From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Morgan Murphy

As the war in Ukraine rages onward, President-elect Donald Trump brings a glimmer of hope for peace in Europe this Christmas season.

An end to the fighting hinges on three key points: (1) Crimea (2) the Donbas region east of the Dnieper River and (3) NATO membership for Ukraine. Many more issues lurk, but without agreement on these major negotiating points, it is unlikely a peace deal will emerge.

Wars often begin with wild optimism that leads to untenable positions. In 1860, Confederates imagined a “short war,” and after early successes at Fort Sumter and Bull Run thought they would be marching through Philadelphia in a matter of months. In 1941, the Japanese strategized they could knock out the U.S. Pacific fleet, shocking and demoralizing the American public long enough for Japan to consolidate their “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” capitalizing on resource-rich territories like Southeast Asia, the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines. In both cases, initial optimism led to eventual disaster.

In 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aimed to seize Kiev and roll over the rest of Ukraine. U.S. intelligence agencies predicted he would be successful. Similarly, after an unexpectedly strong defense, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed to reclaim every inch of land occupied by Russia. Until as recently as this fall, he was touting a “victory plan” to force Moscow to surrender.

Yet, as it tends to do in conflict, the specter of death clarifies the mind. One thousand days of bloodshed in Eastern Europe has washed away initial optimism, giving way to grim realism on both sides. With the war approaching its third year, the biggest recent change in the dynamic is Trump’s landslide election in November.

In a word, Trump’s victory crushed any hopes that America might come charging into the war with air cover and boots on the ground. Out too, are further multi-billion “supplemental Ukraine spending packages.” The American people resoundingly voted to shrink government and cut off the firehose of taxpayer dollars spewing out of Washington, D.C.

Last Wednesday, Trump named Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg as the special envoy to Russia and Ukraine. In the announcement, Trump said of Kellogg, “He was with me right from the beginning! Together, we will secure PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH, and Make America, and the World, SAFE AGAIN!” The battle-hardened warrior and former Fox News analyst (and full disclosure — my boss and colleague at the America First Policy Institute) will no doubt bring massive pressure to bear on both sides.

After the election, it did not take long for all parties to adjust to the new reality. Putin said what Trump publicly said “about the desire to restore relations with Russia, to help end the Ukrainian crisis, in my opinion, deserves attention at least.” Last week, Zelenskyy soberly admitted to Sky News that Ukraine would surrender Crimea, Russia’s critical entry point to the Black Sea.

“He’s been saying that quietly for more than a year,” another prominent Ukrainian politician told me privately this week.

Likewise, European leaders are quietly discussing the most likely scenario: Russia keeps Crimea and the Russian-centric provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk.  Speaking off the record with several former Senate colleagues, the mood seems the same in Washington.

That leaves, of course, the issue of NATO membership for Ukraine. President Joe Biden and his senior-most cabinet membersr loudly and repeatedly promised NATO membership for Ukraine. The problem with that promise was their resounding defeat. The American people feel great sympathy for Ukraine, but that stops short of committing the lives of our youth to defend Ukraine’s borders.

Since at least 2007, Putin has made clear that NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia are non-negotiable for Russia. Though many Western leaders seem to doubt his resolve, Putin has more than backed up his red line with 700,000 Russian casualties. More American jets or long-range missiles are unlikely to change Putin’s calculus.

Short of NATO membership, perhaps we will see a U.N. peacekeeping mission similar to the armistice on the Korean Peninsula in 1953. Ukrainian membership in the European Union may be in the offing as well.

Either way, a new American president and seeming willingness on both sides to negotiate brings with it the hope of peace in the new year.

Morgan Murphy is military thought leader, former press secretary to the Secretary of Defense and national security advisor in the U.S. Senate.

From LifeSiteNews

By Frank Wright

Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, published Thursday night, was an 80-minute conversation that provides remarkable insights on war and politics beyond the narratives we are told by the news.

Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was posted Thursday night.

If you are interested in whether there will be a world war, why, and indeed whether it has already started, the 80-minute conversation will provide remarkable insights beyond the narratives we are told by the news.

Carlson begins with the question of the moment: Is the U.S. at war with Russia?

Lavrov says no, but that the danger is obvious. NATO and the West, he says, “don’t believe that Russia has red lines, they announce the red lines, these red lines are being moved again and again and again. This is a very serious mistake.”

Statements such as this can be dismissed as “Russian propaganda.” Yet Lavrov is simply stating the case. The Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center – the home of “world-leading” U.S./NATO strategic thinking – has admitted that “nudging Russian red lines” has been the gambit of the West for many years.

Lavrov explains the situation conversationally, but with a frankness uncommon from Western diplomats.

He explains that Russia seeks to avoid war, though it remains prepared to fight one.

READ: Putin calls out Biden for ‘escalating’ war in Ukraine right before Trump takes office

“We are ready for any eventuality, but we strongly prefer a peaceful solution through negotiations” – to the Ukraine conflict.

It was “Russian propaganda” until recently to speak of this as a U.S./NATO “proxy war” waged by the West against Russia, until Boris Johnson admitted it was a proxy war in an interview last week.

With so many former “conspiracy theories” having come true in the West, such as the Hunter Biden laptop, the tainted and dangerous COVID mRNA injections, and the narrative of the Ukraine war itself, Lavrov’s genial and revealing chat with Carlson reveals a rich seam of information.

He covers the death of Alexei Navalny, the effective suspension of U.S. diplomacy with Russia, the now obvious role of Boris Johnson in destroying peace and prolonging war in Ukraine, along with Russian relations with China and its role in the current Syrian war.

His remarks provide food for thought for an audience ravenous for information. It is understandable that Lavrov’s view of these events would prove controversial, as the denial of the obvious is a basic principle of the liberal-global system which is currently fighting Russia in two theaters of war.

It is a credit to Carlson that he asks Lavrov, at around the one-hour mark, what his opinion is on the question of who is in charge in the United States.

“Who do you think has been making foreign policy decisions in the U.S.?” Carlson asks.

“I wouldn’t guess,” says Lavrov. “I haven’t seen Tony Blinken in four years”.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is the chief diplomat of the United States and is effectively Lavrov’s counterpart. That he has not spoken to Lavrov since 2020 is an extraordinary fact in itself, given the nuclear brinkmanship his administration has lately pursued, following a long campaign towards a failed proxy war against Russia.

Lavrov says in these four years all he has had from Blinken is a “few words” outside a G20 meeting, where Blinken astonishingly told the Russians, “Don’t escalate.”

Lavrov described the brief exchange: “I said, we don’t want to escalate. You want to inflict strategic defeat upon Russia?”

Apparently, Blinken rejoined, “No, no, no, no, it is not, it is not strategic defeat globally. It is only in Ukraine.”

Yet it is not only Blinken playing peek-a-boo. Lavrov’s description of the last meeting of the 20 most powerful nations is startling.

“Europeans are running away when they see me. During the last G20 meeting, it was ridiculous. Grown up people, mature people. They behave like kids. So childish and unbelievable,” he said.

Following this shocking depiction of the state of Western diplomacy, Lavrov moves to the serious business of regime change, saying it has long been U.S. strategy to “make trouble and see if they can fish in the muddy water” afterwards – in Iraq, for example. As for “the adventure in Libya,” he says, “after ruining the state [there] … they went on to leave Afghanistan in very bad shape.”

His summary recalls that of JD Vance, who denounced the last four decades of forever war as “a disaster” in his speech in May, when he asked, “What are the fruits of the last 40 years of American foreign policy? Of course, it’s the disaster in Iraq, it’s the disaster in Afghanistan, it’s Syria, it’s Lebanon, it’s on issue after issue after issue.”

Lavrov was far more polite about the matter, and said simply, “If you analyze the American foreign policy steps – ‘adventures’ … is the right word.”

There is simply no way to do justice to the example set by Russia’s leading diplomat. Of course, he skillfully represents Russian interests, but it is not to collude with him or his nation to note a master at work. 

His extraordinary composure and command of the situation contrasts starkly with the near total absence of any diplomacy at all by the U.S. with this most significant strategic rival – or future partner. It is a credit to Carlson that he brings this view to the West, which explains so much of the crises in Ukraine and Syria from a viewpoint that has been canceled in the formerly free world.

If you have 80 minutes to spare you will learn more about the state of the world watching Lavrov than in a year’s consumption of mainstream media. One obvious shock is how impoverished our political system is, that it produces no one of the caliber of our supposed enemies, no one who discusses with cordial directness the naked truth of a near-nuclear crisis.

His sobering analysis can be condensed into one statement, from which it is hoped the red line nudgers will not seek to test. Lavrov warns the game players of the U.S. and NATO:

“They must understand that we are ready to use any means not to allow them to succeed in what they call a strategic defeat of Russia.”

This strategic defeat, now impossible in Ukraine, is being pursued right now by Western proxies in Syria. With one war about to end, another has been started. Russian patience is exhausted, and they have committed fully to preventing the takeover of Syria by U.S. and Ukrainian backed “foreign terrorists.”

It is to be hoped that someone will be in charge in a few weeks’ time who will listen, rather than hiding and seeking escalation.