Does Trump have the intellectual depth to reach a deal with Putin? The question almost answers itself. From Strategic Culture at strategicculture.su:
Looks at proposals being reported. But any deal must be based on addressing the roots of conflict.
U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he wants to open talks with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to end the war in Ukraine. Trump has spoken about the urgency of bringing the conflict to a peaceful conclusion. Fair enough.
For his part, President Putin has magnanimously reciprocated, saying he is ready to engage in talks with Trump.
So far, so good. At least the American side is no longer encumbered with the stupid intransigent, hostile mentality of the Biden administration, which refused to have any diplomatic contact with Russia.
Russia, for its part, has always been willing to negotiate a genuine way to not just end the conflict but to avoid future conflict. Before the war in Ukraine erupted three years ago in February 2022, Moscow put forward a comprehensive proposal for a security treaty in Europe in December 2021. The proposal stipulated that the U.S.-led NATO military alliance desist from aggressive expansion on Russia’s borders and, in particular, for Ukraine never to be a member of NATO. Those proposals were rejected out of hand by the U.S. and its European partners.
At the earliest stage of the Ukraine conflict, in March 2022, Russia negotiated a potential peace settlement with the Kiev regime in Istanbul, only for that proposal to be rejected by Washington and its British surrogate. The result has been three years of bloodshed and destruction, with millions of Ukrainian casualties and refugees. Ukraine has been destroyed thanks to the intransigence of its NATO sponsors.
If diplomacy is the art of making politics work then anything is possible. Opening talks is at least a start to exchanging ideas and demands to bring the conflict to an end and stop it from spiraling into a catastrophic global war between nuclear powers.
President Trump says he wants to end the conflict. But does he understand what the conflict is really about? If a problem is not correctly defined, then a solution is elusive.
Trump has a showman style of doing politics. He bragged about ending the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of being elected. Now he is talking about ending it in 100 days.
