’s surprising strategic forbearance in refusing to retaliate directly against NATO countries for their provocative proxy strikes on military and civilian targets deep inside Russia, the Biden administration, has disregarded all the Cold-War era nuclear guardrails and has abandoned all the lessons of the Cold War as to how to keep the nuclear great power peace. They have been engaging in what amounts to a diplomatic temper tantrum over Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine that has persisted over the past nearly two and a half years now, refusing to discuss a peaceful diplomatic solution to a war being waged on the farthest fringes of Eastern Europe being fought over whether Ukraine should return to being a neutral power or not.  

The administration has continued to escalate its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine over the past year authorizing the transfer of longer-range missiles to Ukraine and authorizing their use against targets using US targeting data provided by US military and intelligence personnel who are likely assisting them in firing the missiles. Until recently, Biden honored the terms of its November 2021 agreement with Russia to only allow Ukraine to use US weapons to attack Russian forces in territories it annexed from Ukraine in exchange for a solemn Russian pledge it would not attack any NATO member states. However, in late May, Biden made the decision to violate the terms of the administration’s November 2021 agreement with Russia setting guardrails for an upcoming Russo-Ukrainian War, by authorizing Ukraine to use long-range US missiles to strike anywhere inside Russian territory that Ukraine claims is being used as a staging area for a future attack. This decision crosses a huge Russian redline in the process, presumably relieving Putin of having to keep his reciprocal pledge not to directly attack NATO member states.

The Biden administration has publicly stated that its motivation in wanting Ukraine to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian is to attempt to eliminate Russia as a peer competitor even though the US has no discernible interest in weakening Russia at all, let alone risking the deaths of over 250 million Americans to do so. After the Ukrainian cluster munitions attack that killed four Russian civilians and wounded 140 more on a Crimean beach, the US Ambassador was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry and was told, not that Russia might retaliate to this US backed strike on Russian civilians but that it would retaliate against the US for this attack. As Dr. George Beebe, who served as a national security advisor to former Vice President Dick Cheney, has stated, the administration has proven completely oblivious to Russian warnings that the cumulative effect of US escalatory actions could cause Russian leaders to feel compelled to escalate to the nuclear level to force the US to cease its attacks against Russia. In a recent article in Time magazine, he warned: 

“A key question now being debated within Russia’s foreign policy elite is how to restore America’s fear of nuclear escalation while avoiding a direct military clash that might spin out of control. Some Moscow hardliners advocate using tactical nuclear weapons against wartime targets to shock the West into sobriety. More moderate experts have floated the idea of a nuclear bomb demonstration test, hoping that televised images of the signature mushroom cloud would awaken Western publics to the dangers of military confrontation. Others call for a strike on a U.S. satellite involved in providing targeting information to Ukraine or for downing an American Global Hawk reconnaissance drone monitoring Ukraine from airspace over the Black Sea. Any one of these steps could lead to an alarming crisis between Washington and Moscow. Under the circumstances, mistakes and misperception could prove fatal even if—as is likely—neither side desires a confrontation.”

Russia has many options available to it to retaliate including counterspace attacks that destroy or disable US satellites, major cyberattacks against US infrastructure, a Russian backed terrorist strike against the US homeland or kinetic attacks against key US substations that could bring down part, or even all, of the US electrical power grid for a few weeks or more. Putin might even decide to covertly transfer supersonic Club-K container nuclear cruise missiles to Communist Cuba, presenting the US with a fait accompli in what would amount to a Second Cuban Missile Crisis.

But perhaps the most effective way that Russia could retaliate would be with a low-yield nuclear demonstration air burst above the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. Even worse, the first sign that the US has crossed Russia’s nuclear redline might end up being a mushroom cloud above NATO HQ in Brussels. Russian media is reporting that there is evidence that Ukraine is trying to make a ‘dirty (radiological) bomb’ for a false-flag operation for which Russia will be blamed. This is the same accusation Russia made in October 2022 when US intelligence was warning there was a 50% chance that Russia would use one or more non-strategic nuclear weapons against Ukraine to force it to capitulate and force the Biden administration to de-escalate and accept a peace agreement on terms dictated by the Russian Federation. Accordingly, this suggests Russia may once again be seriously considering nuclear escalation in Ukraine to force Ukraine's surrender. As I warned in April 2022, Russia's vast arsenal of non-strategic nuclear weapons, numbering 35-70 times more than the US has, is Putin's trump card to swiftly win the war in Ukraine at any time he chooses, likely by October. Biden would immediately de-escalate to avert a nuclear exchange. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressing a joint session of Congress on December 21, 2022. Ironically, Zelensky was elected as Ukraine’s President on platform of peace with Russia yet his personal ambition for perpetual political power as well as his desire for further self-enrichment have caused him to support a policy of indefinite war and military escalation with Russia instead.

The Ukraine NATO Membership Conundrum

A letter signed by sixty national security experts called on NATO members not to offer Ukraine a bridge to NATO membership at the upcoming NATO summit which was held from July 9-11^th in Washington, DC., warning it would backfire by incentivizing Russia to continue fighting its war against Ukraine and perhaps even lead to the outbreak of a Third World War between Russia and NATO. Despite the fact that French President Emmanual Macron has revealed, the public US commitment to NATO membership for Ukraine to be a well-constructed farce, stating that the US is one of two major countries that have consistently opposed Ukraine’s NATO membership behind the scenes, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has since announced that Ukraine’s path to NATO membership is “irreversible,” but that it cannot join until the war has ended and it has successfully defeated Russia. This statement is a recipe for endless war as Russia’s legitimate demand that the US issue a written guarantee that Ukraine will never join NATO even though this is the key concession necessary to end the conflict and along with it the increasing death and destruction in Ukraine.

Legendary reporter Seymour Hersh has revealed that the Biden administration blocked promising Ukraine-Russia peace talks late last year that could have ended the war on mutually acceptable terms to Moscow and Kyiv. As noted in this article, Seymour Hersch reported that General Zaluzhnyi was attempting to negotiate a deal with Russia in which Russia would not object to Ukraine NATO membership so long as there were no allied troops or bases in Ukraine in return for Ukraine's recognition of Russian control of Crimea and the other four annexed oblasts. Hersch also reports that Zelensky fired Ukraine’s most popular General Valerii Zaluzhnyi as Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in February allegedly for trying to negotiate a peace agreement after Biden threatened to hold up $45 billion in US aid if Ukraine didn't end its covert peace negotiations with Russia. At the time of his firing earlier this year, it was reported that not only was Zaluzhny running far ahead of Zelensky in Ukrainian presidential polls but there were rumors that he was mulling a potential military coup against Zelensky so he could institute an immediate cease-fire and armistice with Russia to prevent any additional Ukrainian territory from being conquered by Russia and to save hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers from having to die in an unwinnable war.

Forging a Grand Bargain Between the US and Russia

For more than two decades, I have advocated that the US should significantly reduce its military forces in Europe and Asia to reduce our perceived threat profile to Russia and China. My goal in doing so would be to get them to stop viewing the US as the main enemy and focus more on viewing each other as potential adversaries and rivals for geopolitical power to further divide and disrupt their military alliance. Sumantra Maitra, who serves as Director of Research and Outreach at the American Ideas Institute, wrote an excellent article in The American Conservative entitled a “A Vision for NATO.” In this article, he calls for the US to conclude a grand bargain with Russia that would resolve all major disputes and disagreements between the two superpowers along mutually acceptable lines as I have been strongly advocating for at least the past fifteen years. The objective of such an agreement would be to transform Russia from an adversary to a strategic partner to enable us to neutralize the Sino-Russian military alliance and effectively remove Russia from the grand chessboard of strategic rivalry between the US and the PRC, thereby weakening Communist China and radically revising the international order in America’s favor. 

In this article, Maitra suggests the core elements of a potential peace deal ending the war in Ukraine which could help transform Russia from a Chinese military ally against America into a neutral state:

“The Russian foreign ministry’s core conditions [for NATO expansion] were that Moscow might agree to enlargement as long as there were “no deployments of nuclear weapons or allied combat forces on the territory of new member states.” Both conditions were immediately agreed upon by NATO and the U.S…Russia is a reactive, not a revanchist power…The history of NATO–Russia relations was not etched in stone, and it could have been altered several times by a grand bargain with Moscow, the glimpses of which were visible throughout…If a country is an inherently reactive power, then realism dictates that there are ways to achieve a grand bargain with that country. A Russia satiated and relatively neutral in the European balance, similar to her post-Napoleonic posture, would be a net benefit for an America seeking to shift its gaze to the east as a peer rival emerges…Imperial overstretch is as much a reason for great power implosion as all-out war. Both need to be avoided. By any plausible metrics, NATO in its current form is an ever-pressing burden on American shoulders. It need not be. If a grand bargain between Russia and a dormant defensive NATO helps Washington focus more on the rising dark clouds in the east, then that’s a good compromise. To reach that stage, drastic and original measures might be necessary.”

It is noteworthy that Russia’s core conditions for the first NATO expansion in the 1990s have not changed in the last three decades when Russia demanded “no deployments of nuclear weapons or [Western] allied combat forces on the territory of new member states.” The US agreed to those demands and respected them until the July 2016 Warsaw summit when Obama decided to deploy 5,000 combat troops along Russia’s borders for the first time. Even as recently as immediately before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was declaring that US troop deployments to Poland, Romania and the Baltic states were only temporary, not permanent in furtherance of this long-time understanding. After the war began, Putin stated he didn’t have a problem with Finland and Sweden joining NATO so long as allied combat troops were not deployed and allied military bases were not set up there. Accordingly, it is possible that Russia might agree to Ukraine becoming a formal non-NATO ally provided these Russian core conditions were agreed to in writing by the US and its NATO allies particularly if it was agreed to as the centerpiece of such a grand bargain between Russia and NATO. 

Maitra also recently wrote a book entitled “The Sources of Russian Aggression: Is Russia a Realist Power?”, which serves to further advance his convincing thesis that Moscow, far from being the revanchist power Biden claims it to be instead views itself as a champion of the balance of power, and received glowing reviews from foreign policy realists.

Russell Vought, who serves as President of the Center for Renewing America wrote:

Sumantra Maitra's book attempts to address a simple but timely question: when does Moscow choose war, and when, in a similar situation, does Moscow refuse to pull the trigger. This question is of paramount importance, as on that hinges war and peace in Europe and American overstretch in that theater. Studying Russian reactions in three different historical case studies in light of four different variables, Maitra argues that Moscow is a status-quo power and only resorts to aggression when her perceived core strategic and geographic interests are threatened but otherwise lacks the will and capability to be a continental hegemonic threat, even when Russia is and will remain a localized irritant. The central argument is important, different from the hyperbolic literature of our times, and provides some actual confidence building measures to the Euro-Atlantic strategic community. One hopes that this book not only in the Pentagon and the State Department but will also be read in the halls of the Congress and might influence the Congress to return to a classical, detached, and prudential Washingtonian grand-strategy towards Europe.

Yoram Hazony, who serves as Chairman of The Edmund Burke Foundation also offered high praise for the book:

From where most of us sit, Russia looks to be an aggressive expansionist power. But Sumantra Maitra’s new book turns the tables on this view. Amassing a battery of sources on Russia’s reactions to NATO’s eastward expansion and the US and EU-backed “color revolutions” in Ukraine and Georgia, Maitra presents a disturbingly strong case for seeing Russia as having been pushed into anti-Western belligerence by a reckless liberal internationalism that just didn’t know when to stop.

Maitra notes that Russia, rightly or wrongly, views the US and NATO as the revanchist power attempting to expand NATO 1,100 miles eastward since the end of the Cold War and views itself as a reactive, status quo power defending the balance of power in Europe. Given the fact that NATO has doubled the number of its member states over the past quarter century and has expanded its territory by eighty-six percent after Russia disbanded the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union itself while withdrawing all Russian troops from those countries, it is understandable that they feel that way. While Maitra did not explicitly specify it in his article, for a comprehensive peace agreement to succeed along the lines he is advocating would have to be minimally acceptable to Russia likely along the lines of Putin’s most recent peace proposal while also being minimally acceptable to proponents of the war in Ukraine as well.

Former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy who championed a bold plan last summer to end the war in Ukraine as part of a comprehensive agreement with Russia to neutralize its military alliance with Communist China

For those who argue that a comprehensive peace agreement with Russia is not possible while Putin remains in power, it should be remembered that Russia offered very comprehensive draft mutual security agreements with the US and NATO in December 2021 in a very sincere attempt to avert the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. Sadly, both the Biden administration and NATO leaders rejected these mostly reasonable agreements in their entirety. One of my next articles will focus on a review of the specific provisions of Russia’s draft mutual security agreements to determine which are in Western national security interests and the few that would need to be revised for the Western powers to agree to them.

A grand bargain with Russia might also include a full US military withdrawal from Eastern Europe restoring the pre-July 2016 status quo perhaps as part of a Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) II Treaty that I have been advocating for nearly three years now. This is a potent idea which was ably championed by former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy in an article in the Federalist in June 2022 that I helped co-author. The idea would be to transform Russia from a revanchist to a satisfied and secure power removing any incentive for us to attack its western neighbors ever again. With the Russian threat to Europe ended, the US could transfer leadership of the NATO alliance to the UK, France and Germany and a newly elected US President could withdraw all our ground troops from Europe to refocus on the threat from the People’s Republic of China. In fact, recent media reports suggest that might be exactly what President Trump is planning to accomplish in a second term.

In his June 14^th address President Putin again called for the establishment of a new security architecture in Europe that recognized the security interests of all states including Russia to ensure international peace and stability as it proposed most recently in December 2021 with draft mutual security treaties with both the US and NATO which could be used as a basis for negotiations for a grand bargain between the US and Russia. Accordingly, the U.S. should come to an agreement with Russia that if it agrees to a modern day Reinsurance Treaty and pledges to remain neutral in the event of the outbreak of a potential conflict with Communist China over Taiwan, which the U.S. would nevertheless do everything it could do to avoid by implementing a new strategy to counter China though entirely peaceful means, the U.S. will rescind all remaining economic sanctions on Russia and provide a written guarantee that Ukraine will never join the NATO alliance.

During his address, Putin also appeared to express interest in restoring “good neighborliness” with Ukraine, likely in reference to Russia’s 1997 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership with Ukraine. He appears sincere in his desire for the restoration of a lasting peace, friendship and partnership between Russia and Ukraine as was the case before the CIA-backed Maidan coup overthrew democratically elected Ukrainian President Yanukovych. Accordingly, it is very possible, if not likely, that he would support a renewal of this treaty with Ukraine after the war has ended along with a re-establishment of robust, mutually beneficial trade ties.

As part of such a comprehensive peace agreement with Russia, western NATO countries would join the US in withdrawing all of their troops from eastern Europe in exchange for a Russian military withdrawal from Belarus and the Kharkiv region of Ukraine. Such a mutual security agreement could permanently end hostilities between NATO and Russia long-term by recognizing Russia’s legitimate security concerns in Europe, thereby ending the specter of a nuclear Third World War between NATO and Russia, which today is greater than it was even during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 while effectively serving to neutralize the existential threat posed by Russia’s military alliance with China. My next article will focus on what the specific terms of a comprehensive grand bargain ending not only the war in Ukraine but America’s Second Cold War with Russia should be.

© David T. Pyne 2024

David T. Pyne, Esq. is a former U.S. Army combat arms and Headquarters staff officer, who was in charge of armaments cooperation with the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas from 2000-2003, with an M.A. in National Security Studies from Georgetown University. He currently serves as the President of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and as a member of the Committee on the Present Danger-China. He recently served as Defense and Foreign Policy Advisor to former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. He has also co-authored the best-selling new book, “Catastrophe Now--America’s Last Chance to Avoid an EMP Disaster” and his new book “Restoring Strategic Deterrence” will be published in December 2024. He serves as the Editor of “The Real War” newsletter at dpyne.substack.com and previously served as a contributor to “The National Interest”. Here is a link to his interview archive. He may be reached at emptaskforce.ut@gmail.com.

Recent Interviews

July 22nd—Interview with Nima Alkhorshid on the Dialogue Works podcast to discuss my new ten-point peace plan to end the war in Ukraine, transform Russia from an adversary to a strategic partner, end its threat to the US and NATO and deter Chinese aggression by neutralizing its alliance with Russia. Here is a link to the interview.

July 22nd—Interview with Pascal Lottaz on his Neutrality Studies podcast to discuss my new peace plan to end the war in Ukraine, transform Russia from an adversary to a strategic partner, end its threat to the US and NATO and deter Chinese aggression by neutralizing its alliance with Russia. Here is a link to the interview.

July 23rd—Interview with Jon Twitchell on Talk with Jon on KTALK AM 1640 to discuss the Republican National Convention, the attempted Trump assassination and how Biden’s decision to drop out and endorse Kamala Harris for President will effect the outcome of the November 2024 presidential election. Here is a link to the interview.

July 26th—Interview with Brannon Howse on Patriot TV to discuss the Trump assassination and the threat from 80 missing Russian suitcase one kiloton nuclear weapons. Here is a link to the interview.

August 6th—Interview with Jon Twitchell on Talk with Jon on KTALK AM 1640 to discuss the Republican National Convention, the attempted Trump assassination and Kamala Harris’ decision to choose Tim Walz as her vice presidential running mate. Here is a link to the interview.

August 13th—Interview with Col. Rob Maness on the Rob Maness Show to discuss my new Ukraine War peace plan showing how Trump could end the war within 24 hours of his inauguration. Here is the link to the interview.

August 14th—Interview with Brannon Howse to discuss my new Ukraine War peace plan showing how Trump could end the war within 24 hours of his inauguration as well as Kamala Harris’ Manchurian vice presidential running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, who is a far left extremist enamored with the murderous Communist Chinese terror regime. Here is the link.

August 20th—Interview with Jon Twitchell on Talk with Jon on KTALK AM 1640 to discuss Kamala Harris’ decision to choose Tim Walz as her Manchurian vice presidential candidate and my latest plan to end the Ukraine War. Here is a link to the interview.

August 26th—Interview with Col. Rob Maness on the Rob Maness Show to discuss whether the US could win a full-scale war with China and talk about my latest China-Taiwan peace plan detailing how the US could negotiate a resolution to the conflict that would allow Taiwan continued self-rule and continued control of its armed forces.

Upcoming Interviews

August 30th—Interview with Nima Alkhorshid on the Dialogue Works podcast to discuss my new comprehensive peace plan to end the war in Ukraine, my proposal to negotiate a grand bargain with Russia to transform it from an adversary to a strategic partner and my updated proposal to negotiate a EU style confederation agreement between China and Taiwan to avert the outbreak of a Third World War in the Western Pacific.

September 7th—Interview with Preston Schleinkofer on Civil Defense Radio to discuss the key recommendations of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security as to what the next President should do to defend America against the existential threats against cyber, super-EMP and nuclear missile attack.

September 12th—Interview with Brannon Howse to discuss Russia’s massive “Ocean 24 naval and air exercises in the Sea of Japan with China as well as the Pacific and Arctic Oceans, the Mediterranean, Caspian, and Baltic Seas. We will also discuss recent North Korean nuclear missile launches and Putin’s threats to escalate to the nuclear level if Biden authorizes Ukraine to use long-range US missiles in deep strikes against Russia.

September 24th—Interview with Jon Twitchell on Talk with Jon on KTALK AM 1640 to discuss Biden’s escalation of the war in Ukraine which could trigger World War Three and Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with a World War Two historian.

September 25th—Interview with Brannon Howse to discuss China’s massive joint naval exercises with Russia in the Sea of Japan and their deployment of all three of their supercarriers for the first time ever. We will also discuss the findings of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy which concluded China is outpacing the US and the US is woefully unprepared to fight a war with nuclear great powers.

September 27th—Interview with Raphael Machado on behalf of a German media publishing group to discuss the ramifications of Biden’s sabotage attack on Germany’s Nord Stream pipelines, which was an attack on a NATO ally as well as the prospects for continued large-scale US and German military assistance to Ukraine.