On February 28, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky got the meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump that he had been hoping for. It was an opportunity to sign their agreement on minerals and, more importantly, to improve relations and heal their recent fight. Instead, another fight erupted. Much has been written on the tone of what was said by both sides, but not enough attention has been paid to the content of what was said. Much of what Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance said publicly had been said privately before. This was not the first time the United States or its allies have...

There may come a day when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky regrets taking the bait and, at what may be the conclusion of three years of fighting Russia, being drawn into a verbal war with U.S. President Donald Trump. Over the last few days, Trump has called Zelensky a dictator who started the war, and Zelensky has said that Trump is “caught in a web of disinformation.” As negotiations are being prepared, and Zelensky needs more than ever to be in the shadow of Trump’s goodwill, this may be the worst time to become entrenched as an enemy of Trump. Vice President J.D. Vance said that...

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the United States has led an international campaign to shun and isolate Russian President Vladimir Putin. Former U.S. President Joe Biden did not talk to Putin once after the war began. That policy of isolation is now over. On February 12, U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed that he had a “lengthy and highly productive phone call” with Putin. But Trump did not just open the door a cautious crack. He flung it wide. He did not just agree to further phone calls, but that he would go to Moscow and Putin would come to Washington: “We agreed to work...

On January 6, Indonesia formally entered BRICS as a full member. It was an important geopolitical shift that went largely unreported and little discussed in the mainstream western media. BRICS is an international organization whose primary purpose is to balance U.S. hegemony in a new multipolar world. Its roots go back to 1996 and the emergence of the core group of Russia, India, and China (RIC). In 2009, along with Brazil, BRIC held its first summit. In 2010, South Africa joined, and BRICS was formed, making it, perhaps, the only major international body in which representatives of Africa...

A leaked document has given us a first glimpse at President Donald Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine. According to the Ukrainian online newspaper Strana, U.S. officials handed the plan to European diplomats who then passed it on to Ukraine. The existence of the plan has not been verified, and Andriy Yermak, head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, has said “no ‘100-day peace plan’ as reported by the media exists in reality.” If the plan is real, and if it is being put on the table by the Trump administration as a finished product that, if rejected, will lead to more sanctions on Russia...

There may be a battle looming, not just between the United States and Ukraine over the conscription of men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, but also within the Donald Trump administration. The call for Ukraine to cast a wider conscription net predates the Trump administration. Facing imminent loss on the battlefield after NATO had bankrupted its supply of weapons, demanding that Ukraine throw more men into battle emerged as the last grasp solution during the Joe Biden administration. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, “In fact, we believe manpower is the most...

Before the first day of Donald Trump’s second term in office, he already had more diplomatic achievements than Joe Biden did on the last day of his. The entrance of the Trump team into the negotiations was the difference in Gaza. Biden opened his administration with the promise of “a new era of relentless diplomacy.” But after four years of wasted opportunity, the Biden administration would struggle to name a single diplomatic accomplishment. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s inclusion in his January 2 exit interview with The New York Times of the Biden administration’s “core goal” of...

The present severed from the past is easily misunderstood. In discussions of the Russia-Ukraine war, not enough is made of the historical fact that, at the end of the Cold War, the newly independent Ukraine promised not to join NATO, and NATO promised not to expand to Ukraine. Not enough is made of the fact that Article IX of the 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine, “External and Internal Security,” says that Ukraine “solemnly declares its intention of becoming a permanently neutral state that does not participate in military blocs…” That promise was later enshrined in Ukraine’s...