In what universe should the United States suggest a “peace plan” that gives Russia more Ukrainian territory than it has been able to win on the battlefield? Or that Ukraine, after being invaded repeatedly by a much larger Russia, should have the size of its armed forces limited? And that its security should be guaranteed by unspecified promises of the United States, whose current administration has repeatedly seemed to want to rehabilitate an obvious monster in Vladimer Putin. Longer term Bereans are well aware of my thoughts on Russia, and why it’s in the U.S. national interest, not to help Ukraine, but to ensure Russian aggression is not allowed to stand, such as here, here, and here. I’m not sure about the administration’s peace deal, because at this time I’m not even sure who wrote it. Originally it was leaked as the U.S.’s, and then with the details so bad, Secretary Rubio told his former colleagues that it was Russia’s input and just the starting point. But then it was further backtracked. But beyond the provenance of the plan, the details stink. I suggested a few weeks ago that Mr. Putin’s intransigence would likely yet force Mr. Trump to do the right thing and turn Ukraine loose. Yet the administration keeps trying to get a deal with the devil. Not everything is a deal to be done; not everyone is susceptible to economic coercion to get to your vision of peace.

Andy McCarthy says much of the same thing as you’ve read from me over the last couple of years, but in his usual great writing, much better than I can.

To repeat what I’ve argued before (see, e.g., here and here), the problem here is that Trump has focused myopically on his objective of “peace” – which he wrongly takes to be the mere absence of combat, regardless of how that is achieved. America’s highest interest is to degrade Putin’s armed forces and regime for as long as Ukraine is willing to fight. If you accept the president’s flawed premise that the aim is to end the fighting as soon as possible, then there is no possible outcome besides Russian victory — including Moscow’s rolling of Kyiv at the negotiating table. Putin is more than willing to keep pounding Ukraine if he remains confident that Trump doesn’t want to take sides against him, no matter how many war crimes he commits.

Peace through strength is not a slogan. It’s a theory of national defense and the pursuit of America’s interests in the world. That begins with understanding who you’re friends and enemies are. If Ukraine is willing to keep fighting, we should keep arming them, remove the restrictions on what we provide, and ratchet up the sanctions and secondary sanctions on Russia and its abettors. Most of all, we should abandon any fantasies that the United States should just be a disinterested broker in a war between a murderous dictator aligned with America’s geopolitical rivals and a besieged European nation that, for all its flaws, wants to be a Western democracy.

Exactly. Our strategic objective is to make Russia bleed. And unless we are willing to turn the Ukrainian’s loose (and both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump have supported them not to lose, but refuse to help them win), we are doomed to more death and/or ultimate appeasement (which simply ensures more death later–likely to include U.S. military when Russia comes for former Eastern Europe NATO allies).