It's Time to End the War in Ukraine

This is not America's fight, and to continue to press now could ensure the start of World War III

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I try to be a very careful writer.

I have written thousands of thought pieces that are currently floating around the internet, ready to be picked apart by anyone who googles my name.

The vast majority of them, I’m ready to stand behind.

Many, of course, were written in my very Catholic days, before my faith slipped away and I found myself standing outside the Church as a critic looking in.

Nevertheless, I would be able quite easily to defend the arguments I was making from the perspective of who I was when I sat down to write them. They were consonant with my worldview, and I sought to ensure they were correct from that perspective.

There is one article in particular, however, that I have been thinking about a lot lately. One I wasn’t very eager to go back and read. One that I probably never should have written.

It was this, which reads now almost like a hagiography for Volodomir Zelenskyy:

I am a sucker for underdog stories, and no fan of Putin or Russia, and I was still buried in a deep and perplexing depression when I wrote it, but these all feel like excuses.

I went off half-cocked, about a conflict I knew next-to-nothing about. In fact, in my own defense, I will say that I gave voice to my ignorance, and my concern that I might find out I had been deceived, even at the time:

I still don’t feel that I know enough to understand the real reasons for the War in Donbas, or why it has escalated at this particular moment into a possible inflection point for a third world war. Like many of you, I’m just an outsider trying to make sense of what I am observing from half a world away, wondering how it will affect me and my family as the human drama of this distant war plays out in an unprecedentedly transparent way online.

What I do see from my limited perspective is a fascinating story of two figures locked in a larger-than-life conflict; one, a megalomaniacal former KGB operative infamous for having both political rivals and critical journalists turn up dead, and who has made himself Supreme Dictator for Life with unrestrained power; the other an unlikely politician, a lawyer who became an actor and comedian and then a popular president. A man who is rapidly becoming an emerging folk hero at a time when the world has precious few of them.

Another caveat: it’s hard to know, with all the disinformation going around, how much of what we’re seeing and hearing is accurate. Old videos and photos turn up presented as new while popular stories about the conflict turn out to be false. It makes you wonder whether the historical narratives we believe we know weren’t also subject to clever misinformation. Are we in a worse situation now, or are we just more aware of how these stories are manipulated and controlled? The uncertainty of what to trust can be frustrating. As one friend on Facebook put it today:

I'm finding so much out now that appears to be propaganda. WTF is all this? I feel like I can't even watch or read anything and trust it anymore. I want to believe some of the badassery I see happening. There is so much injustice in this world and I desperately want to see people with integrity win the day.

But insofar as cultural memes have power, I think the narratives still matter even though some of this will turn out to have been theater, or even outright deception. While there is uncertainty in some of the details, for the first time in a while, the good guys and bad guys in this conflict seem relatively clear.

Three years and nearly $200 billion in US aid dollars later, I feel confident in saying that a LOT of this turned out to have been theater, or even outright deception.

I also feel confident in saying this is not America’s war, we have no business funding it at the level we have been, and that our proxy actions have brought us closer to the onset of World War III than we have ever been.

Zelenskyy, for his part, has turned out to be less of a hero, and more of a money-grubbing petulant puppet of Western nations. Reports have emerged that some of the nation’s top brass — including Zelenskyy himself — have been skimming (or attempting to skim) millions off the top of American taxpayer money being sent for relief.

These claims, of course, are disputed, but Ukraine is well-known for having issues of corruption, and a stigma hangs over the entire affair.

Today, Zelenskyy all but single-handedly killed diplomatic relations with the United States.

Today was supposed to see Zelenskyy meet with American leadership to finalize a deal that would allow America to recoup its investment in Ukraine’s defense with access to revenue from Ukraine’s rare earth minerals. Secondarily, discussions about security guarantees were to follow.

But Zelenskyy, instead, got himself kicked out of the White House.

Let’s back up and review: first, the Ukrainian president showed up for a meeting with President Trump and Vice President Vance wearing business casual clothing, which Trump remarked on upon his arrival, “Hey, you’re all dressed up!” See for yourself. It honestly had me laughing out loud:

He was asked about this by Real America’s Voice host, Brian Glenn, inside the Oval Office:

But the worst thing was the argument that broke out between Zelenskyy, Trump, and Vance, with the latter flat out accusing the Ukrainian president of “disrespect” for the office and the American people. By the end, Trump was practically shouting that Zelenskyy was “gambling with the lives of millions of people…gambling with World War III!”

Mind you, this did not occur in a vacuum. Zelenskyy was reported to have been combative and disrespectful, and was not ambushed. Here’s Richard Hanania’s breakdown:

I watched the entire press conference with Zelensky. There was 40 minutes of discussion up to the argument. Most people saw at most the last ten minutes. The whole video gives the proper context.

When I first watched the argument without the proper context, I thought it was possible that Trump and Vance ambushed Zelensky or were even trying to humiliate him. That's not what happened.

You had 40 minutes of calm conversation. Vance made a point that didn't attack Zelensky and wasn't even addressed to him, and Zelensky clearly started the argument.

In the first 40 minutes, Zelensky kept trying to go beyond what was negotiated in the deal. When Trump was asked a question, it was always "we'll see." Zelensky made blanket assertions that there would be no negotiating with Putin, and that Russia would pay for the war. When Trump said that it was a tragedy that people on both sides were dying, Zelensky interjected that the Russians were the invaders.

For his part, Trump made clear that the US would continue delivering military aid. All Zelensky had to do was remain calm for a few more minutes and they would've signed a deal.

The argument started when Trump pointed out that it would be hard to make a deal if you talk about Putin the way Zelensky does. Vance interjects to make the reasonable point that Biden called Putin names and that didn't get us anywhere.

The Zelensky/Trump dynamic was calm and stable. It was when Vance spoke that Zelensky started to interrogate him. Throughout the press conference to that point, everyone was making their arguments directly to the audience. Zelensky decided to challenge Vance and ask him hostile questions. He went back to his point that Putin never sticks to ceasefires, once again implying that negotiations are pointless. Why on earth would you do this? Then came the fight we all saw.

Zelensky was minutes away from being home free, and he would have had the deal and new commitments from the Trump administration. The point Vance made was directed against Biden and the media, taking them to task for speaking in moralistic terms. This offended Zelensky, and that began the argument.

I've been a fan of Zelensky up to this point, but this showed so much incompetence, if not emotional instability, that I don't see how he recovers from this. The relationship with the administration is broken. Ukraine should probably go with new leadership at this point.

Emily Jashinsky of Unherd echoed this assessment:

(The full meeting can be viewed here. I have not had a chance to watch it.)

The aftermath has been swift. Senator Lindsey Graham, who has been one of the biggest supporters of America’s involvement in Ukraine, seemed positively pissed off, and not at Trump:

The reception in Ukraine hasn’t been all warm and fuzzy either. Oleksandr Dubinskyi, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, has called for Zelenskyy’s impeachment after the debacle:

It should be noted that Dubinskyi is currently being held in prison, which he claims has happened unlawfully, on fabricated charges. He issued a chilling statement today, with an accompanying video of himself, from within facility where he’s being held:

I made a statement to Donald Trump, the only world leader capable of restoring justice and returning democracy to Ukraine.

Ukraine has turned into a dictatorship.

Today, hundreds of people are imprisoned not for crimes, but for their political beliefs. They are arrested, labeled as russian agents, tortured, subjected to fabricated cases, and handed pre-written sentences. Independent courts have been dismantled, the media suppressed, and elections canceled.

At the same time, Ukraine operates secret SBU prisons where individuals are illegally detained and tortured into providing desired testimony. The UN has already documented the existence of one such concentration camp in Kyiv, where approximately 300 people, including U.S. citizens, have been held since March 2022. This prison was managed right in the headquarter of SBU - paragraph 116, read please. [edited to embed hyperlink - SS]

Among prisoners there was american blogger Gonzalo Lira, who was detained by the SBU and spent several days there before dying in a Kharkiv detention center in December 2023 following beatings.

I myself have been beaten and tortured in prison twice, with demands to confess to nonexistent ties with russian intelligence. The true purpose of these attempts to extract false confessions from me is to fabricate a lie about a "russian trace" in Donald Trump’s campaign, to justify the failure of Blinken’s "51 intelligence officers" letter operation, to perpetuate this narrative against Trump in 2024, and to derail his peace initiatives in Ukraine. I have been saying this since 2023.

Ukraine has become a tool for political manipulations aimed at interfering in U.S. domestic affairs. Zelensky acts in the interests of globalist elites, Soros structures, and USAID-funded organizations, destroying democracy and suppressing all opposition. Y

et I refuse to give up. Despite being held in a detention center, I have filed a lawsuit with Ukraine’s Supreme Court demanding presidential elections as required by the Constitution. I have announced my candidacy for President of Ukraine, representing the party of peace, and I support Donald Trump’s plan to end the war.

I have provided the United States with a list of political prisoners. We must fight for their freedom. Their fate is a test of the principles of liberty and human rights.

So Where Does This Leave Us?

The bottom line is this: the conflict between Russia and the Ukraine is complex, not simple. It is not a question of Russian Imperialism in the conventional sense; Russia lacks the manpower to defend its own existing territory, let alone a vastly-expanded empire.

It is instead an issue of security. Russia’s Geography has always left it open to attack from the West, and NATO has not acted in good faith.

In 1990, US Secretary of State James Baker wrote, in a now-declassified memorandum summarizing a conversation between himself, then-Soviet President Gorbachev, and then-Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union Eduard Shevardnadze, that if America maintained a presence in Germany that is part of NATO, “there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east.”

As we all know, this promise was not kept. NATO countries now include Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Slovakia — all to the West of Ukraine and Belarus, but much too close to Russia for the latter’s liking.

Geopolitical analyst Peter Zeihan predicted the Russia/Ukraine war years before it started, because he looks at both history and the significance of geography and demographics.

I’ve written extensively on this before, so I’m not going to re-hash it all here:

Suffice to say, Russia’s geography is awful. The Great European Plain, which lies to the West of Moscow and borders the former Soviet bloc countries, is flat and open and requires a massive military presence to patrol and defend.

But Russia’s population is shrinking, and they can no longer field a military of the size necessary to defend it.

In his book, The Absent Superpower: The Shale Revolution and a World Without America — originally written in 2016 — Zeihan argues:

[T]he Kremlin wants to alter Russia’s borders so they are easier to defend. Unfortunately for the Russians (and their neighbors), there is no internal fastness to which they can retreat. The more securable borders that Russia desires can only be achieved by expanding.

The Russians need to forward-position their military in five zones: the Baltic Coast, the Polish Gap, the Bessarabian Gap, and the western and eastern reaches of the Caucasus Mountains. Because the Russians would then be anchored in a series of geographic barriers, the portions of the frontier that actually require large-scale defenses would shrink from some 3,000 miles to under 600 — something the Russians can achieve with a military substantially smaller than it is today. If Russia is to survive its demographic Twilight, it must do nothing less than absorb in whole or in part some 11 countries — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. This Twilight War will be a desperate, sprawling military conflict that will define European/Russian borderland for decades.

Russia’s geographic situation was well-understood in the aftermath of Ukraine’s 2014 revolution, which led to the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovich after he refused to sign a political association and trade agreement with the EU, and chose instead to foster closer ties with Russia.

At that time, a pro-Western government was established, and the CIA quickly moved in to train and orchestrate the work of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) — the same intelligence agency Dubinskyi accuses of persecuting political opposition. The CIA also established 12 clandestine bases along the Russian border, escalating tensions between Russia and the West. (See more about this in this 2022 Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times, and this 2024 report from the New York Times.)

In a 2015 piece in The Atlantic — the date is important, since it was published a decade ago, just after the revolution — Tim Marshall wrote about how Putin views Russia through the lens of Geography:

If God had built mountains in eastern Ukraine, then the great expanse of flatland that is the European Plain would not have been such inviting territory for the invaders who have attacked Russia from there repeatedly through history. As things stand, Putin, like Russian leaders before him, likely feels he has no choice but to at least try to control the flatlands to Russia’s west. So it is with landscapes around the world—their physical features imprison political leaders, constraining their choices and room for maneuver. These rules of geography are especially clear in Russia, where power is hard to defend, and where for centuries leaders have compensated by pushing outward.

[…]

Two of Russia’s chief preoccupations—its vulnerability on land and its lack of access to warm-water ports—came together in Ukraine in 2014. As long as a pro-Russian government held sway in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, Russia could be confident that its buffer zone would remain intact and guard the European Plain. Even a neutral Ukraine, which would promise not to join the European Union or NATO and would uphold the lease Russia had on the warm-water port at Sevastopol in Crimea, would be acceptable. But when protests in Ukraine brought down the pro-Russia government of Viktor Yanukovych and a new, more pro-Western government came to power, Putin had a choice. He could have respected the territorial integrity of Ukraine, or he could have done what Russian leaders have done for centuries with the bad geographic cards they were dealt. He chose his own kind of attack as defense, annexing Crimea to ensure Russia’s access to its only proper warm-water port, and moving to prevent NATO from creeping even closer to Russia’s border.

Again, writing ten years ago, Marshall warned:

Russia has not finished with Ukraine yet, nor Syria. From the Grand Principality of Moscow, through Peter the Great, Stalin, and now Putin, each Russian leader has been confronted by the same problems. It doesn’t matter if the ideology of those in control is czarist, communist, or crony capitalist—the ports still freeze, and the European Plain is still flat.

Russia is fighting an existential war, not a war of imperialist conquest. She is invading and seizing land in sovereign nations to do so, which is understandably viewed as a problem by the global community of nations.

But an America First policy must recognize that this is a regional conflict, and there is no path to Ukrainian victory. Push too hard, and Russia, feeling like a cornered animal, may well resort to the nuclear option. Pull back too much, and Russia takes what it wants. The only path that ever looked like it might work out was wearing out Russia by means of the proxy war we’ve been fighting. But as Russia has warned, the continued use of Western weapons threatens to end the facade that this is Ukraine’s war to fight, and risks dragging the West directly into the conflict.

In other words, World War III.

I wrote a piece about this last November, and suffice to say, I think it is within reason to believe that if Trump had not won the election, Ukraine’s decision to launch American-made ATASCSM ballistic missiles into Russia may have been the tipping point.

We were closer to a new world war than most people realized.

I don’t know what Trump planned to do, if Zelenskyy had been able to keep himself under control. I don’t know what security guarantees might have been offered, had things taken a different turn.

But in my estimation, the time to pull back is now. This is not America’s war, and it is not in our interests to continue to hope that Putin is willing to keep even the most devastating options off the table.

The shift in American policy is not as many warhawks have claimed, indicative of us “siding” with Russia. It is an acknowledgement that we are playing with fire, and the best resolution is one that ends in peace, even if that means concessions.

The picture is dynamic — I would not be surprised if they have changed since I sat down to write this — but I expect more developments in the coming hours and days.