In 1988, when President Ronald Reagan was asked by a reporter during the summit in Moscow what his goal was in the Cold War, he said: “We win, they lose.”
When it comes to today’s Russia and its unprovoked war with Ukraine, President Trump’s goal at least in practice and outcome appears to be “we lose, they win.”
The president has given Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy until Thanksgiving Day to accept his “peace proposal,” which reads as if it could have been written by Vladimir Putin. In fact, according to news reports, it may have been. According to the NY Post, “Secretary of State Marco Rubio told US senators Saturday that the sweeping peace plan to end the nearly four-year war between Russia and Ukraine was not America’s — but merely a ‘leaked’ Russian ‘wish list’.”
Maybe so, but it seems to align with the one-sided pressure Trump has put on Zelenskyy to settle the war since he took office. Trump said Saturday the proposal is not his “final offer.”
If the document is from the administration, it is capitulation to most of Putin’s demands and is an invitation for the dictator to continue pursuing his stated goal of re-taking all of the former Soviet satellite countries, which have been free and independent since the end of the Cold War.