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On Tuesday, the U.S. and Russia formally kicked off the beginning of the negotiating course of, which Staff Trump expects to lead to a peace settlement for Ukraine – President Trump’s purpose and marketing campaign promise.
Trump’s crew of heavy hitters – Secretary of State Marco Rubio, nationwide safety advisor Mike Waltz and Particular Envoy Steve Witkoff – met in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with the opposing crew handpicked by Russian President Vladimir Putin: Overseas Minister Sergei Lavrov, Putin’s overseas coverage advisor Yuriy Ushakov and Harvard-educated former Goldman Sachs govt Kirill Dmitriyev, who at present heads up the Russian Sovereign Wealth Fund.
Rubio additionally met with Lavrov, which State Division spokesperson Tammy Bruce characterised as an “necessary step ahead.”
Trump, who held a “extremely productive” telephone name with Putin final week, needs to finish the warfare in Ukraine rapidly and being a realist, he made, albeit not directly, a beneficiant preliminary supply to Putin – no NATO membership for Ukraine, Putin’s long-held purple line; Russia retains one-fifth of Ukraine and Crimea; and even a return to the Group of Seven (G-7) main economies, making it the G-8.
The U.S. delegation, from left, Center East envoy Steve Witkoff, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and nationwide safety advisor Mike Waltz meet with, from proper, Russian Overseas Minister Sergei Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin’s overseas coverage advisor Yuri Ushakov, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Tuesday Feb. 18, 2025. (Evelyn Hockstein/Pool Photograph through AP)
Why is Trump seemingly handing victory to the Russian dictator who invaded a sovereign nation and has been waging a bloody warfare on it for 3 years? With Trump, every thing isn’t what it appears. A really unconventional thinker, Trump is enjoying a wholly completely different sport than all of his predecessors. Trump’s strategy to fixing the Russia-Ukraine drawback reveals his considering on navy technique, definition of victory and finish sport.
Trump needs to guard America from the actual risk, which he and his crew consider is China. He additionally needs to keep away from a nuclear warfare with Russia, which former President Joe Biden himself warned his DNC donors about.
Trump is compelling NATO allies to take over duty for the Russia drawback, which has been draining the U.S. of its weapons arsenal and money. We now have offered $200 billion to Ukraine in money and armaments and depleted our personal weapons arsenal to harmful ranges in key weapon programs and ammunition, for no return on our funding.
Trump needs to cease the bleeding – each of Ukrainians and of U.S. navy {hardware} and money, so we are able to concentrate on China, which has an offensive navy doctrine to defeat the US, together with kinetically, if Washington intervenes in China’s plans and actions to take over Taiwan.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Donald Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Sputnik/Alexei Danichev/Pool through Reuters/Leah Millis/Alina Smutko)
However Trump needs to win to realize victory over China with out dragging our nation into one more countless unwinnable warfare, the type that his predecessors have fought mindlessly. Trillions of {dollars} and hundreds of American lives had been misplaced, and no victories have been achieved, as Washington eagerly engaged in conflicts in overseas lands for the previous quarter of a century – suppose Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria.
America spent $2.2 trillion of taxpayers’ earnings and sacrificed six thousand American lives. Wars in Iraq and Syria value almost $3 trillion and half 1,000,000 casualties, which embrace nationwide navy and police, allied troops, civilians and opposition fighters. None of these international locations have develop into democracies, as Trump’s predecessors hoped they’d. Actually, they’re now worse off than previous to U.S. intervention.

Ukraine’s Nationwide Police mentioned seven persons are lifeless and 5 wounded in a mortar strike east of Kyiv, in Makariv. (Nationwide Police of Ukraine)
As a profitable businessman and sensible statesman, Trump needs to win the subsequent warfare, the one which Xi Jinping has been on the brink of struggle to realize China’s long-term ambitions. However Trump needs to do it the Trump approach, not the Washington Method – win with out preventing. Trump’s approach additionally occurs to be the Chinese language approach – the last word Artwork of Conflict, or Artwork of the Deal, in Trump converse.
This is what the traditional Chinese language navy strategist Solar Tzu wrote in his seminal treatise “The Artwork of Conflict. “To win 100 victories in 100 battles isn’t the supreme excellence. Supreme excellence is to subdue the enemy, to interrupt his resistance with out preventing.”
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A Ukrainian a number of rocket launcher shells a Russian troop place close to Luhansk within the Donbas area on Sunday. (Anatolii Stepanov/AFP through Getty Pictures)
As Solar Tzu warned, “If you have interaction in precise preventing, if victory is lengthy coming, then males’s weapons will develop uninteresting and their ardor can be damped. If you happen to lay siege to a city, you’ll exhaust your power.” “Once more, if the marketing campaign is protracted, the assets of the State is not going to be equal to the pressure.” And that is precisely what occurred, on account of Washington’s obsession with overseas wars.
President Trump’s definition of victory isn’t about Russia and Putin. It’s about securing the homeland and stopping the subsequent warfare. For this to occur, Trump needs to protect our assets, re-build our navy, and safe our borders, which China has been violating, sending fentanyl to kill our individuals and intelligence operatives to conduct clandestine operations.
Successful with out preventing is Trump’s Artwork of Conflict. Additionally it is the essence of the “Artwork of the Deal” that he’s making with Putin on Ukraine.