One can easily dismiss JD Vance’s recently stated prescription for ending the war in Ukraine as fatuous nonsense. But in examining why he’s making no sense, one can learn what really needs to be done to bring peace and justice to Ukraine. Vance should try to learn more about how other wars were ended—especially World Wars I and II. And Trump should pay more attention to how Putin has treated Melania.
Recently appearing on Meet the Press, Vice President Vance said, “If you go back to World War II, if you go back to World War I, if you go back to every major conflict in human history, they all end with some kind of negotiation.” Vance added that to achieve peace, Ukraine would have to find “middle ground” with Russia. After all, Vance said, that’s “how wars ultimately get settled.”
Well—since Presidents Trump and Putin met in Alaska, how’s the search for peace been going? Where’s the middle ground? The answers: The negotiations, if any are still going on, seem to be going nowhere. And there is no apparent middle ground between Ukrainian independence and the lack thereof.
Vladimir Putin has been nothing if not candid in his ambitions. He wants to restore the old Soviet Union to its glory days as one of the world’s two superpowers—albeit without Marxism. And he wants to destroy Ukrainian independence, believing it is not a real nation anyway but rather a rogue province of Russia.
Vance—presumably with Trump’s endorsement—apparently thinks the Trump administration can nonetheless mediate between Ukraine and Russia and achieve a negotiated settlement by finding a middle ground between Ukraine’s desire to exist as an independent nation and Russia’s desire to eliminate it. Vance cites the settlements of the First and Second World Wars as precedents for successful American efforts. But Vance seems to have forgotten, if he ever knew, that the negotiations ending these wars were preceded and brought about by levels of warfare, death, and destruction unprecedented in their intensity.
Consider World War I: The armistice of November 11, 1918, which led to the negotiations by which Germany was saddled with surrender and guilt for starting the war, only followed more than four years of savage fighting, wiping out an entire generation of young men in Europe, followed by an influx of fresh American troops in the war’s final year.
And it’s true that both Germany and Japan agreed to negotiations ending World War II with their unconditional surrender—but only after Germany was invaded and conquered by American, Soviet, and Allied forces, and Japan was attacked with atomic bombs. Our Vice President would be well advised to bone up on Normandy, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.
None of this is to say that to achieve peace in Ukraine, the United States must either invade Russia or nuke it (although Putin himself has threatened invasions and/or the use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine and its European allies). Rather, what Trump and Vance must realize is that Putin considers the losses Russia is currently sustaining as acceptable, and he won’t stop fighting until he either achieves victory or is met with the threat of overwhelming counterforce. Therefore, to achieve any degree of victory by which Ukraine can preserve its freedom, Trump should follow through on his threats to supply Ukraine with more weapons systems capable of attacking targets deep inside Russian territory, along with the freedom to so use those systems.
And a good way to strengthen Trump’s resolve to actually do something effective to end the war may be to remind him of Putin’s response to Melania Trump’s handwritten letter delivered by her husband to Putin himself in Alaska. Her letter was a plea to Putin to spare the Ukrainian children. His immediate response, according to conservative Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen, was to launch “a massive drone and missile strike on residential buildings and a kindergarten in the center of Kyiv, killing at least 23 people, including four children.” Thiessen further reports, “According to the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, more than 3560 schools have been hit by Russian missiles, drones, artillery and even cluster munitions, including 371 that were destroyed. In those attacks, 652 children were killed and 2142 injured, while another 2193 remain missing.”
So where’s the middle ground?????
Malcolm L. Cross has lived in Stephenville since 1987 and taught politics and government at Tarleton for 36 years, retiring in 2023. His political and civic activities include service on the Stephenville City Council (2000-2014) and on the Erath County Republican Executive Committee (1990-2024). He was Mayor pro-tem of Stephenville from 2008 to 2014. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Stephenville
Economic Development Authority since 2018 and as chair of the Erath County Appraisal District’s Appraisal Review Board since 2015. He is also a member of the Stephenville Rotary Club, the Board of Vestry of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, and the Executive Committee of the Boy Scouts’ Pecan Valley District. Views expressed in this column are his and do not reflect those of The Flash as a whole.
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