Zelensky went on to say, in fact, that “We cannot spend dozens of thousands of our people so that they perish for the sake of Crimea coming back.” Instead, he indicated that he hoped to recover Crimea “diplomatically.”
A cease-fire with European security guarantees fits with long-held American desires to “pivot to Asia,” to project more power in the Pacific. China is ultimately more dangerous than Russia (it has a smaller nuclear arsenal but a much larger economy and much larger conventional forces), and European nations (which are ramping up their own military spending) can deter Russia even if we concentrate more of our forces in the Far East.
Negotiating peace will be difficult. Neither side is likely to simply roll over anytime soon. Ukraine will reject any “peace” that constitutes a surrender of its freedom and independence, and Putin isn’t willing to permit an allied military deployment on Ukrainian soil.
But the failure of military force eventually made men as vicious as China’s Mao Zedong and North Korea’s Kim Il Sung agree to an armistice in the Korean War. There is no reason (yet) to believe that Putin is more intransigent than two of the 20th century’s worst dictators. It is by supporting Ukraine that we give peace a real chance.
Some other things I did
It will not be easy to fix what Donald Trump is breaking. That was the focus of my Sunday column. A new president could change course, but our allies have learned a lesson that they won’t soon forget: America can’t be trusted.
Even if Democrats sweep the midterms in 2026 and defeat the Republican candidate in 2028, that lesson will still hold. Our allies will know that our alliances are only as stable as the next presidential election — and that promises are only good for one term (at most).
It’s extraordinarily difficult — if not impossible — to build a sustainable defense strategy under those circumstances. It’s impossible to enact sustainable trade policies. And it’s impossible to conduct any form of lasting diplomacy. If agreements are subject to immediate revocation with the advent of a new administration, will any sensible world power rely on America’s word — or America itself?
This week we also published my conversation with Jessica Riedl, a scholar at the Manhattan Institute, who is one of the nation’s most-respected experts on the federal budget. We’re both fiscal conservatives, and we both dislike DOGE, and here’s just one reason:
French: The implication of what you’re saying is that DOGE is causing an awful lot of disruption to federal operations without doing anything material to address the long-term fiscal challenge America is facing.
Riedl: I would call what DOGE is doing “government spending-cut theater.” The targets they’re going after are not where the money is. D.E.I. contracts, Politico Pro subscriptions, federal employees, foreign aid. Some of it is essentially a rounding error, but they are targets that hit a lot of cultural touchstones for a lot of conservatives. DOGE is really a distraction from the spending increases and tax cuts Congress is really doing right now.