America First and Dealing with a Recalcitrant Putin Trump offered Putin a historic off-ramp to end the Ukraine war, but Putin spurned peace for Xi’s summit—leaving Trump to press Europe for tougher sanctions and real unity. By Fred Fleitz
https://amgreatness.com/2025/09/05/america-first-and-dealing-with-a-recalcitrant-putin/
It has now been three weeks since the historic Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, where the two leaders met to discuss how to end the horrific war in Ukraine. President Trump has extended to Putin hospitality, patience, and incredibly generous terms to provide him with an off-ramp to end the war and Russia’s isolation. Despite Trump’s peacemaking efforts, Putin has not only spurned him and continued the war but also attended a showy summit convened by Chinese President Xi Jinping, where Putin expressed his defiance of U.S. peace efforts and flaunted a closer relationship with China and North Korea.
Putin’s recalcitrance requires a robust response from President Trump to promote peace and reaffirm America’s global leadership. This should be a carefully calculated America First policy initiative to pressure Putin to end the war and promote diplomacy while keeping U.S. troops out of Ukraine. Trump also must demand that Europe do much more to pressure Russia to end the war.
Naturally, President Trump’s political opponents and the mainstream media are blaming Trump for Putin’s decision to continue the war. This criticism is unfair. Trump and his senior officials went to great lengths to give Putin an honorable way to halt the war, along with post-war diplomatic and trade opportunities to end Russia’s isolation and bring prosperity to Russia. God gave man free will and the ability to make right and wrong decisions. President Trump is not responsible for Putin’s choice to make the bad and irrational decision to ignore his peace offer and continue the war.
Chinese President Xi hosted a summit meeting of the do-nothing Shanghai Cooperation Organization this week, which Trump’s political opponents and the mainstream media used to attack his foreign policy and Ukraine peace efforts. Photos of Xi, Putin, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi cheerfully greeting each other and holding hands at the summit—along with a massive Chinese military parade—were cited as evidence of a new world order that is arising due to opposition to President Trump’s foreign policy, especially his tariff policy.
This is nonsense. The truth is that many world leaders, especially Putin and Xi, greatly resent the prominence and success of President Trump on the world stage and tried to use the summit to knock him down a peg. Moreover, as much as some nations dislike a strong America under Trump, they have no interest in a new world order led by Xi or the Chinese Communist Party.
Moreover, China and India remain adversaries. Prime Minister Modi attended the summit out of anger over the 50% tariffs Trump imposed on India for its oil purchases from Russia, rather than to forge a new partnership with China at America’s expense.
Putin tried to use the summit to imply that the attendees support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. However, beyond China and North Korea, only a handful of rogue states back Russia’s war in Ukraine because the majority view it as destabilizing to global security. Putin’s defiant remarks at the summit defending the invasion did nothing to win him support for war or increase his international standing.
President Trump’s task now, therefore, is to implement tough energy sanctions—including secondary sanctions on states that buy Russian energy—as a consequence of Putin’s refusal to end the war and his defiance of U.S. peace efforts. If necessary, energy sanctions should be followed by economic sanctions, including seizing about $300 billion in frozen Russian assets worldwide and using them to rebuild Ukraine. President Trump should also move forward with his proposal to sell weapons to Ukraine through NATO.
At the same time, President Trump should keep the door open to a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine War. U.S. diplomats should continue to regularly engage their Russian and Ukrainian counterparts to discuss how to end the war.
What the U.S. should not do is support proposals to end the war that violate America First national security principles or undermine efforts for a peace deal. Ukraine is not a U.S. strategic interest, and President Trump has accordingly ruled out deploying U.S. troops as part of a peace settlement. European leaders should stop proposing this. The U.S. should also make clear to Europe that, because Putin will not accept European ground troops in Ukraine, proposals to deploy them as peacekeepers are futile.
Instead, the U.S. should work with Europe to devise other post-war security guarantee arrangements for Ukraine, such as heavily arming Ukraine after the war to prevent a new Russian invasion and deploying peacekeepers from non-NATO neutral states to monitor a cease-fire.
Europe must do much more to inflict economic pressure on Russia until it agrees to end the war. President Trump made this point yesterday during a conference call with Ukrainian President Zelensky and European leaders, stating that Europe must stop buying Russian oil. He noted that Russia generated 1.1 billion euros in oil sales from the European Union over the last year. Trump also called on European states to put economic pressure on China for funding Russia’s war efforts.
President Trump’s diplomats will make it clear to European leaders that their full support for U.S. peace efforts—including economic pressure against Russia and states that rely on its energy—is essential to forcing Putin to start negotiating in good faith to end the Ukraine War.
Peacemaking is hard. Although Trump’s peace efforts have not yet succeeded, there was no peace effort before he became president. Trump deserves credit for trying to address a global threat that was seen as unsolvable. But because the U.S. is not the world’s policeman and Ukraine is not a U.S. strategic interest, there are limitations on what the U.S. should do to end this war. American troops should not be deployed to Ukraine or put in the position of possibly exchanging fire with Russian soldiers.
Ending the war in Ukraine will take time—possibly years—and will require significant diplomatic and economic pressure on Russia. Europe must join the U.S. in this effort and stop muddying the waters with unrealistic peace plans. The Ukraine War is difficult to resolve because of the incompetent policies of President Biden and European leaders before Trump took office. Any chance of ending this war will depend on European leaders and Zelensky closely cooperating with President Trump’s peace efforts. The U.S. cannot end this war by itself.
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Fred Fleitz previously served as National Security Council chief of staff, a CIA analyst, and a House Intelligence Committee staff member. He is the Vice Chair of the America First Policy Institute’s Center for American Security.
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