Trump’s Brilliant Plan to Forge a New US-Russia Entente
Inside the President's bold, courageous endeavor to neutralize the Sino-Russian military alliance by creating a grand geostrategic partnership for peace with Russia to counter Communist China
President Donald J. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin pictured at a summit meeting during his first term before the outbreak of the war in Ukraine
This past week marked both the third-year anniversary of the outbreak of the war in Ukraine but also the anniversary of Nixon’s trip to Beijing. Fifty-three years ago this week, President Richard Nixon traveled to Beijing to begin normalizing relations with the PRC in a failed attempt to get them to join a US-China entente directed against the Soviet Union. While it was doomed to failure as the PRC and USSR had more in common as Communist regimes than they had in common with the US, his diplomatic gambit demonstrated strategic thinking on the part of his administration such as has not been seen by a US President until now.
Now, President Donald J. Trump is reportedly attempting to execute what some have termed a “reverse Nixon” strategy as he attempts to normalize US diplomatic and trade relations with Russia to get them to join a US-Russia entente to help counter the PRC. Trump has an opportunity to outdo Nixon with his strategic overtures to the Russian Federation as given that the US has no underlying reason to remain adversaries his strategy of attempting to neutralize the Sino-Russian military alliance has a far higher prospect of success. In the realization that Russia, unlike the PRC, is a manufactured adversary and US security interests are very different from Ukraine’s, President Trump is moving full speed ahead with his new plan to forge a grand new strategic partnership for peace with Russia that could secure the US and its treaty allies and restore peace and stability to Europe. Unlike the US relationship with Communist China over half a century ago, the US and post-Soviet Russia have many interests in common which could provide the basis for a lasting friendship and transformational geopolitical cooperation that could entirely neutralize Russia’s military alliance with the PRC and ensure the safety and security of the US homeland for half a century or more to come.
His grand strategic peace plan appears to incorporate the best elements from Sumatra Maitra's plan for “a Dormant NATO,” Vivek Ramaswamy's plan to split the Sino-Russian alliance which I co-wrote and a proposal I co-authored along with former Reagan administration official Chet Nagle last summer outlining how President Trump could end the war in Ukraine in days after becoming President with a new entente with Russia. As I wrote in a previous article, President Trump is working to jettison the liberal international in favor of a much more peaceful and stable tripolar international order that neutralizes the Sino-Russian alliance and ends Russia’s nuclear threat to the US making America much more secure. This is all part of a strategy by the Trump administration to reset US relations with Russia to an extent not previously thought possible improving cooperation with Moscow along a host of geopolitical issues to benefit our mutual interests rather than pursue an endless cycle of unnecessary zero-sum confrontation with Russia as the Biden administration sought to do. Thus far, Trump’s strategy has proven a masterclass in how to resolve difficult and protracted conflicts and restore peace in furtherance of US national security interests.
As I wrote before the outbreak of the war, “What is most needed right now is for the United States and NATO to restore trust and a mutual sense of security in their relationships with Russia. To avoid stumbling into such an unnecessary and apocalyptic war, a new strategic framework that recognizes the vital security interests of the United States and Russia and resolves other outstanding sources of tensions must be established. Otherwise, a more stable, secure, and enduring peace will remain elusive.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has made clear that Russia will not agree to a cease-fire with Ukraine until the main points of a peace deal have been agreed to. A couple of weeks ago, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance made a number of statements with regards to a US peace framework for inducing Russia to accept a cease-fire seeming to accept its two biggest demands to do so with their statements that Ukraine will never join NATO and Hagseth’s suggestion that Ukraine may have to give up any attempt to regain its former territories which have been annexed by Russia. This has given the world new hope that the Trump administration has realistic expectations for what terms it will be able to negotiate in a final peace agreement with Russia ending the war in Ukraine.
The State Department readout said the meeting between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov last week puts the two sides "on a path to ending the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible in a way that is enduring, sustainable, and acceptable to all sides." As Bloomberg reported:
They also agreed to “address irritants” in US-Russia relations to restore the work of their diplomatic missions, and to “lay the groundwork for future cooperation on matters of mutual geopolitical interest” once the war ends, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said. Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov said they discussed a summit between Trump and Putin but it was unlikely to take place next week. “It’s hard to say yet that we’re getting closer, but there was a conversation,” Ushakov said of the US and Russian positions after the meeting, according to the state-run Tass news agency. Ushakov and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov represented the Kremlin at the talks that included White House National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal Bin Farhan was also present. Trump is determined to “move very quickly” on securing a permanent settlement in Ukraine, Waltz said in a briefing by the US side. Rubio said he was convinced Russia’s willing to engage “in a serious process” on Ukraine, while Witkoff called the meeting a “very, very solid session.”
US and Russian diplomats meet in Riyadh to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine as well as the terms of a new US-Russia grand strategic partnership for peace that I have long been advocating.
President Trump appears highly motivated to get a peace deal ending the war in Ukraine done as soon as possible to stop the death and destruction on both sides and, even more importantly, end the ongoing threat of escalation to a full-scale war with NATO that would quickly spiral to the nuclear level. Great power alliances transformed two regional wars in Eastern Europe into unnecessary world wars that cost the lives over 100 million people. Trump is singularly determined that US membership in the NATO alliance does not transform a third regional war in eastern Europe into an unnecessary Third World War that could cost the lives of a billion more. Just as the UK and France did in issuing a military guarantee of Poland from German attack in 1939 they knew they were unable to keep ensuring the outbreak of the Second World War, the Biden administration and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson issued misleading and dangerous assurances of unlimited US financial and military support to Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelensky. They did so in exchange for Zelensky rejecting the Istanbul Agreement agreeing to fight the NATO proxy war against Russia indefinitely at the cost of over a million Ukrainian soldiers dead and wounded to date while refusing to send so much as a single NATO soldier to fight Russia in Ukraine.
During an interview on CNN the following day, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, who has proven to be by far the best negotiator on the US negotiation team, stated that the Istanbul Agreement could serve as a “guidepost” to swiftly achieving a final peace agreement ending the senseless and incredibly destructive war in Ukraine. Russian leaders have also pointed to the Istanbul Agreement as the basis for a final peace deal modified to include the 2022 Russian annexation of the formerly Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia. This strongly suggests that US and Russian negotiators may be much closer than we previously realized to finalizing a peace deal or at least to agreeing on the key points of a peace framework which could produce a cease-fire before a final peace deal has been signed. As Samuel Charap, a senior analyst with the RAND Corporation, wrote in Foreign Affairs, it makes eminent sense for the US to pick up on negotiations where Russia and Ukraine left off given they were more than ninety percent agreed on the final terms before UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson persuaded Zelensky to cancel the signing of the peace agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin a day before it was scheduled to be signed back in April 2022.
On February 22nd, White House Secretary Karoline Leavitt stated that negotiations with Russia are proceeding so expeditiously that President Trump is very confident the war could end with a cease-fire this week. Two days later, National Security Advisor Mike Walz stated on Fox News that a deal ending the war in Ukraine could be “imminent.” During a White House press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron later that same day, Trump said he thinks the war "could end within weeks." On February 27th, President Trump said peace talks with Russia were “very well advanced” implying that peace talks have been continuing in secret without fanfare perhaps at the embassy level or remotely. Trump likely briefed Zelensky on progress of the talks during his brief visit to the White House on February 28th which went so poorly they may have irreparably damaged US-Ukrainian revelations causing even neocon Ukraine war backer Sen. Lindsey Graham to call for Zelensky’s resignation. Negotiations could be finalized later this month if the US delegation were meeting with the Russian delegation every day just as the Russians and Ukrainians did before they signed the Istanbul Agreement within five weeks of the war’s beginning.
Former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Stephen Bryen posted the details of a reported Trump peace plan in this graphic. While it has yet to be confirmed by the US as genuine, all of this would be acceptable to Moscow except for the insertion of European peacekeepers. Russia is on record rejecting any foreign troops in Ukraine including peacekeepers but I believe they would accept my counterproposal of non-European peacekeepers particularly if they were led by India.
Trump has been working overtime to normalize US-Russian relations, reduce tensions and eliminate the potential for future conflicts. During a White House press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron on February 26th, President Trump said the US would not provide any security guarantees to Ukraine and that “we are going to have the Europeans do that,” virtually eliminating the chance that the US could be embroiled in a future NATO proxy war with Russia. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth informed America’s NATO allies that from henceforth they would have responsibility for virtually all military assistance to Ukraine. Furthermore, the fact that there have been no Ukrainian long-range missile attacks on Russia greater than 50-mile range since Trump became President strongly suggest his administration is withholding satellite targeting info from Ukraine essentially ending US participation in the conflict.
In so doing, President Donald J. Trump is making good on his 2022 promise to end the war in Ukraine as quickly as possible beginning with his ninety-minute phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin a couple of weeks ago. While his campaign pledge to end the war within twenty-four hours of taking office proved overly optimistic, he has reportedly set a date of May 9th to finalize a comprehensive peace agreement ending the war with US negotiating teams working as quickly as possible to come to terms with their Russian counterparts. A negotiated peace ending the war in Ukraine would be a “win-win” agreement for the US, Russia, Ukraine and Europe as it would end the threat of nuclear escalation that would destroy not just Ukraine but the entire Western world.
His decision to negotiate a swift end to the war in Ukraine with Russia has earned praise by America First conservatives and statesman across the world while producing scorn by neo-imperialists in both parties and in Europe who feign shock by Trump’s decision to follow through on his promise made to the American people years ago to end the war in Ukraine. They continue to misleadingly claim, in Orwellian fashion, that the only path to a just and lasting peace is a NATO proxy war against Russia of indefinite duration to be fought until the last Ukrainian soldier has been killed in action allowing Russian forces to sweep across the country unopposed all the way to NATO’s borders. This senseless and unnecessary war, which Trump has correctly pointed out was provoked by former President Joe Biden, has caused Ukraine’s population to shrink by thirty percent and its territory to contract by twenty percent, while killing and wounding a generation of Ukrainian men totaling well over a million—a demographic catastrophe from which it will likely take generations to recover.
Some of the harshest criticism has come from neoconservatives who have been extremely critical of Trump’s decision to talk to Russia’s leader, something every President has done since FDR, demonstrating a fundamental and profound misunderstanding of the critical role that great power diplomacy has played in averting or ending regional conflicts before they erupt into full-scale world wars. Former National Security Advisor John Bolton, a longtime Never Trumper, called it “surrender” while other neocon acolytes have called it “appeasement.” On February 19th, China expert Gordon Chang posted on X, “We did not talk to the Third Reich so why are we talking to Russia?” claiming Putin is a “genocidal war criminal.” Chang then asserted that the best way to divide the Sino-Russian alliance would not be a Grand Bargain with Russia but defeating Putin which he claimed could be done “without firing a shot” by enforcing US oil sanctions against Russia. He then falsely claimed the US agreed to defend Ukraine under the Budapest Memorandum in order to get it to surrender its nuclear weapons.
Of course, the US has no way to defeat Russia let alone a rationale why we would want to defeat it. As I will expand upon in this article, a grand bargain with Russia is the key to deterring Chinese aggression. Putin is not a war criminal, let alone genocidal. Only 11,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the past three years of war, a remarkably low level of civilian casualties not seen in modern warfare not seen in decades. Western economic sanctions and the disastrous Western response have made Russia much stronger now, both economically and militarily, than it was when they invaded Ukraine propelling it from the 6th largest economy in the world to the 4th largest ahead of Germany and Japan. Russia has everything they need to continue the war indefinitely until Ukraine's military collapses and all of Eastern Ukraine has been totally overrun by Russian forces. Also, the US never agreed to defend Ukraine. In fact, the Budapest Memorandum was written by the Clinton administration to ensure the US would not be required to send a single soldier or weapon to defend Ukraine from a potential Russian attack.
Splitting the Sino-Russian Military Alliance
While speaking with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson at a rally just days after his re-election, Trump demonstrated his clear understanding of the existential threat to America posed by the Sino-Russian alliance, which Biden’s war in Ukraine has caused to become ever closer, and his determination to do whatever is necessary to break it apart. "The one thing you never want to happen is you never want Russia and China uniting,” he said. “I'm going to have to un-unite them, and I think I can do that, too. I have to un-unite them." Trump was not alone in the realization of the existential threat posed by the Sino-Russian military alliance and the need to split it apart. Tucker Carlson previously stated on his Fox News show, "the US ought to be in a relationship with Russia aligned against China if we can." Even Joe Biden claimed he had a post-election plan for dividing the Sino-Russian alliance during a press conference just before he was forced to drop out of the 2024 presidential race.
General Keith Kellogg who serves as Trump’s Special Envoy to Russia and Ukraine recently stated that the Trump administration is attempting to use a peace agreement with Russia ending the war in Ukraine to break Russia away from its alliance with China, North Korea and Iran.
As I have stated in previous articles, former President Joe Biden made a conscious choice to provoke Russia to invade Ukraine by refusing to issue Russia a written guarantee that Ukraine would never join NATO. There is a growing understanding among US leaders that Biden’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine has been a strategic debacle for the US because as Brahma Chellaney wrote in a recent article in The Hill, it has pushed Russia into an ever closer alignment with China making the PRC the biggest winner of the war:
Former President Joe Biden left President Trump a mess in Ukraine, with Russian forces continuing to occupy one-fifth of Ukrainian territory and advancing along the front lines. The U.S. faces diminishing options after three years of deepening entanglement in a brutal war that has devastated numerous Ukrainian cities, towns and villages. The war has distracted America from pressing challenges in the Indo-Pacific region, the world’s emerging economic and geopolitical hub that is poised to shape the new international order. Worse still, China has emerged as the big winner, as the conflict has ensnared NATO and Russia. The U.S.-led “hybrid war” and unprecedented sanctions against Moscow have inadvertently strengthened China’s hand, including by making it Russia’s banker. More concerning is China’s strategic maneuvering to co-opt Russia in an unholy alliance against the U.S. Their “no-limits partnership,” declared in 2022, is creating a two-against-one geopolitical competition that threatens to accelerate America’s relative decline through strategic overreach. A formal Sino-Russian military and strategic alliance could produce a pan-Eurasian colossus — America’s worst geopolitical nightmare.
Given this backdrop, the U.S. needs to return to its old grand strategy, which helped the West win the Cold War by driving a wedge between Moscow and Beijing. Ending the Ukraine war would also enable the U.S. to reallocate military resources from Europe to the Indo-Pacific, where its global primacy is truly at stake. But diplomacy between adversaries is crucial to defuse tensions and prevent direct conflict. Biden firmly shut the door to diplomacy with Russia, prolonging Ukraine’s suffering. Only after a change in U.S. leadership did the American and Russian leaders resume direct communication, agreeing to explore pathways to peace. By opening direct dialogue with Moscow, the Trump administration has demonstrated both its commitment to ending the war and the marginal role China plays in securing peace in Ukraine. The only nation that benefits from prolonging the war is China, which has more than doubled its nuclear arsenal since 2020 and is expanding its conventional forces faster than any other country has since World War II. Trump’s decision to extricate America from the Ukraine conflict aligns with long-term U.S. strategic interests.
While Challaney is right to warn that a Sino-Russian military alliance producing “a pan Eurasian colossus” which is America’s worst geopolitical nightmare,” she ignores the fact that this alliance is already a reality as on February 4, 2022, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a “no-limits partnership” which they described as “greater than an alliance.”
While still serving in the US Senate, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio correctly stated that China wants the war in Ukraine to continue to bog down the US militarily and economically to maximize their chances that a Chinese blockade or invasion of Taiwan would be successful. He stated, "The Chinese see great benefit in (continuing the war in) Ukraine because they see it as the more time and money we spend in Ukraine, the less time and money we have to focus on trying to weaken them." President Trump understands that ending the war in Ukraine is critical to closing this perceived window of vulnerability to dissuade China from blockading or invading Taiwan.
Back in 2000, as part of my graduate thesis at Georgetown University, I warned that the Sino-Russian military alliance would prove to be the greatest existential threat to US national security in the 21st century and that the overriding focus of US national security policy should be to develop and implement a strategy to divide and disrupt their alliance. Seven months later, the Russian Federation and People’s Republic of China formalized their alliance with their formation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in June 2001 which Russian President Vladimir Putin declared in 2005 to constitute “a reborn version of the Warsaw Pact.” This was followed by their signing of a Treaty for Good Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation the following month which includes some provisions for mutual defense against the US. Recent events, including the signing of an agreement for closer military coordination between Russia and China, seem to have validated my prediction, which President Jimmy Carter’s former national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, also warned about before he died in 2017.
In 2003, while serving as the president of a research organization in Washington DC, I proposed withdrawing the vast majority of US troops from Europe and East Asia so Russia and China would cease viewing the US as the main enemy to increase their rivalry with one another. In 2009, I wrote that the best way to divide the Sino-Russian alliance would be with a grand bargain with Russia, resolving all areas of conflict in a way that recognized the vital interests of both superpowers, and a strategic partnership with Moscow to counter the PRC and deter Chinese aggression. Beginning in 2019, I wrote a number of articles in The National Interest and other publications arguing for the US to negotiate or otherwise recognize de facto spheres of influence to divide the Sino-Russian military alliance. I have continued to advocate the US do so in articles since. That is a conceptual framework that might prove useful to the Trump administration in preventing unnecessary military confrontations that could lead to a potential nuclear conflagration with Russia and China in the future.
Renowned foreign policy realist scholar Dr. John Mearsheimer has gone even farther than what I have proposed stating repeatedly that "ideally the US should ally with Russia against China" since the PRC posed a far greater threat to the US than Russia and having Russia as an ally would be of tremendous benefit in terms of enhancing US national security given its immense military and nuclear power. During an interview with an Indian media channel, after stating that the US is fighting a “remarkably foolish" proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and saying “it’s not good that the US is bogged down in Europe and has lost sight of the China threat,” Mearsheimer stated, "The US should be focusing laser-like on China. It should be thinking overtime how to contain China and at the same time it should be working with Russia as an ally to help contain Beijing." Mearsheimer argued that India, Russia and the US should all be on the "same side of the ledger"
President Richard Nixon was arguably the most innovative foreign policy strategist to occupy the White House before President Donald Trump returned to the White House last month. The Trump administration appears to be taking to heart Nixon’s wise counsel that the US should strive to maintain better relations with Russia and China than they have with each other. General Keith Kellogg, who Trump has designated Special Envoy for Russia and Ukraine, has confirmed that President Trump aims to use US negotiations with Russia to partner with Moscow geopolitically to split them off from their military alliance with China, North Korea and Iran. During a Fox News interview following Trump’s press conference addressing his phone call with Putin on February 12th, former National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien stated that “Trump would like to pull them (Russia) away from China and end that alliance between China and Russia and come back to the fold” by dropping all US sanctions on Russia if they agree to end the war in Ukraine. He then echoed the neocon talking points in stating he thinks a peace deal would entail “Russia keeps the land it took under Obama with European boots on the ground, a Polish armored division and RAF planes over Ukraine.” Needless to say, all of that would be unacceptable to Russia and would ensure the war continued until Russian tanks surrounded Kyiv and Ukraine surrendered. Trump reportedly planned to sign a grand bargain with Russia to divide the Sino-Russian alliance, similar to the one he is negotiating now, during his first term but was only prevented from doing so by the fake Trump-Russia collusion hoax pushed by President Barack Obama, other Democrat leaders and the Deep State.
The Wall Street Journal has also confirmed that Trump’s seeming embrace of Putin and Russia is “propelled in part by a strategic desire to drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing.” The article noted that the Trump administration sent Russia a proposal to end its military cooperation with China in exchange for the US agreeing to a peace agreement ending the war in Ukraine largely on Russian-proposed terms. The article noted: "Thus, in a memorandum prepared for the Kremlin by an analytical center associated with the Russian government, on the eve of the negotiations, there was a proposal to stop cooperation with China as part of a peace agreement on favorable terms for Moscow. It also concerns Russia's promise to limit the resumption of natural gas exports to Europe in order to undermine European competitiveness and allow the sale of American liquefied natural gas, as well as proposals to grant American companies rights to mineral deposits in occupied Ukraine." Former Under Secretary of Defense Stephen Bryan reports that Putin dispatched Sergei Shoigu, who serves as the Secretary of the Russian Security Council on an urgent mission to reassure Chinese President Xi Jinping that reports that Russia is discussing ending its military and economic cooperation with China were false and that Russia would not give in to US attempts to divide their military alliance.
A New US-Russia Entente
As suggested above, the best way to disrupt the Sino-Russian alliance would be to end the war in Ukraine and forge a new US-Russia entente, modeled on the Entente Cordiale of 1904 that ended centuries of military conflict and great power competition between Britain and France. That agreement defined spheres of influence that clearly delineated the lines between both great powers to prevent future conflicts. To do so, the Trump administration understands that it will first need to terminate the war as swiftly as possible to restore peace and stability to Europe, thus ending the potential threat of Russian nuclear escalation that could cost the lives of hundreds of millions. It should also establish a new security architecture that benefits all European nations under the principle of “indivisible security” with the aim of providing security to all parties instead of promoting needless conflict with Russia by continued NATO imperial expansion.
The Economist magazine’s cover page highlighted the fact that a Trump-Putin peace deal that restores peace and stability to Europe and leads to the formation of a new US-Russia strategic partnership would be the globalist EU ruling class’ greatest nightmare.
Such a new US-Russia geopolitical partnership could potentially constitute the most powerful international entity in the world and could dominate geopolitical affairs to an even greater degree than the Sino-Russian alliance does today. More importantly, it would end the Russian nuclear, super-EMP, cyber, counterspace and conventional military threats to the US and its European allies allowing the US to focus on countering and deterring the threat from the PRC in the Western Pacific. As I noted in a recent interview, it has the potential for providing the US far more real security than almost any amount of defense spending could no matter how high potentially saving the US tens of billions of dollars on our military spending in furtherance of President Trump’s objectives.
A strategic partnership agreement with Russia could serve as the centerpiece of a new European security architecture that could end what has been called “the Second Cold War” between the United States and Russia. It would likely redefine U.S.-Russian relations by forging a grand strategic partnership between the two nuclear superpowers and ushering in a new era of mutual cooperation. This could be followed by the signing of a U.S.-Russia Free Trade Agreement, meaningful military-technical cooperation, and the establishment of a joint U.S.-Russian missile defense shield in Europe, which Putin called for back in 2000. The US could also implement further confidence-building measures and joint military exchanges designed to increase cooperation, trust, and friendly relations between Russia and NATO and perhaps even engage in joint military exercises with Russia while acting as an intermediary to improve relations between Russia and NATO. Assuming the United States then ceased deployments of its military forces in the Taiwan Straits and the South China Sea, such an agreement would greatly reduce the chances that the United States would either be dragged into a war with Russia and China or face the threat of an adversarial nuclear first strike.
Both President Trump and Russian President Putin have given indications of game-changing US-Russia economic agreements following the signing of a peace agreement. In addition to the signing of a US-Russia free trade agreement, this could include increased US investment in Russia in exchange for it and India pulling out of BRICS and relegate our rivalry with the PRC to purely economic competition rather than military confrontation as was done under the Biden regime. Ideally, Russia and India could even join a Western trade bloc to counter the BRI.
Trump met with Zelensky at the White House yesterday to finalize and sign a US-Ukraine agreement on sharing the profits of Ukrainian rare-earth minerals. However, Zelensky refused to sign it stating he “won’t agree to even a 10-cent debt repayment in this deal with the US” for the $300 billion we sent Ukraine to enable it to continue fighting its war against Russia while starting a shouting match the US president likely to lead to the Trump administration abandoning all its support for Ukraine. Trump should respond to Zelensky’s intransigence by accepting President Putin’s offer to supply the US with rare earth minerals instead including two million tons of aluminum from both pre-2104 Russian territory and Russian annexed areas of Ukraine in furtherance of his objective of increasing US-Russian economic cooperation.
Senior Chinese officials have privately expressed anxiety about Trump’s bold attempt to forge a new strategic partnership with Russia, coining the phrase, “Only Trump can go to Moscow,” an echo of Nixon’s historic visit to Beijing in 1972. If Trump were to secede in neutralizing the Sino-Russian military alliance, then China might be deterred from executing its plan to blockade Taiwan as early as later this year but no later than 2027 knowing that Russia would not support it militarily. Even China’s BRICS economic bloc could be threatened as it is very conceivable that Trump could provide Russia with powerful financial incentives to leave BRICS and if Russia were to leave then India would be assured to do so as well, dealing China a major setback in its attempt to successfully achieve global hegemony within the next decade or so.
Reimagining the Security Architecture of Europe
Just before the defeat of Nazi Germany by the Anglo-Soviet alliance at the end of the Second World War, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and murderous Soviet dictator Josef Stalin met at Yalta where Churchill and FDR proceeded to meekly surrender half of Europe to nearly half a century of Soviet occupation and subjugation in 1945. As much as I vehemently oppose the Yalta appeasement pact, the truth is that it was successful in keeping the nuclear great power peace for over half a century because neither superpower interfered in each other’s respective sphere of influence during that period. As such should be considered as a potential model for a just and lasting peace between the US and the Russian Federation.
As revealed by Russian President Vladmir Putin during his blockbuster interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson a year ago, the main reason that Soviet leaders decided to collapse the Soviet Union in 1991, when they could have easily used force to preserve it to the present day, was to pursue a strategy of convergence with the West in which Russia was to become part of the economic and security structure of Europe, a policy that began under former Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989. However, that goal was met with abject failure as after a brief flirtation with the idea of some sort of collective security arrangement that would include NATO, US leaders decided on a period of NATO expansion instead while the EU refused to include Russia. While US leaders were wise to form NATO to oppose the Soviets and defend Western Europe after the Cold War ended, the US should have either left NATO entirely or, perhaps better, made its membership conditional upon Russia being allowed to become a NATO member state as Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin all requested from 1990-2002.
US State Department Document showing Secretary of State James Baker promised Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that in exchange for allowing US troops to remain stationed in a reunited with Germany, “there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east. ” Declassified documents now available also show that British prime minister, John Major, and also the West German foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, gave similar assurances. However, the US proceeded to break this verbal agreement beginning with the Clinton Administration’s decision to expand NATO to the Russian border for the first time in 1999.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has argued that the West “betrayed” the principles of Yalta by violating solemn understandings reached between the West and the USSR that if the Soviets allowed Germany to be reunited as a member of the NATO alliance, the West would agree to continue to honor the sphere of influence dividing lines established at Yalta by never expanding NATO eastward. Russia claims that it is the US not Russia that has been the revisionist power by attempting to expand NATO 1,100 miles eastward into Ukraine, thus destroying the post-Cold War balance of power in which both sides agree that former Warsaw Pact nations and former Soviet republics would remain neutral buffer states between Russia and NATO, undermining Russia’s security in the process. From Russia’s standpoint, its invasion of Ukraine is viewed as a strategically defensive and preventive war by Russia taken only as a last result after fifteen years of Russian diplomacy had failed to negotiate a peaceful diplomatic solution to the Ukraine in NATO crisis.
Accordingly, what Putin wants most of all is not for Russia to annex more territory but rather to restore the security of Russia’s western frontier by negotiating a new “Yalta 2.0” sphere of influence agreement between the US and Russia under which the US would recognize a Russian sphere of influence over the former Soviet Union with the exception of the Baltic states and would see the US withdraw all 20,000 of its troops from Eastern Europe. The difference between the original Yalta Agreement and a new Yalta agreement is that the US would not cede one square inch of NATO territory to Russia. We would just have to agree to restore Ukraine's neutrality and pull all US troops out of Eastern Europe, thus restoring it as a buffer zone separating the two nuclear superpowers from a potential future military confrontation.
As Russian expert Gilbert Doctorow notes:
"From the standpoint of the Kremlin, the war with Ukraine is already over, just as effectively the War in Europe was already over in February 1945. The Russians have won. What they want to talk about with Trump is precisely the security architecture of Eurasia, and this gives the American president the opportunity to bury the rubble of the disastrous, failed campaign of the Biden Administration to impose a strategic defeat on Russia under the edifice of a new global age of peace within the terms of a Yalta 2.0 agreement in which everyone wins. Logically this Yalta 2.0 agreement should go further than allocation of spheres of influence, just as Yalta 1.0 did when it set out guidelines for implementing plans to establish the United Nations."
One of the best ways to break up the Sino-Russian alliance would be to recognize Russia and China’s respective de-facto spheres of influence rather than continuing the dangerous US strategy of attempting to exert overlapping spheres of influence which increase the risk of the outbreak of an unnecessary nuclear war. As I noted in a previous article, in recognition of the fact that we live in a multipolar world, the Trump administration has effectively abandoned the Biden administration’s strategy of liberal hegemony in favor of a strategy of retrenchment. The US would be much safer and secure with a tripolar sphere of influence agreement such as I proposed in 2019 that ensured the vital interests of all three nuclear superpowers while eliminating the perceived need for Russia and the PRC to ally against us militarily. This arrangement would better safeguard the U.S. interest in securing a much more stable and enduring great-power peace.
Then we could revert to being a hemispheric superpower like we were before the US entered the Second World War, exerting our dominance over North and South America as well as the Atlantic and most of the Pacific Oceans, and could re-focus on homeland and strategic defense instead of conventional military power projection. The idea would be to greatly strengthen America’s ability to deter and defend itself from cyber/EMP/nuclear/biological attacks, rather than to project U.S. military expeditionary forces to far-flung regions of the globe, where no vital U.S. national security interests are threatened.
After meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov on February 18th, Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that there were “incredible opportunities that exist to partner with the Russians geopolitically on areas of common interest and economically” indicating Trump is working on transforming Russia from an adversary to a strategic partner as I have been proposing we do for the past four years. Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson revealed in a recent interview that Russia’s incorporation into the security architecture of Europe and the West was a main topic of discussion between US and Russian negotiators. As part of its efforts to affect a new geostrategic partnership for peace between the US and Russia, the Trump administration voted against a Ukrainian sponsored UN resolution on the war’s three year anniversary denouncing Russia an aggressor and demanding that Russia vacate the former Ukrainian territories it annexed in September 2022 while also signaling it is abandoning all efforts to prosecute Russian for alleged war crimes committed in Ukraine.
EU leaders’ vehement opposition to Trump’s drive to normalize US relations with Russia, restore peace and stability in Europe by ending the war in Ukraine and establishing a new geopolitical partnership with Russia has created major fissures in NATO which was much more united before the war began. French Prime Minister François Bayrou expressed his concern about a potential alliance between the US under President Trump and Russia saying, "We can see an unthinkable alliance between Putin and Trump, which will marginalise Europe." One British government official exclaimed in response to Trump’s Truth social post calling Zelensky a dictator, “We now have an alliance between a Russian president who wants to destroy Europe and an American president who also wants to destroy Europe,” another European diplomat observed in recent days, declining to be identified discussing sensitive matters. “The transatlantic alliance is over.”
President Ronald Reagan and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev meeting at the White House during the late 1980s. Given President Trump has cited Reagan’s successful policy of “peace through strength” that was successful in bringing an end to the Cold War with the Soviet Union as a model, might he be seeking a similar relationship with Russian President Putin to bring an end to the Second Cold War with Russia and usher in a new golden era of world peace?
In response to EU attacks on his signature foreign policy initiatives, during his first Cabinet meeting on February 26th, President Trump said twice "the EU was formed in order to screw the US and they're doing a great job of it" twice during his Cabinet meeting and that Ukraine can forget about NATO membership. He is absolutely right in so stating. The EU is behaving as nearly as much of a US adversary than Russia is right now and Ukraine is not far behind. While, leftwing European leaders and media articles are rife with fear that President Trump and President Putin will negotiate a new Yalta Agreement, in fact, what they are envisioning is in many respects the exact opposite. While it’s true any agreement addressing the broader security architecture of Europe would likely codify de-facto spheres of influence in Europe between the US and Russia, all of NATO would remain firmly in the US sphere. Furthermore, Trump’s stated objective is to restore Europe’s independence and sovereignty by massively reducing their dependence on the US for their security to enable them to defend themselves something they have been unwilling to do since the end of the Second World War, in effect liberating them from their post-World War Two role of being mere client states in America’s liberal empire.
The Financial Times reported that during the Rubio-Lavrov meeting held in Riyadh last week, Russia demanded as the price for normalization of US-Russia relations that all US troops be withdrawn from Central and Eastern Europe including all of the nations that joined NATO from 1999 onward Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Sweden as well as Kosovo which is not part of NATO. German newspaper Bild reports that US officials are discussing doing exactly that but only as part of a final peace deal ending the war, confirming reports that Trump intends to withdraw 20,000 troops from Europe which is the number of troops the US currently has stationed in these countries. Combined with an end to Biden’s war in Ukraine, a return to neutrality for Ukraine outside of NATO, a withdrawal of all NATO troops and bases from Ukraine and its partial demilitarization, this proposal would eliminate any incentive for Russia to ever attack Ukraine again, eliminating the need for any US security guarantee for Ukraine entirely.
What might Trump’s plan for a new security architecture in Europe look like? It would need to be bilateral as there are too many NATO countries that continue to pursue anti-Russian foreign policy to have a wider Russia-NATO agreement. Here is what I have proposed which would be very easy for the US and Russia to implement.
Proposed US-Russia Strategic Framework Agreement
1. The U.S. guarantees that NATO will never expand eastward. All U.S. economic sanctions against Russia enacted from 2014 onward shall be rescinded and the US will encourage its allies to do the same. All seized public and private Russian financial and economic assets shall be fully restored to their Russian owners. In addition, the US will encourage its allies not to recognize or attempt to enforce the warrant issued by the International Criminal Court against the President of the Russian Federation.
2. In return for a withdrawal of all Russian troops from Belarus and a reduction of Russian troops in its recently annexed territories to 250,000, all 20,000 U.S. troops shall be withdrawn from those nations in Europe that were not part of NATO prior to 1999 and the overall number of U.S. troops in Europe shall be reduced to their 2021 level. The U.S. will encourage its western European allies and Canada to withdraw their troops from those nations as well. The U.S. and Russia shall refrain from flying heavy bombers or deploying major surface combatants within two-hundred miles of the other’s territory, except for the Bering Strait.
3. In exchange for Russia removing all its air and land-based nuclear weapons from Kaliningrad, Belarus and all territories previously controlled by Ukraine, the U.S. will redeploy all one hundred and fifty of its B-61 nuclear gravity bombs from Western Europe to its aircraft carriers in the Western Pacific. The U.S. and Russia agree to begin negotiating a New START II Treaty with a limit of 3,500 operational strategic nuclear weapons.
4. In return for Russia committing not to interfere in the Western Hemisphere or in NATO member states, the U.S. commits to a policy of non-interference in all former Soviet republics which are not NATO members. The U.S. and Russia solemnly pledge that neither side will go to war against the other in the event they are attacked by a third party.
NATO Should Stop Provoking Russia to Attack it
A recent analysis published by the IISS on February 13th has concluded that Russian military spending has overtaken the combined military spending of all thirty European NATO member states in terms of Purchase Power Parity. The report noted, “But if Russia's spending is calculated in purchasing power parity terms — used in countries like Russia where domestic inputs are significantly cheaper than on the world market — the Kremlin's military expenditure would come to $461.6 billion, the IISS said. Russia surpassing all of Europe in military expenditures is something new, a result of its "remarkable" defense growth and industrial reform, said Fenella McGerty, an IISS senior fellow for defense economics. That adds weight to worries that Russia would be capable of attacking the continent once the war against Ukraine is over.”
Another recent study concluded that NATO only has sufficient weapons and munitions to fight a direct war with Russia for two weeks. Moreover, Russian military doctrine is to engage in a massive cyberattack and counterspace first strike in the event of war with NATO that would shut down its critical infrastructure and prevent it from being able to fight effectively. Accordingly, if NATO had to fight a hot war against Russia right now in Eastern Europe, the most likely outcome is that Russia would win. NATO's de facto expansion into Ukraine has created the very threat it was ostensibly founded to prevent--a stronger, ascendant Russia enraged from three years of NATO-sponsored Ukrainian attacks on its military and territory which is mobilizing its armed forces for a full-scale war against its proxy attackers. NATO leaders should start supporting President Trump's efforts to negotiate a compromise peace agreement with Russia ending the war in Ukraine as a further unnecessary prolongation of the war may threaten NATO's very existence.
"In summary, NATO is positioning itself as Europe’s defender, yet lacks the industrial capacity to sustain peer-to-peer warfighting, is wholly dependent on U.S. forces for the remotest chance of success, is unable satisfactorily to defend its sea lines of communication against Russian submarine, or its training and industrial infrastructure against strategic ballistic bombardment, is comprised of a diverse mix of un-bloodied conventional forces, and lacks the capacity to think and act strategically. An easy NATO victory cannot be assumed, and I am afraid that the opposite looks far more likely to me. The truth is that NATO now exists to confront the threats created by its continuing existence. Yet as our scenario shows, NATO does not have the capacity to defeat the primary threat that its continuing existence has created. So perhaps this is the time to have an honest conversation about the future of NATO, and to ask two questions. How do we return to the sustainable peace in Europe that all sides to the conflict seek? Is NATO the primary obstacle to this sustainable peace?"
Despite the fact, that the outbreak of a full-scale war between NATO and Russia would likely lead to defeat for NATO within a few weeks, some of NATO’s smaller front-line state along the Russian border are scheming for ways to force NATO into a hot war with Russia. They hope such a war would enable us to expel Russian forces from Ukraine and break up Russia into smaller countries as former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas has been advocating for. Finland and the Baltic states are reportedly developing plans to seize Russia’s shadow fleet which carries 80% of Russian oil out of the Baltic Sea. If they were to take such a reckless action, it would likely lead to World War Three with Russia and derail Trump’s plans for a permanent cease-fire in two months which appears to be their objective just as it was Biden’s. President Trump should respond by announcing that NATO Article V security guarantees will not apply to any nation that participates in this scheme to derail his peace plan and drag the US and NATO into an unnecessary nuclear war with Russia henceforth and forever. NATO would be far safer and more secure if it were led by rational leaders who understood that the best way to drastically reduce, if not entirely eliminate, the Russian threat to NATO is to end NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and incorporate Russia into the security architecture of Europe as President Trump does. Since NATO would be certain to lose a war with Russia if the US were not to join the fight, European leaders should drop their antagonism towards Russia by ending their support for the war in Ukraine, dropping their plans to send combat troops to Ukraine under the guise of peacemakers and focusing on improving their diplomatic and trade ties with Moscow.
The future of the NATO Alliance
Politico cited Liana Fix of the Council on Foreign Relations who noted, “While the Europeans hope to ‘keep the U.S. in’ and U.S. support flowing for Ukraine, they do not see the risk that comes with taking themselves out of the game when it comes to securing a cease-fire.” By opposing Trump’s call for ending the war in Ukraine, NATO countries risk opening up a huge rift with the Trump administration that could cause the President to further marginalize themselves on other issues such as retaining high numbers of US ground troops in Europe. In fact, if they continue to denounce Trump’s peace through strength plan as “appeasement” it might well cause him to decide to take US out of NATO entirely whereas their support of his peace efforts could potentially serve to strengthen the Atlantic alliance.
NATO served a vital purpose in defending Western Europe from Soviet invasion during the Cold War but has since transformed into an aggressive alliance of increasingly autocratic nations that suppress free speech and even cancel elections while publicly opposing US foreign policy objectives.
What use are our NATO allies to us if they act more like our enemies than our friends? Why should the US remain enemies with Russia when Russian leaders are offering us the hand of friendship, peaceful cooperation and strategic partnership? If NATO leaders cannot support the Trump administration’s drive to restore peace and stability to Ukraine and the whole of Europe and if our European “allies” refuse to act as allies and begin acting as our enemies, then perhaps President Trump should consider pulling the US out of NATO. In fact, Newsweek is reporting that President Trump gave EU leaders three weeks to sign off on a peace deal ending the war in Ukraine or else the US will leave NATO entirely.
Other European leaders have been more supportive of Trump’s bold new peace initiative with Moscow. Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó declared, “We have lived in the shadow of war for three years, and for three years we have hoped that the war would end,” he wrote on social media. “Today, with the phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, we have come a big step closer to fulfilling that hope.” Hungarian President Viktor Orban was jubilant about Trump’s proclamation that serious negotiations with Russia were already underway, exclaiming, “If the American president makes peace, if an agreement is made, I think Russia will be reintegrated into the world economy, reintegrated into the European security system, and even European energy. This will give the Hungarian economy a huge boost. It's a big opportunity. We gain a lot in peace.” Turkish President Recep Erdogan and Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico have also been supportive of negotiating an end to the war with Russia in Ukraine. President Trump should incentivize European leaders to follow his lead by signing free trade agreements with countries that support his signature foreign policy initiative in Europe and increasing defense ties with them while decreasing ties with states that oppose it.
President Trump should respond to harsh criticism on the part of European leaders of his visionary plan to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine with Russia by threatening to withdraw all US troops and end the US security guarantee from any country that continues to oppose his efforts to end the war in Ukraine and restore peace and security to the US and its European allies. Alternatively, he could threaten to massively increase tariffs on the EU and withdraw most US troops from Europe. On Friday, Defense Secretary Hegseth stated that Europeans cannot assume that America's military presence on the continent will last forever. "That’s why our message is so stark to our European allies — now is the time to invest because you can’t make an assumption that America’s presence will last forever," he added. He then added that US troops will remain in Europe for now but suggested that the Trump administration is discussing whether to pull them out of Europe in the next five or more years.
At the Munich Security Conference earlier this month, Vice President Vance even threatened to leave NATO if the EU cracked down on Elon Musk’s X free speech platform and I doubt he would have said that without getting Trump’s approval. Then during a speech proceeding the Munich Security Conference, he again made a veiled threat that if NATO nations didn’t stop assaulting free speech in their respective nations, then the US might not defend them in the event they came under Russian attack. What this means is that US membership in NATO might already be on shaky ground if Trump tires of NATO leaders’ sharp criticism to his laudable pursuit of an America First national security policy that will actually save Ukraine and restore peace and security to Europe.
A New Trump Doctrine?
We are seeing the formulation of a new Trump Doctrine which is that the US will honor its security guarantees for its allies so long as it is in the US national security interest to do so. President Trump reportedly sees US security guarantees over NATO allies as conditional and being predicated on whether it is in the US national interest to defend them. Accordingly, from henceforth, no US alliance should be “ironclad” and America’s treaty allies should be made to understand that if they behave more like adversaries than allies, they may lose their security guarantees while former adversaries like Russia that are willing to act as US strategic partners in furtherance of a new tripolar international order based on peace and stability will be treated as such.
Sumatra Maitra published an excellent article in the American Conservative underscoring the foolishness of the Biden administration’s “democracy vs. autocracy” narrative when the US is, in fact, a liberal empire. He echoes Vice President JD Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference last month that many of our NATO allies are acting in illiberal ways, destroying democracy in their own countries under the false claim of defending democracy much as Joe Biden did as President. Maitra states that Trump’s view of the EU as “a free riding trade rival” that has differing interests and sometimes opposes US foreign policy than the US is correct and as such it “doesn’t deserve unconditional American support and protection.”
Anthony Constantini, a Contributing Fellow at Defense Priorities, published an excellent article in Newsweek last month in which he called for the issuance of a new Trump Doctrine in which President Trump would condition America's adherence to all of its mutual security agreements that it will only defend its treaty allies militarily if it deems it to be in furtherance with US nationals security interests. Implementing this doctrine would provide the US the strategic flexibility to avert potential nuclear conflicts with Russia and China over small countries half a world a way that could lead to the destruction of our great nation. It would also incentivize our allies to do much more to provide for their own defense as well as induce them to try harder to get along with their neighboring nuclear superpower adversaries, serving to increase global peace and security. Finally, US nuclear adversaries like the PRC would be less likely to stage pre-emptive strikes on the US in regional conflicts if they believed that the US was less likely to defend Taiwan militarily in response to a Chinese blockade likely to materialize within the next couple of years, potentially avoiding the outbreak of an unnecessary nuclear war that could destroy the US and cost the lives of 250 million Americans.
"President Trump has the chance to reverse this trend with the announcement of a new, unifying presidential doctrine. The doctrine could be something along these lines: "The United States of America will aggressively defend its national interests wherever and whenever it so chooses and will interpret existing agreements in light of said national interests. Such a doctrine takes inspiration from two previous doctrines, Monroe's and President Richard Nixon's, the latter of which pledged to keep "all of [America's] treaty commitments" and defend nations whose survival America considered vital to its security." https://newsweek.com/its-time-trump-doctrine-foreign-policy-opinion-2020535
“The actual text of Article V does not require an armed response: each member is to "assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith...such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area." That "action" could constitute, for instance, sending humanitarian aid. Right now, the expectation is that America will interpret Article V by focusing on the "use of armed force" phrase; a Trump Doctrine could reset that expectation, giving our allies a reason to care for their own defense. It would leave the United States more strategic options, and turn defense into something that each side can gain from.”
The Trump administration should focus its defense spending on strategic and homeland defense while shifting burden sharing to our allies to provide the ground troops while the US continues to provide the naval and nuclear power to help them deter aggression. This arrangement would be far less costly for US taxpayers while proving even more effective in keeping the peace and should be applied not just in Europe but to our treaty allies in the Pacific as well in furtherance of the President’s plan to drastically reduce US defense spending.
At the same time, the US should act in furtherance of its vital strategic interests to expand its influence throughout the Northern Hemisphere which continues to represent its most core national security interest including by exerting control over Greenland and retaking control of the Panama Canal ports from the PRC. Finally, the Trump administration should fully implement his plan to use reciprocal tariffs to expand its defense industrial base to meet the PRC challenge given its industrial base is nearly four times larger than ours.
Conclusion
The principal aim of a comprehensive peace agreement with Russia would be to transform the strategic landscape in America’s favor by replacing the existing bipolar international order, in which we face two peer nuclear competitors that are allied against us, with a tripolar international order in which no nuclear superpower is allied with any other, thus making the US far more secure. It would also further Trump’s reported objective of restructuring NATO to reduce its dependence on the US for its security by implementing a proposal written by Sumatra Maitra, who serves as the Director of Research and Outreach at the American Ideas Institute, for a ‘dormant NATO.’ It is worth noting that despite the US withdrawing its non-strategic nuclear weapons from Europe, it would retain its nuclear umbrella over NATO member states.
This peace agreement could also serve as the centerpiece of a strategic realignment by the Trump administration that would significantly enhance the security of the U.S. and its treaty allies in Europe and East Asia. Effecting this peace plan would not only end the war in Ukraine, it would also end America’s New Cold War with Russia by transforming Russia from an adversary into a strategic partner. That transformation would end Russia’s threat to NATO while simultaneously serving to effectively neutralize Moscow’s alliance with Beijing, thereby seriously weakening China. Additionally, without the assurance of Russian military support, China might need to reassess its plan to risk direct conflict with the U.S. over Taiwan.
This agreement would constitute “a grand bargain with Moscow” leaving “Russia satiated and relatively neutral in the European balance” as Maitra has suggested. It would also serve to reorient Russia on the grand chessboard of great power competition between the U.S. and the People’s Republic of China, restoring the rough balance of power that existed before June 2001 when Russia and China formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which Putin has described as “a reborn Warsaw Pact,” and when Russia and China signed their Treaty for Good Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation the following month. Previous to that time, Russia was actively pursuing friendly relations and alliances with both the PRC and the West but had yet to ally with China militarily.
In addition, it would allow the U.S. to refocus on deterring Chinese aggression in the Western Pacific without having to worry about future Russian aggression in Eastern Europe. Such a diplomatic triumph, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General CQ Brown has stated, would provide “more global security” by saving Ukraine, recognizing its hard-won battlefield gains and ensuring the independence of over eighty-seven percent of its prewar-controlled territory. Once implemented, this peace agreement could secure President Trump’s legacy as one of the greatest transformational peace presidents in American history, ending the war in Ukraine and saving the U.S. and Europe from a full-scale war with Russia that could cost the lives of tens of millions of our citizens and forge an enduring and lasting peace.
In furtherance of a new geostrategic partnership for peace with Russia, the US should withdraw all its ground troops, not just from Europe, as President Trump is likely planning on doing but from the Middle East and East Asia and make a deal with the PRC over Taiwan in which the two countries would join together in an EU style confederation which preserved Taiwan's self-rule and control of its military ending the possibility of a nuclear war with China. If China were to blockade Taiwan, that is something President Trump might be willing to agree on to prevent World War Three. I have been calling for the US to exit NATO since 2019 and indeed Trump himself repeatedly expressed his desire to do exactly that during his first term as President.
© David T. Pyne 2025
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 is the former President and current Deputy Executive Director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security. He also serves 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 April 2025. 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
February 3rd—Interview with Nima Alkhorshid on his Dialogue Works podcast to discuss my latest plan to end the war in Ukraine in days not months as well as my analysis of Trump’s 100 day peace plan and its prospects for success in ending the war in Ukraine. Here is a link to the interview.
February 3rd—Interview with COL Rob Maness to discuss my latest articles focusing on Trump’s leaked 100-day Ukraine war peace plan and the prospects for Trump realizing his goal of achieving a permanent peace deal ending the war in Ukraine. Here is the link to the interview.
February 4th—Interview with Dr. Pascal Lottaz on his Neutrality Studies podcast to discuss my latest plan to end the war in Ukraine in days not months as well as my analysis of Trump’s 100 day peace plan and its prospects for success in ending the war in Ukraine. Here is a link to the interview.
February 6th—Interview with Brannon Howse on Brannon Howse Live to discuss Trump’s official Ukraine war peace plan due for release this weekend and the chances that Russia might accept it. Here is the link to the discussion.
February 14th—Interview with Brannon Howse on Brannon Howse Live to discuss comments by President Trump about his phone call with Ukraine discussing ending the war in Ukraine and the comments by Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at the Munich Security Conference. Here is a link to the interview.
February 17th—Interview with KUTV CBS Channel 2 News to discuss why I support President Trump and his agenda to put America First both at home and abroad.
February 18th—Panel Discussion on RT’s Crosstalk program to discuss Trump’s bold new peace negotiations with Russia to end the war in Ukraine without Ukraine or the EU having a seat at the table and to discuss the UK’s proposal to send tens of thousands of NATO peacekeeping troops to Ukraine that could lead to a direct war between Russia and NATO. Here is a link to the interview.
February 18th—Interview on Main Street Radio with Jon Twitchell discussing my latest articles focusing on Trump’s leaked 100-day Ukraine war peace plan and the prospects for Trump realizing his noble goal of achieving a permanent peace deal ending the war in Ukraine. Here is the link to the interview.
February 24th—Interview with COL Rob Maness to discuss the increasing feud between President Trump and Zelensky, whether he will agree to sign Trump’s proposed agreement to split the profits for Ukrainian rare earth sales and the Trump administration’s adoption of many of my recommendations not just for the terms of a peace deal with Russia but also a more comprehensive peace ushering in a grand partnership for peace between our two great nations. Here is the link to the interview.
February 24th—Interview with Brannon Howse on Brannon Howse Live to discuss the increasing feud between President Trump and Zelensky, whether he will agree to sign Trump’s proposed agreement to split the profits for Ukrainian rare earth sales and the Trump administration’s adoption of many of my recommendations for a comprehensive peace including a new US-Russia entente ushering in a grand partnership for peace between our two great nations. Here is a link to the interview.
February 25th—Interview with Raphael Machado to talk about when the EU will resume natural gas purchases from Russia, the implications of the German national elections and whether the EU will succeed in their bid to derail peace talks between Trump and Putin and defeat his plan to restore peace and stability to Ukraine and to Europe.
February 28th—Interview with Brannon Howse on Brannon Howse Live to discuss the fiery aftermath of the Trump-Zelensky meeting at the White House in which Zelensky refused to sign the minerals deal, claimed Trump failed to help Ukraine during his first term and accused him of parroting Putin’s talking points.
March 1st—Interview with Greg Allison on his show to discuss the Trump-Zelensky feud, the prospects for a peace deal ending the war in Ukraine, the increasing fissures between the US and EU and whether it would be better for US national security to pull the US out of NATO entirely.
Upcoming Interview
March 3rd—Interview on the Dr. Maria show on Lindell TV to discuss the ramifications of Friday’s Trump-Zelensky shouting match in the Oval Office on the upcoming US-Russia peace deal ending the war in Ukraine.
March 18th—Interview on Main Street Radio with Jon Twitchell to discuss the progress of US and Russian negotiations on a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine and form a US-Russia grand strategic partnership for peace as well as the chances that China will blockade Taiwan in early April.
A good read, and I've used it to forward its message of unilateral entente by the Trump agenda, which is ions from where the leftists here and abroad were capable of delivering while persisting only in the exasperation of this proxy war. The report is in-depth and accurate in its depictions.
This is very interesting and provides a good explanation of what Trump may be up to.
If this is the plan, it will fail for two reasons. It does not account for the nature of the Russian state, and more broadly, it relies on the great man theory of history, which is largely false.
Russia is an extractive state. It funnels the wealth it produces to a small elite which enforces its rule by intimidation and violence. There is no rule of law in Russia since the courts are under the thumb of the executive.
If Russia is granted a sphere of influence, it will impose the same system on the states within that sphere. This is what happened under the Soviet Union and characterised its relationship with eastern europe. This system collapsed because in the end such extractive states ossify, lacking the flexibility to cope with change.
Such a deal will mean the end of the system of international law and human rights. It will represent the abandonment by the US of the cause of freedom and democracy.
And yet the populations of these countries subject to Russian control will not abandon their desire for freedom. The dynamic of history consists of the great swell of peoples as they pursue their own interests and of others who seek to control them. Power is always fragile, because in the end it cannot resist the wish of people to be free. It is democratic states which are able to walk forward with the march of progress.
So a system of global governance which concedes domination to one or two other autocratic states, is inherently unstable. It would represent a great retrenchment by the US and a loss of its animating spirit. That spirit is already attenuated due to its own problems with growing oligarchic and corporate control and the anti-democratic philosophy taking hold in its own elites. So it is no great surprise that this proposal may come out of an administration that appears overwhelmingly concerned with purely commercial considerations. But this strategy represents the machinations of a degenerating democratic civilisation that has forgotten the purpose of its own constitution. It is of course a big step towards isolationism. But it fails to see that it is only one step of many on a path to obscurity.