President Trump claims he would end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours but refuses to say how. Ron DeSantis’ position is unclear, and other GOP candidates support continued U.S. involvement in Ukraine without specifying clear limits on engagement. If elected president, I will end the war by ceasing further U.S. support for Ukraine and negotiating a peace treaty with Russia that achieves a vital U.S. security objective: ceasing Russia’s growing military alliance with China. This strategy is the mirror image of President Nixon’s diplomatic maneuver that distanced China from Russia in 1972 — except this time, Putin is the new Mao.
In 2001, Russia and China entered their Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation, and in February 2022 Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a more expansive “no-limits partnership.” Collectively, these agreements effectively commit each country to defend the other militarily if either is attacked.
The Sino-Russia alliance presents the greatest military risk the U.S. has ever faced. Russia and China together outmatch the U.S. in every area of great power competition: geographic footprint, economic potential, industrial manufacturing might, conventional military power, and nuclear weapons, including super-Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) weapons, which could destroy critical U.S. infrastructure resulting in hundreds of millions of American civilian casualties.
Beijing’s alliance with Russia provides China with sufficient strategic depth to chance direct conflict with the U.S. in the context of Taiwan, on the credible belief that the U.S. would not dare risk a simultaneous war with two allied nuclear superpowers. Russia is armed with
