It's actually common sense, including putting Crimea on the table
Most of the peace plan for Ukraine now sketched out by the Trump administration is not new, is based on common sense, and has indeed already been tacitly accepted by Kyiv.
Ukrainian officials have acknowledged that its army has no chance in the foreseeable future of reconquering the territories now occupied by Russia. Vice President J.D. Vance’s statement that the U.S. plan would “freeze the territorial lines…close to where they are today” simply acknowledges an obvious fact.
On the other hand, by reportedly agreeing to a ceasefire along the present front line, Putin has indicated his readiness to abandon Russia’s demand that Ukraine withdraw from the parts of the provinces claimed by Russia that Ukraine still holds. This too is common sense. The Ukrainians will never agree to give those up, and, judging by the slowness of Russia’s advance to date, conquering these territories in the face of Ukrainian resistance backed by the U.S. would be a long and horribly bloody process from which Russia would gain only devastated wastelands.
Even without a U.S. veto, NATO membership for Ukraine is not realistic, both because all existing NATO members have made clear that they will not fight to defend Ukraine, and because several European countries will also veto Kyiv’s membership. Indeed, during the peace talks at the war’s outset, President Volodymyr Zelensky himself said that since all the leading NATO governments (including the Biden administration) had refused to promise NATO membership within five years, a treaty of neutrality with security guarantees was the best way for Ukraine to go.
At the same time, the Trump plan contains one big surprise: the offer to recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea. Unlike neutrality and de facto (not de jure) acceptance of Russian control over the other territories, this really constitutes a major concession to Russia. It is not, however, as big as the Western media is suggesting, since it does not cover the other four provinces in eastern Ukraine that Russia claims to have annexed.
Nor is it clear yet whether the Trump administration is simply offering formal recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea itself, or whether it — and Moscow — will also insist on Ukraine doing so, which is almost certainly politically impossible for the Zelensky government. White House press spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt has said that Trump’s offer of recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea applies only to the U.S., and that he is not demanding that Ukraine follow suit.
Given this ambiguity, it was unwise and thoughtless of Zelensky to declare immediately that “there is nothing to talk about here.” Maybe he doesn’t need to talk about it — and this kind of public rebuff is no way to retain the Trump administration’s sympathy.
There is a certain legal, moral, and historical basis for the U.S. at least to treat Crimea differently, since Crimea was only transferred from the Russian Soviet Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic by Soviet decree in 1954, and without any pretense of consultation with the local population. The Crimean majority vote to join Russia in 2014 also appears to have been generally credible, while the “referenda” held by Russia in the other four provinces in the middle of the war are rightly seen as wholly unreliable.
Will this plan bring peace? Russia appears close to accepting it — though at least as revealed so far, the plan does not appear to address other Russian demands, including the rights of Russian speakers in Ukraine, limitations on the Ukrainian armed forces, and, above all, a bar on a European “reassurance force” in Ukraine, something on which the British, French, and other governments have been working intensively.
It is possible that the Kremlin will try to load additional and genuinely unacceptable conditions onto the peace plan (for example, radical reductions in the Ukrainian armed forces). In that case, Trump should blame Moscow for the failure of the peace process, and, while walking away from it, should also continue U.S. aid to Ukraine.
A key motive for Moscow’s acceptance is that the Putin administration is indeed extremely anxious that Trump should blame Ukraine and the Europeans, not Russia, for a failure of the talks, and therefore that if, as threatened, he “walks away” from the peace process, he will also cut off military and intelligence aid to Kyiv.
For that same reason, the Ukrainians and Europeans would be insane to reject this plan outright, as initial statements suggest they may. As already noted, the formal goals set by Ukraine, for NATO membership and the recovery of its lost territories, are practically impossible to achieve. In concrete terms therefore, Ukraine loses nothing by agreeing to Trump’s plan.
Assuming that the British government sticks to Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s statement that a European “reassurance force” can enter Ukraine only if the U.S. acts as a “backstop,” then this force is also not going to happen. Trump has no intention of providing such a guarantee, which would amount to Ukrainian NATO membership by another name. Key European governments including Poland’s have also said that they would not participate in any such force.
At present and for a considerable time to come, the British and French armies simply do not seem to have the troops for such a deployment in a context of possible war with Russia. A former British army chief, General Lord Dannatt, has said that (given the need for rotation and training of troops) up to 40,000 British soldiers would need to be designated for such a force, and “we just haven’t got that number available.” Creating such a force for Ukraine would also mean ending British commitments to defend existing NATO members, notably the Baltic states and Poland.
At present, the likely response of Kyiv and most European governments to the Trump plan appears to be “no, but.” In other words, they will reject the plan as it stands, but declare their readiness to negotiate on aspects of it. This, however, would be deeply unwise, if indeed Russia is ready to accept it. Trump is waiting on them and he is not a patient man. His administration’s threat to leave Ukraine and Europe to their own devices could hardly have been clearer. As Secretary of State Marco Rubio has stated:
“The Ukrainians have to go back home, they have to run it by their president, they have to take into account their views on all of this. But we need to figure out here now, within a matter of days, whether this is doable in the short term. Because if it’s not, then I think we’re just going to move on.”
If the U.S. does indeed “move on,” Ukraine will have placed itself in a terribly precarious situation, and West European countries may face a choice between deep humiliation and immense danger. For if U.S. aid is withdrawn, Ukraine’s ability to hold its present line would be greatly reduced, and the chances of a Russian breakthrough greatly increased.
If that happened, Europeans would either have to admit that their “ironclad” promises to Ukraine were made of paper, or send their troops into Ukraine. They could of course stay in Kyiv and Odessa, far away from the actual fighting, but how would that help Ukraine? And unless this intervention were worked out as part of a deal with Moscow that ceded much additional territory to Russia, how could European air forces avoid being drawn into direct combat?
Given these acute dangers, and given that details of the Trump plan still have to be worked out, the appropriate Ukrainian and European response should be “yes, but” — certainly if they wish to have any hope of retaining Washington’s support for Ukraine.
The Trump plan would leave 80% of Ukraine independent and free to try to move towards membership in the European Union, and, in historical terms, that would be a great (albeit qualified) victory for Ukraine. A rejection of that plan can only promise Ukraine greater defeat — possibly catastrophically greater.
The blitzkrieg offensive which ousted Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024 has sparked an explosive political and military reaction across the country.
Al-Qaeda offshoot Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) seized Damascus, Israel extended its occupation in southern Syria, and Turkey launched fresh military operations targeting the secular, multi-ethnic, Kurdish-led federation in North and East Syria (NES), where the U.S. has long maintained a military presence with boots on the ground, justified by its anti-ISIS mission.
But now the dust has settled, with the U.S. reducing its troop presence in Syria back to pre-December 2024 levels of around 1000. And further changes are imminent. A U.S.-brokered deal between the Kurdish-led/U.S. allied Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) and the new authorities in Damascus, promising the former’s gradual integration into the new Syrian state and military while preserving a degree of autonomy for NES, has created unexpected hopes for a lasting peace in Syria.
The deal arrives on the back of not only a détente between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the militant Kurdish group against which Ankara has long used as a pretext for airstrikes and ground invasions targeting the SDF in Syria and sometimes endangering U.S. troops, but also unprecedented talks between the Syrian Kurdish leadership and their rivals in neighboring Iraqi Kurdistan.
These factors combine to create a unique opportunity. The U.S. can hand over responsibility to a combined Kurdish, Syrian and regional anti-ISIS mission, while continuing its present efforts to support a political resolution to the 14-year Syrian conflict from afar — thus allowing for a managed withdrawal of American troops.
Both the U.S. military and their Syrian Kurdish partners recognize the writing is on the wall. At a recent event assessing a potential U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and Syria, retired CENTCOM commander and long-term advocate for the U.S. military presence in Syria General Joseph Votel acknowledged: “the Trump administration has been clear from the first time they were in office that they don’t see [the U.S.] being engaged in Syria.”
Back in 2019, President Trump ordered a shambolic and ultimately unsuccessful withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, paving the way for an immediate Turkish invasion. Hundreds of civilians were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced by Turkey and its Islamist proxy militias before the order was abruptly reversed. This lose-lose situation left the U.S. just as entangled as before, even as it suffered the humiliation of chaos redolent of Joe Biden’s 2021 exit from Kabul.
The question is, therefore, can the U.S. actually accomplish a withdrawal while evading the unwanted optics of once again abandoning its erstwhile partners (the Kurds) to a potential slaughter by its adversaries, or worse, creating an even bigger mess that sucks Washington right back into the Syrian quagmire, like Iraq in 2014. Fortunately, this goal looks more achievable than ever following the recent, unexpected developments in Syria.
The possibility of heightened chaos following Assad’s fall likely stayed Trump’s hand — what Gen. Votel called a “level of patience” during his first 90 days in office, accepting that he could not withdraw troops immediately. (Following Trump’s global U.S. aid freeze in January 2025, for example, emergency funding was rushed through to Syria, allowing Kurdish-led forces to continue operating the camps and detention centers where they hold over 25,000 ISIS-affiliated detainees from over 50 countries).
But unlike in Afghanistan, the U.S. has a trusted, highly-trained partner force in Syria. The SDF commands some 100,000 troops — far more, in fact, than the new rulers in Damascus. On a recent visit to NES I met with Rojhilat Afrin, commander-in-chief of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), the all-female Kurdish force which led ISIS’ defeat. “If ISIS were controlled and guarantees given over [Turkish] attacks, we wouldn’t need external protection,” Afrin said. “We would be able to decide everything ourselves, as Syrians.”
In reality, the immediate ISIS threat is significantly degraded, with the terror organization incapable of holding territory even in the post-Assad vacuum. The SDF is by this time well-equipped to deal with the slow-burning ISIS insurgency.
When I asked Gen. Votel how the U.S. military could learn the lessons of 2019 and respond to a fresh executive order for a troop pull-out, he suggested the U.S. should prioritize securing those ISIS detainees, consider continued aerial surveillance and intelligence-sharing for the SDF after the U.S.A’s exit, and execute a well-planned withdrawal marked by clear communication up the chain to Washington and down to the SDF, giving the latter fair warning over the U.S.A’s withdrawal plans.
Admittedly, there is a genuine threat posed by that army of highly-radicalized ISIS detainees, who will not vanish overnight. However, the U.S. can pressure its allies to follow Washington’s own lead in repatriating and putting on trial their respective ISIS-linked nationals rather than abandoning them to wreak havoc in Syria, as Donald Trump’s anti-terrorism chief this year urged the UK. Failing that, the U.S. can at least push its allies to pull their weight in funding their own nationals’ continued detention by the SDF, in line with Trump’s broader messaging toward Europe.
Despite constant talk of ISIS, the U.S. presence served a key secondary purpose as a strategic foothold in a country previously dominated by Assad’s Iranian and Russian allies. ”America is in Syria for its own benefits, not for our benefits as Syrians,” says Hassan Koçer, a senior official in NES’ political administration. But Iranian capacity has been degraded throughout the region by Israeli attacks on its proxies following the Oct. 2023 Hamas attacks and ensuing war in Gaza, thus paving the way for Assad’s deposition, and removing another factor motivating the continued U.S. presence.
In reality it’s the second issue raised by Afrin, the threat posed by Turkey, which is the real challenge facing any successful U.S. withdrawal, as we saw in 2019. Gen. Votel pointed to the need for continued diplomatic efforts to support dialog between the SDF, HTS and Turkey like those which have currently halted Turkish hostilities, but again emphasized this political activity needn’t be tied to a physical U.S. military presence. “These problems must be resolved in a political, not a military way, and the [U.S.-led] Coalition has a role in ensuring this is understood,” Koçer says, echoing Votel’s comments.
Meanwhile, the new rulers in Damascus appear pragmatically willing to avoid direct conflict with the SDF, an approach which the U.S. can encourage from afar through non-military means such as adding autonomy and security for NES to its pre-existing list of conditions for sanctions relief on Syria. Ongoing Kurdish ‘unity talks’ between historically-opposed progressive and conservative Kurdish factions in Syria and Iraq should further help alleviate Turkey’s claimed concerns over the SDF, given Turkey’s own ties to the latter bloc.
Finally, Turkey’s proposed new anti-ISIS coalition with Iraq, Jordan, and the Syrian interim government could offer a vehicle for a rebooted anti-ISIS policy. Requiring these states to collaborate with both U.S.-trained Syrian and Iraqi Kurdish forces and other regional powers such as Saudi Arabia would discourage further regional instability, while also helping pick up the slack against ISIS.
The U.S. can thus learn from the mistakes of its botched 2019 withdrawal from Syria to plan a pragmatic, realistic exit from Syria.
UPDATE 4/26, 5:25 AM: The Defense Policy Board website has been scrubbed, and members later dismissed, reports The Wall Street Journal and Intercept. The list of the now former DPB members can still be viewed on an archived version of the website.
Discussing alleged Pentagon leaks with Tucker Carlson on Monday, recently ousted DoD official and Iraq war veteran Dan Caldwell charged that there are a number of career staff in the Pentagon who oppose the current administration’s policies. He then took particular aim at the the Defense Policy Board as a potential source of ongoing leaks to the press.
Caldwell claimed “most of the [DoD] leaks” were probably coming from career staff “hostile to the secretary, to the president, vice president's worldview.” But, he also told Carlson that “there's a less obvious place” the leaks could come from: the Defense Policy Board, which advises the secretary of defense on matters related to defense policy.
There is no evidence to his claim about the leaks, nor has there been any insight into the investigation reportedly embroiling Caldwell and two others who were pushed out of the Pentagon last Friday. Statements by Caldwell, who was serving as senior adviser to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and others suggest the accusations against them are a setup. Caldwell’s interview with Carlson did little to shed light onto who specifically might be behind them, or why, though a Drop Site News report late yesterday underscored the fierce internal infighting that could have led to the present circumstances.
But the interview did draw fresh attention to the Defense Policy Board, which is quite unknown outside the Beltway, but does wield influence inside the Pentagon as a repository for former high level national security officials who are tasked with providing “independent, informed advice and opinions on matters of defense policy” to the E-Ring.
As Caldwell pointed out, today the current DPB is filled with Biden-era appointments like former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice, and Michele Flournoy, who also worked in the Pentagon during the Obama administration and is now a high-powered consultant working with the defense and tech industry.
It also includes Michael O’Hanlon of Brookings, an early, integral think tank supporter of the War in Iraq, and Richard Fontaine, CEO of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), an enthusiastic proponent of the counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign during the first Obama administration. He served in various national security roles during the wars, including as Sen. John McCain’s foreign policy advisor.
The board has likely not met since Trump’s inauguration and it would be no surprise if it’s entirely replaced, as the undersecretary for policy planning oversees the panel and Elbridge Colby was just confirmed to the post two weeks ago. Trump fired the board after he lost the 2020 election and Biden fired and replaced Trump’s replacements in 2021 with the current roster.
The faces, names and political affiliations may change, but members have largely reflected the same consensus thinking about using and sustaining U.S. power abroad, whether it be for maintaining the global liberal order or confronting great power conflict. Past members have included foreign policy luminaries such as Henry Kissinger and Madeline Albright, who once famously said, “What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?”
Many have sailed through the revolving door between government, think tanks, academia, and the defense industry and have been integral to the failed policies that led to and prolonged U.S. wars and smaller interventions abroad since 9/11.
In addition to Washington mainstay Susan Rice, for example, DPB member Kori Schake is director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, which essentially served as the brain trust for the Iraq War. Today it is regularly pushing for further Pentagon budget increases. In a 2022 Foreign Affairs article, Schake herself called for a DoD budget exceeding $1 trillion.
Neoconservative and former U.S. Ambassador Eric Edelman, who had served in the Bush and Obama administrations, is also a long-time Washington war-hawk, previously pushing a hard line on Iran’s nuclear program and for U.S. intervention in the Syrian civil war.
Current DBP member Jack Keane, former vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army, was a key figure in pushing President Bush to “surge” U.S. troops into Iraq in 2007 and was an aggressive cheerleader for the aforementioned COIN and pushing more troops into Afghanistan in 2009.
Notably, Keane subsequently served as executive chairman of military contractor AM General, which obtained a $459 million contract in 2017 to send more than 2,000 Humvees to Afghanistan — profiting from his previous policy recommendation to Congress.
A DoD representative told RS the DBP website is “up to date.” And yet, some members’ online profiles suggest it may not be : the official website says Flournoy is a member; her bios on Council on Foreign Relations and Center for a New American Security pages, however, say she is a former one.
For now, however, the DPB’s composition is representative of a Washington highly resistant to change, particularly to the “America First” approach that questions whether the policies of the past 30 years have made the U.S. any safer or more prosperous. Again, it is not clear how much access that DPB members, together or individually, have to the Pentagon today or whether they even have access to the type of inside information that's been allegedly leaked.
But musing that his restraint-minded foreign policy views played a role in his ouster, Caldwell alleged the old establishment’s entrenchment inside could have ruptured informational leaks helping throw the DoD into disarray — mere months into the new administration.
The death of Pope Francis, the first pontiff from Latin America, is being mourned across the continent, but especially in Cuba, despite the communist government’s history of antagonism toward religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular.
Upon hearing the news of the Holy Father’s passing, President Miguel Díaz-Canel wrote, “The displays of affection and cordial closeness he conveyed to our compatriots were always reciprocated by the Cuban people.” The headline in the Communist Party’s official newspaper, Granma, read, “Pope Francis and Cuba: A History that Opened Paths,” referring to the Pope’s pivotal role in promoting reconciliation between the Cuban government and the island’s Catholic Church, and between Cuba and the United States.
Church-state relations in Cuba quickly deteriorated into acrimony after the triumph of the revolution in 1959, when the church resisted the socialist trajectory of the revolutionary process. The government responded by closing Catholic schools, expelling foreign clergy, persecuting believers, and formally declaring Cuba an atheist state in the 1976 constitution.
The first green shoots of reconciliation emerged in the 1970s when Pope Paul VI and Pope John-Paul II counseled Catholic hierarchies in communist countries to avoid political confrontations with authorities.
That strategy began to bear fruit in the 1990s when the economic debacle following the fall of the Soviet Union led to a surge in religious observance among the Cuban people, and the government decided to accommodate rather than resist it. The Communist Party’s ban on religious observers was lifted, the constitution was amended to declare the state secular rather than atheist, and Cuba welcomed the first papal a visit from Pope John-Paul II in 1998.
Before he became Pope, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio had a long-standing interest in Cuba. After Pope John Paul II’s visit, the cardinal wrote a short book entitled, Dialogues between John Paul II and Fidel Castro. Its central theme, which would become a central theme of Vatican diplomacy under Francis, was the need for dialogue and mutual understanding between adversaries. Through this “culture of encounter,” he believed, people could come to have compassion for one another, to see each other as children of God.
This was the philosophy he brought to Cuba on his 2015 trip and to his meetings with Raúl and Fidel Castro. His ardent welcome by the Cuban people helped consolidate a constructive, albeit wary, modus vivendi between the government and Church. The party newspaper Granma called it “one of the greatest rapprochements between the Catholic Church and the nation, based on a relationship of mutual respect and sensitivity.”
The result was greater tolerance for the Cuban church and an expanded role for the church’s charitable social work, which the government had previously resisted.
Francis, like his two predecessors, spoke out against the U.S. embargo of Cuba on the grounds that economic embargoes inevitably take the heaviest toll on the most vulnerable people. In 2014, he had an opportunity to put his faith in the culture of encounter into practice.
The United States and Cuba were locked in conflict over the imprisonment of USAID subcontractor Alan Gross in Cuba and the imprisonment of five Cuban intelligence officers in the United States. Two Catholic cardinals with especially close personal relations with the pontiff, Cardinal Jaime Ortega, Archbishop of Havana, and Cardinal Seán O’Malley, Archbishop of Boston, asked Francis to use his moral authority to try to break the deadlock.
In March, the pontiff met with President Barack Obama, urging him to seek reconciliation with Cuba and offering the Holy See’s good offices to help advance the secret dialogue already underway between the two governments.
That summer, with the negotiations stalled, Francis wrote letters to both President Obama and President Castro, imploring them "to resolve humanitarian questions of common interest, including the situation of certain prisoners, in order to initiate a new phase in relations.” The letters helped break the impasse.
When a tentative agreement was finally reached, the Pope invited the U.S. and Cuban negotiators to Rome to finalize the deal. The meeting, facilitated by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, focused on building confidence that both sides would keep their end of the bargain.
''It was less a matter of breaking some substantive logjam but more the confidence of having an external party we could rely on,'' explained a senior U.S. official. The Pope agreed to act as "guarantor" to help overcome the lingering distrust between the two sides.
On December 17, 2014, President Obama and President Castro simultaneously announced their historic agreement, not just to exchange prisoners but to begin normalizing relations between the United States and Cuba after more than sixty years of estrangement. Both presidents thanked Pope Francis for helping bring their dialogue to fruition.
Unfortunately, the rapprochement did not last. President Donald Trump returned to a policy of regime change through “maximum pressure,” rolling back most of Obama’s steps toward normalization. Trump and the Pope clashed openly over a host of issues, especially the treatment of migrants.
Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election seemed to auger well for a resumption of Obama’s Cuba policy. But the Cuban government’s harsh suppression of the nationwide protests on July 11, 2021, caused Biden to freeze relations, insisting that any improvement had to be preceded by the release of some 700 imprisoned protestors. Cuba insisted that any prisoner release would have to be part of a wider deal — a stalemate that offered Pope Francis an opportunity to resurrect the process of engagement.
In late 2021, Francis asked Cardinal O’Malley to once again serve as an interlocutor between the Vatican, Washington, and Havana, carrying messages from the Pope urging Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel to give clemency to non-violent demonstrators and urging the White House to return to the path of reconciliation.
Over the next three years, O’Malley met repeatedly with the senior officials in both capitals, including the presidents, delivering messages from the Holy Father. Perhaps the prospect of a second Trump presidency induced a sense of urgency in both capitals, because it was only after the November 2024 U.S. election that Washington and Havana were able to agree on independent but parallel steps. “The door was closing for an opportunity,” O’Malley reflected.
On January 14, 2025, The White House announced major policy changes undertaken “as part of an understanding with the Catholic Church under the leadership of Pope Francis.” Biden rescinded Trump’s 2017 presidential directive overturning Obama’s policy of engagement; removed Cuba from the list of state sponsors of international terrorism; and suspended Title III of the 1996 Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act allowing U.S. citizens who lost property in Cuba to sue in U.S. federal court foreign firms making use of that property.
The next day, the Cuban government announced that would free 553 prisoners at the behest of the Pope "in the spirit of the Ordinary Jubilee of the year 2025 declared by His Holiness.”
Unfortunately, Pope Francis’ second effort to nurture a culture of encounter between the United States and Cuba was cut short by President Trump, who, within days of taking office, reversed all of Biden’s actions. The Cubans, for their part, followed through by releasing the 553 prisoners, as promised.
All the leaders of the Catholic Church who played such central roles in fostering a U.S.-Cuban rapprochement have now left the stage of global diplomacy. Cuba’s Cardinal Ortega passed away in 2019. Cardinal O’Malley retired as Archbishop last year and is too old to participate in the upcoming conclave to select the new pontiff. With Francis’ passing, the poor have lost a champion and the world has lost a moral force for peace and reconciliation.
At a moment when rapprochement between the United States and Cuba seems as distant as ever, those who support a relationship based on mutual understanding, respect, and compassion can take inspiration from the indefatigable spirit of Pope Francis and his commitment to a culture of encounter.
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