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James W. Carden: The Vance Doctrine

TRRJune 3, 2025

Vice President JD Vance is the first sitting vice president since George HW Bush to serve during wartime. And at a commencement speech at the US Naval Academy’s 2025 Commissioning Ceremony, Vance delivered a coup de grace to the outdated yet still dangerous notions of American unipolarity that have animated US foreign policy for the past thirty plus years.

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Lyle Goldstein: Reverse Kissinger? No, Double Kissinger

TNIJune 2, 2025

Today, many strategists in Washington are talking about Kissinger’s adroit diplomatic maneuver. administration supporters hope Donald Trump can orchestrate a so-called “reverse Kissinger,” wooing Russia away from China.

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MK Bhadrakumar: Trump won’t walk away from Ukraine

indian punchlineJune 2, 2025

One of the mysteries of the Ukraine endgame is that President Donald Trump did not issue an executive order on January 20 withdrawing all support for Ukraine. That would have been the easiest way to end the war. 

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Qi: Germany huffs and puffs on long-range weapons for Ukraine

RSMay 30, 2025

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has announced that Germany, and perhaps other Western allies, would be removing range restrictions on Western-supplied missiles to Ukraine.

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AP/CNN: Germany deploys permanent troops outside country for first time since World War II

cnnMay 30, 2025

Chancellor Friedrich Merz inaugurated a groundbreaking German brigade in Lithuania that is meant to help protect NATO’s eastern flank and declared Thursday that “the security of our Baltic allies is also our security” as worries about Russian aggression persist.

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Ian Proud: Merz has already lost the escalation battle with his comments on cruise missiles

the peacemonger May 28, 2025

Russia has established escalation dominance in Ukraine in November 2024 by raising the bar on the military capabilities it is willing to use. Merz’s comments on western cruise missile use haven’t changed that calculus and, instead, have illustrated his weakness.

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VIDEO: Dr. Nicolai Petro: The Far-Right and How Ukraine Became a Pawn in Geopolitical Game

world affairs in contextMay 28, 2025

Peace negotiations often appear stalled due to public posturing, but real progress happens quietly through back channels. Diplomatic theater—like symbolic disputes—masks ongoing bargaining. War and diplomacy coexist until both sides reach exhaustion or shifting interests favor peace. Ultimately, peace emerges when those profiting from war see more gain in its end.

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Le Monde: Germany’s Merz says Western allies no longer impose range limits on Ukrainian weapons

le monde May 27, 2025

Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Monday, May 26, that Germany, along with Ukraine’s other key Western backers, had lifted range restrictions on weapons they send to Kyiv to fight against Russia. Merz, who took office early this month, also vowed that “we will do everything in our power to continue supporting Ukraine, including militarily,” in close coordination with other supporters.

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VIDEO: German Journalist Patrik Baab Lays Bare the Harsh Realities of Ukraine

YouTube May 27, 2025

German journalist Patrik Baab explains the origins and current reality of the Ukraine crisis.

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Rand Paul: Imposing 500% tariffs on nations that trade with Russia will backfire

RSMay 27, 2025

While tariffs make wars more likely, embargoes make wars difficult to avoid. Senator Lindsey Graham’s Sanctioning Russia Act calls for 500% tariffs on dozens of countries and essentially amounts to an embargo.

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New York Review of Books: On Benjamin Nathans’s ‘To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause’

NYRB May 27, 2025

The freethinking Soviet dissidents who tried, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, to make space in their society for opinions and activities not authorized by the ruling Communist Party included a few genuine giants, most notably the physicist Andrei Sakharov and the writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Many others remain largely unknown, but dozens of them appear in Benjamin Nathans’s history of the dissident movement, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause. In the struggles they waged for more than twenty years against a repressive dictatorship and its relentless political police force, the KGB, they won no memorable victories. Only the transformations of Soviet society initiated or permitted in the 1980s by a new and unexpected leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, brought the liberalization they had long advocated.

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VIDEO: The Truth About Maidan: An Interview with Professor Alan J. Kuperman

TRRMay 23, 2025

University of Texas at Austin Professor Alan J. Kuperman talks about his article in The Hill titled, ‘Sadly, Trump is Right on Ukraine.’ Kuperman also discusses the folly of regime change wars, particularly in Libya, and the myths the US government and mainstream media create to sell these wars to the American people.

 

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The Jordan Center at NYU: The Russian Economy Three Years after the Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine

NYUMay 23, 2025

Since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, its surprisingly strong economy has enabled the government to continuously replenish its military forces without implementing unpopular mass mobilization.

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Anatol Lieven: Why US Engagement Is Essential in Setting Terms for Peace in Ukraine

the nationMay 21, 2025

President Trump’s new strategy of getting Russia and Ukraine to negotiate directly might seem to make sense. In the end, after all, they will have to sit down together to sign any agreement that can be reached. Without active US involvement, however, that end is likely to be postponed for a very long time; and as Trump has said, that time will be measured not just in months or years, but in tens of thousands of human lives.
The Russian and Ukrainian positions are far apart, and absent US sticks and carrots applied to both, there seems little realistic prospect that they will come together. US engagement is also essential because a new relationship between the United States and Russia is the greatest incentive that Moscow can be offered in return for making peace with Ukraine.
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Kelley Vlahos: Jake Sullivan: Trump not doing diplomacy right

RSMay 21, 2025

It is an inevitable right of passage in Washington: every outgoing administration’s senior officials have a chance to shake off the loss, find a golden sinecure, and then start crafting the narrative that they prefer, rather than the history that exists.

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VIDEO: Col. Douglas Macgregor: We Have No Leverage

DEEP DIVEMay 20, 2025

Doug Macgregor talks with the Deep Dive podcast on Trump’s delusions of leverage over Russia.

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AP: Trump says Russia-Ukraine ceasefire talks will begin immediately

APMay 20, 2025

WASHINGTON (AP) — Russia and Ukraine will “immediately” begin ceasefire negotiations, President Donald Trump said Monday after separate calls with the leaders of both countries meant to spur progress toward ending the three-year war. The conversations did not appear to yield a major breakthrough.

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Ian Proud: Russia is in the driving seat

the peacemongerMay 20, 2025

Theodore Roosevelt said: “Speak softly but carry a large stick.” European leaders are doing the opposite yet offended when not invited to Russo-Ukraine negotiations. Instead, and from the side lines, Europeans have been insisting that Russia accepts ceasefire conditions that neither they nor the Americans have the political or the military means to impose. So, it’s no surprise that Russians continue patiently to insist on their own conditions, nor that Americans may be slowly coming round to Russia’s position. Yet European leaders are affronted. Why?

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ACURA ViewPoints: Thoughts on the Istanbul Talks

ACURA exclusive May 19, 2025

Several members of the ACURA Board shared their thoughts on the latest round of talks that took place between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul on Friday.

 ***

Looking back, this devastating and unnecessary calamity has been going on longer than it should have for over two years. It was clear then what the result would be: Tens of thousands of have died because of the failure of leaders to come together to work out the best solution available. Like the American Civil War, World War I, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars, countless people have died far past the point when the ultimate outcome was altogether clear.

—John Pepper is the former Chairman and CEO of The Procter & Gamble Company.  

What might be described as the “Track One-minus” direct talks between Russia and Ukraine, all two hours of them, have ended and the verdict is virtually unanimous: no real progress on key issues, especially that of territorial demands by Russia that Kyiv deem to be a non-starter.
To be sure, it was useful that officials of the combatants were sitting at the same table for the first time in over three years.  But the fact is that the proceedings showed from the beginning that Russia holds the upper hand in the conflict and its eventual resolution.  President Putin declined to take part, understandably so: a facet–face with Zelenskyy could well have made the Ukrainians White House confrontation with Trump and Vance look like a paragon of civility.  But what undermined expectations even more was a Russian delegation headed by Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to Putin and a former Minister of Culture. Ukraine was represented by the ministers of Defense and Foreidy Affairs; equal clout  would have meant Foreign Minister Lavrov at the table.
Of course, President Trump was correct in saying that “Nothing is going to happen until Putin and I get together”.  This is correct for two reasons: first, this is a war between Russia and NATO fought on Ukrainian soil because of the catastrophic prospect for Russia of a NATO including Ukraine.  Second, as Mr. Putin has repeatedly said in the course of the war, negotiations to find peace in Ukraine must also address “root causes”, a 35-year litany of NATO hostility via expansion eastward to Russia’s borders and the placement of lethal weaponry, including nuclear, in those new NATO states.  Quite understandably, Russia’s existential concerns go beyond the war in Ukraine, and while its end is devoutly to be wished, it will not allay these concerns.
The White House has announced.that President Trump will speak by phone with Presidents Putin and Zelenskyy on Monday May 19. The next step should be a Trump-Putin face to face meeting.
-David C. Speedie was Senior Fellow and Director of the Program on U.S. Global Engagement at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in New York from 2007 to 2017.
Even though the talks in Istanbul ended after only two hours, any amount of time that  two sides spent engaging in diplomacy should be considered time well spent. The agreement on an exchange of POWs is a good sign. Better still are reports that the two sids have agreed in principle to further talks.

That the two sides are still far apart on a number of issues relating to the establishment of a ceasefire is neither surprising nor unexpected. What matters is that they keep at it. Meanwhile, it has been reported that Trump plans to speak by phone to Putin on May 19th.

The thing to bear in mind is that these things take time: It took Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho four and a half years to reach an agreement on ending the Vietnam war.

The two sides last met in Istanbul 3 years ago, and in the time that has passed, Russia’s paramount demand (no Ukraine in NATO) has not changed. Russia and Ukraine could have reached a deal then (and nearly did) but it was undermined by Washington and London. At no point in the intervening three years did the Biden administration attempt to jump start negotiations or encourage Kiev to cut a deal that would have saved countless lives. Indeed, since the first round of talks in Istanbul (March 2022)  perhaps a million people have perished.

—James W. Carden is editor of The Realist Review

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BREAKING: Trump to speak with Putin, Zelensky on Monday

politico May 17, 2025

President Donald Trump announced he’ll be speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin — and then with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shortly after — as he looks to broker a deal to end the war in Ukraine.

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