My father retired from the U.S. Army with the rank of lieutenant colonel. In elementary school, I used to wear his (ridiculously) oversized Army jacket, because:
A) It just so happened to have my last name on it, too. (As a kid, that impressed me: I thought it was a really cool coincidence.)
B) U.S. soldiers are superheroes.
When you’re an insecure kid, you cling to comfort wherever you can. Wearing a genuine, 100% authentic Army jacket — the exact same jacket that our brave soldiers wore every single day! — made me feel safe.
Forget about Superman, Batman, or Spiderman: I knew who the real heroes were.
Today, my son is in the U.S. Army Cavalry. He just turned 19 years old.
And I don’t feel the same way.
Our soldiers aren’t indestructible superheroes. They’re our babies. Our little boys and girls.
They’re our dreams, hopes, and late-night prayers.
And the consequences of screwing-up the Russia-Ukraine War could get tens of thousands of them killed.
That’s the consensus on all sides, all continents, and all political parties. Everyone understands that we’re playing with fire. Everyone agrees that war is awful and destructive. By some estimates, there’s already been 1.4 million casualties.
But there’s a huge disagreement over what the hell we should do about it.
The Democrats, quite naturally, vehemently oppose President Donald Trump's foreign policy, pushing him to “get tough” with Russian leader Vladimir Putin:
After 10 wasted months of uselessly courting his buddy Putin’s approval, Trump finally heeded our calls to put the pressure on Putin.
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) October 24, 2025
His new sanctions are a start, but it’s not anywhere near enough. Ukraine needs more help.
The best thing we can do is for the Senate and the…
They’re not the only ones. Non-MAGA Republicans, exemplified by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), feel the same way:
.@POTUS is right that Biden’s weakness emboldened enemies like Putin. But those who think pressuring the victim and appeasing the aggressor will bring peace are kidding themselves. Which difficult concessions are we pressing Russia to make? How does limiting Ukraine’s defenses…
— U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell (@SenMcConnell) November 23, 2025
The fault line runs through the purpose of American mediation. Sen. McConnell views the world through carrots-and-sticks: If you “reward” aggression, you’ll get more of it.
Which means, the opposite is also true: If you punish aggression, you’ll make future wars less likely.
For men like McConnell, peace isn’t enough. There must also be a punitive component that makes an example of the Russian Bear.
From their point of view, peace without punishment is no peace at all.
The Trump administration strongly disagrees. The White House is less concerned with “rewarding” or “punishing” than with finding a way to silence the cannons, end the bloodshed, and reach a lasting peace.
Even if doing so allows Putin to claim victory.
Yesterday, Politico ran an op-ed, “Trump wants peace in Ukraine, no matter what a deal looks like”:
As European allies and the Ukrainians haggled over the details of an initial 28-point plan that would have given Donbas over to Russia, White House officials stressed that Trump doesn’t have red lines — just as long as both sides agree and the war comes to a close.
“The ultimate goal is peace. That’s the most important thing that can be achieved here. Stop the fighting, stop the killing. Those are the main things he wants out of this,” said a senior White House official, granted anonymity to discuss ongoing peace negotiations.
Trump would sign on to a deal that stops “the war, and whatever agreement that both sides can agree on as quickly as possible,” the official added.
From a wholly amoral, Machiavellian perspective, perhaps the Biden administration’s plan was actually in America’s best interest: By providing Ukraine with just enough weapons to stave off a Russian takeover — but not enough resources to ever repel them — we greased the wheels for a bloody, gruesome war-of-attrition.
Sure, lots of Russians and Ukrainians had to die, but they were cannon fodder: Our real objective was depleting the Russian war machine.
Look, if our #1 concern is Russia launching a larger war with Western Europe and NATO, the Biden approach wasn’t a dumb strategy. It may be amoral, but it’s logical: The more Russian soldiers, Russian tanks, and Russian equipment that are destroyed in Ukraine, the less likely it becomes that Russia would have the wherewithal to expand the war.
So maybe, our smartest strategy is to perpetuate the status quo for another four years. Or even longer.
Trouble is, Russia is a nuclear superpower. And war is unpredictable: Very seldom does it go according to plan.
Which means, the longer this war drags on, the more probable it becomes that someone, somewhere, will make a tactical calculation that leads to a horrifying death toll.
And if that happens, our American sons and daughters WILL be going to war. There are certain red lines that cannot be uncrossed.
Those are the catastrophic consequences of overplaying our hand.
We need to decide what’s more important: “Punishing” Russia or achieving peace.
Even if the peace isn’t permanent.
After all, peace seldom is: “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
At this point, it’s difficult to see how a peace deal that leaves Ukraine free and independent — and Volodymyr Zelenskyy still in power — would embolden Putin to leapfrog Ukraine and attack Western Europe. Four years of war (with a $211 billion price tag) and over a million casualties isn’t exactly a slap on the wrist.
Especially considering Russia’s current demographics.
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If not for Napoleon’s invasion, World War I, the communist revolution, World War II, Stalin’s bloody purges, the Afghanistan War, the post-Soviet exodus, and now the Ukraine War, Russia would be far and away the world’s most populous country, had it avoided “melon-scooping” hundreds of millions of its young people.
But every few decades, that’s what it does.
And today, more Russian men are dying than boys are being born. (It’s also noteworthy that Russia has the world’s highest abortion rate, with up to 70% of all pregnancies terminated.)
As geopolitics strategist and demographics expert Peter Zeihan explained:
The demographic situation in Russia is bad and has been declining for the better part of a century.
[…]
When the Russians started mobilizing [for the Ukraine invasion], a million men aged 30 and under fled the country. And since the war began three years ago, a million men, mostly aged 30 and under, have either been killed or incapacitated to the point that they’re functionally nonworkers within the Russian system. So this is bad. It’s only going to get worse.
[…]
[Russia] started the war with their own statistics by 8 million people in that [under 30, fighting age] block, between X migrations and deaths and casualties. We’re now down to about 6 million.
Make no mistake, the Ukraine War has hobbled the Russian Bear. If that was America’s end-goal, we’ve already achieved it.
All we need is a “Mission Accomplished” banner and a presidential flyover.
Furthermore, the Ukrainian people have fought so bravely — and suffered so greatly. They don’t deserve to be treated as cannon fodder.
They deserve better than that!
President Trump is exactly right: It’s time to bring this in for a safe landing. Enough is enough.
Peace for its own sake is in America’s best interests.
After all, the men and women of the U.S. Armed Services are wearing a uniform to protect the rest of us. It’s a helluva commitment — a sacred obligation — to risk life and limb on behalf of their nation.
And every one of them is someone’s child.
Peace isn’t only in the best interest of Russia and Ukraine. It’s in our servicemembers' best interest, too.
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