You may not like him, but Vladimir Putin deserved the high-octane reception that he received in Alaska.
One of the problems that Democrats and weak-kneed Republicans have is that they are always playing the wrong game. Imagine a baseball game. Team A’s goal is to have more runs at the end of nine innings than other guys have. That has traditionally been the goal of baseball: to win. Team B has a different program. While they also field nine guys and look serious in their uniforms, their goal is to face as many pitches as possible. One guy fouls off nine pitches before striking out. The next guy goes through 12 pitches before grounding out to first. They think they are winning; in fact, they are losing by all traditional metrics and are also losers.
Let’s assume that Vladimir Putin is all the bad things that his detractors say:
*He started the war in Ukraine (we’ll ignore why he started it)
*He mistreats his political opponents, some of whom fall out of sixth-floor windows
*His election is suspect as to its veracity
*He is into “that macho thing” as Obama described him riding bareback, etc.
*He is in cahoots with America’s enemies like Iran and China
Let’s say it’s all true. He’s no Boy Scout and maybe he is a bona fide enemy of the U.S. With all that, he still deserved the red carpet, the rows of hi-tech planes and attack helicopters, the ride in the Beast, the B-2 flyover and the F-35 escort home. Why? Because improved U.S.-Russian relations benefit the U.S. enormously.
The meeting that took place this past weekend in Alaska should have taken place in some form eight years ago. With the perfidy of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, there was no way that Donald Trump could make overtures to Vladimir Putin without further strengthening the fake “Russian collusion” narrative. Putin himself said that had Trump been reelected in 2020, there would have been no war. Why? The people in the Biden administration still had Russia on their mind and wanted in any way to get back at her for supposedly electing Orange Man Bad. So they saw bringing Ukraine into NATO and strengthening its military as good ways to get at Putin. I am not justifying the invasion; I only point out that Donald Trump and his people would have understood that there are red lines that Russia—like every country—has that should not be crossed. NATO does not need Ukraine and Trump would have not taken steps to threaten Russia’s border. But Trump was hamstrung in 2016, out in 2020 and now back in the saddle in 2025. He gave Putin the reception he deserved because getting Russia closer to the U.S. is in our interests.
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I wrote in the past about pulling a reverse-Nixon and moving Russia away from China. China is America’s biggest economic and military peer. Anything that one can do to weaken China or at least prevent it from getting stronger is a plus for the U.S. I would rather see a joint U.S.-Russian naval exercise in the Sea of Japan than a Chinese-Russian exercise. I would rather see Russian pressure on Iran over its nuclear ambitions than Russia buying huge numbers of Iranian drones for its war in Ukraine. One does not have to love Putin or even ignore his negatives. But the U.S. today is better served with Russia as a friend rather than an enemy. It’s quite a funny thing when Hillary Clinton brought her silly “Reset” button to the Russians but suddenly hated them when she invented out of thin air a story of Russia getting Trump elected. She repeated the same last week: Trump lost in 2020, won in 2024, and questionably won with Russian help in 2016. Don’t these people ever go away? Don’t they have a sell-off date on their necks when we no longer have to hear from them?
Donald Trump, though brought up in the world of real estate, has impeccable political instincts. He twice whacked Iran in such a surprising manner that they arranged with him their revenge attacks so as not to further provoke him. He has learned to pick associates and give them the baton to run their offices and departments. Trump understands Putin and knows what he needs. One can pretend to be quite righteous and demand Putin’s removal from office or refuse to deal with him. Will such approaches bring peace? Will they lead to the end of the killing? No. Trump wants an end to the war and that will not happen without Putin. He knows that if you want Putin on board, you have to treat him like an important world actor—and Alaska was a form of honor given to few world leaders.
The other side of the table is Zelensky and his cabal of European leaders. When you read this, their meeting with Trump will already have taken place. I don’t believe that any of them understands their situation with respect to the current war. There is no question that Russia has not won as in World War II and thus demand unconditional surrender. The situation on the battlefield is opaque with both sides making some progress and losing some land. Zelensky and his European fanboys do not understand that Crimea and much of Ukraine's eastern regions—taken by Russia under Obama—are not coming back. They remind me of Hitler barking out orders to nonexistent army groups from his delirium in the Reichsbunker. The Ukrainians do not have the ability to get Crimea or all of the Donbas back. Donald Trump, if anything, is a realist. He knows that Zelensky will have to certify former parts of Ukraine as Russia and give Putin land that he does not want to give him. Putin apparently is okay with serious security arrangements after he gets what he wants. I can’t predict the way Zelensky and the Seven Dwarfs will behave, but they always seem to be making demands beyond their position on the battlefield. There is nothing better than winning if you want to dictate terms; Ukraine is getting by and running out of soldiers.
The smart play for Zelensky would be to get the best terms he can that Trump will support in talks with Putin. The two of them and Putin then need to formalize the understandings and stop the war. They can then move to rebuilding and new non-NATO security arrangements between Ukraine and the West. That is the smart play. What I expect is for Zelensky, having his cheerleaders close by, will be intransigent and will demand Crimea and all of his eastern land. Donald Trump is smart enough to shake his hand, wish him good luck and throw him out of the Oval Office. Europe wants to fight Putin and they may be dumb enough to put boots on the ground. Donald Trump knows what a good deal looks like and will not entertain a bad one when he goes back to Putin. Zelensky and his crew should swallow their pride and say yes. My guess is that they don’t have the courage to do so and will soldier on to the utter destruction of Ukraine without further U.S. assistance.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.
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