The Unrealistic Realists

Trump's 28 point peace plan for Ukraine

“…this appeasement of Putin and the way Trump’s gone about negotiating with Putin, putting no pressure on him, using no leverage and putting all the pressure on the victim is absolutely the opposite of what he did with Israel and Israel’s enemies. To use an analogy, if Trump had employed the same strategy, he would have been backing Iran, backing Hamas, pressuring Israel, refusing to send Israel weapons.” — Professor Robert Kaufman

Hi all,

I’m back with a second podcast on President Trump’s 28 point peace plan for the Ukraine War with Professor Robert Kaufman of Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy. Several years ago, I was working for Fox News when Russia invaded Ukraine. I interviewed him then on Ukraine and Zelensky and here is the video and article.

When I heard about Trump’s latest peace effort, I reached out to the professor and, as usual, he doesn’t hold back, especially against what he calls the “unrealistic realists” inside the Trump Administration. He doesn’t expect to receive many Christmas cards from them. Below is the unedited transcript and here is the full video of our conversation:

My best,

Eli

Unedited Transcript:

Man of Steele Productions

Hey everybody, welcome to the Man of Steele podcast. This is our second time and I’m back with Professor Kaufman. And the reason why I thought we would talk again is because of the new so-called peace plan that Trump has proposed regarding Ukraine. And most of you probably don’t remember, but I did interview Professor Kaufman several years ago at the very beginning of the war, where we talked about what the war meant in Ukraine and Russia’s invasion. So I will include a clip into the article that comes with this video. But first, let me introduce you to Professor Kaufman, one of my favorite professors of all time. He’s at the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy. I’m going to let him introduce himself and then we’ll give you the first question.

Robert Kaufman

Eli, thank you for the very kind introduction. I’m Professor Robert Kaufman. I’m the Doxin Chair at the Pepperdine School of Public Policy.

Man of Steele Productions

Most people don’t read the details. So can you tell us what is exactly in Trump’s proposal, which I believe he is calling it, the 28-point U.S. Russia peace plan for Ukraine? What exactly are some of the key details of that plan?

Robert Kaufman

Well, two points to make at the outset. One, it is a plan that will delight President Putin. It really echoes most of his talking points. Very disappointing if you believe in Ukraine’s independence and integration with the West. Even worse, Eli, as you were preparing this, the Wall Street Journal reported that President Trump has issued an ultimatum to President Zelensky giving Ukraine until Thursday to accept his terms. So this is in the form of a fate accompli, very, very disadvantageous to Ukraine if the Ukrainians accepted.

I take a very dim view of their prospects for genuine independence. This is the equivalent of the Munich 1938 agreement that resulted in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and an eventual Nazi turnover that was not Hitler’s last major piece of aggression. But he had only just begun.

This is really very distressing. If you believe this, I do, that Ukraine has fought heroically. If you believe that an independent Ukraine anchored to the West is an important moral and geopolitical interest, this is a somber day. So what is in this plan?

I’ll tell you what’s in it and what isn’t in it, which collectively make it very, very disadvantageous to Ukraine. One, Ukraine will have to cede territory that it now controls, not just the areas in Russian control, but substantial areas of the Donetsk Basin. Even worse, the agreement restricts Ukraine’s ability to defend itself. One, it caps Ukraine’s army. Two, there’s no provision for an international force to enforce it. Three, the United States has issued only the vaguest statements about their role in upholding the agreement. And four, as the agreement essentially rests, Ukraine makes all the concrete concessions and the Trump administration is counting on Putin honoring his word and the Russian legislature, which is a rubber stamp for Putin, codifying this in legislation. This is not worth the paper it’s printed on.

Look at Putin’s past history of violating agreements serially. This is really just a ceasefire, a way station to dismembering Ukraine by salami slicing tactics. This is again very grim if you think that Ukraine should emerge from this war, part of the West. It rules out specifically Ukraine becoming a member of NATO for several years, but given the disadvantageous nature of the provisions heavily weighted in Putin’s favor, that’s only a theoretical proposition. Ukraine will not survive as an independent nation, and it represents not only strategic insanity, but monumental ingratitude given the great contribution Ukraine’s heroism has made to the security of NATO and America’s national interests rightly understood. Sad day.

Man of Steele Productions

We’ve had a long line of appeasement of Russia from Bush to Obama. And so Trump, who obviously, as you mentioned earlier, the Art of the Deal, seems to be going against the principle here with Putin in Russia. Why is that?

Robert Kaufman

Well, before we get to that, I’m going to push back on your description a little bit. I would not call George Bush’s policy, Bush 43, a policy of appeasement. What I do agree with is like his successors, he began with a very naive view of infamously saying after meeting Putin, who was an intelligence agent, manipulated Bush as he’s manipulated everybody else. Bush said he saw Jesus in Putin’s eyes. Now that was unfortunate, but by the time the Bush administration ended and Putin had annexed part of Georgia, the Abkhazia region, the bloom was off the rose. Bush became much tougher, was about to deploy missile defense in Eastern Europe.

The person who brought appeasement of Ukraine to its apotheosis before Trump was Obama, who did almost nothing when Putin sent in his surrogates to annex Crimea in 2014, refused to send Ukraine aid, and continued his reset with Putin.

Assuming Putin was a partner for peace rather than an adversary, way past the time when it was plausible to make that case, even with a straight face. Trump came into office the first time expressing his admiration for Putin and other strong men. But actually in his first term, Trump was much tougher than Obama despite the rhetoric. Remember, it’s Obama who invited the Russians into Syria when he folded on its red line. Trump launched airstrikes when Assad, during his administration, used chemical weapons, killing perhaps 250 Russians. What Trump has done in his second term, is revert to his rhetoric as a candidate and even worse.

He’s had several iterations during the administration, but the one that has set the tone and seems to be the real Trump is that disgraceful ambushing of Zelensky in the White House where Zelensky had no choice but to defend himself. Trump and J.D. Vance outright lied, saying that Ukraine initiated the hostilities and Vance served as literally a political hitman for Trump. After that, Trump trying to bluff his way into a deal has alternatively said the sanctions will be tougher, will take the gloves off Ukraine by removing the restrictions on the use of our weapons.

He’s talked about resuming military aid, but unfortunately, and I say this as a critic of the Biden administration’s disastrous foreign policy, Biden looks like George Patton compared to Trump at this moment. For all of Biden’s maladroitness, literally inviting the attack by his weakness, the Afghan pullout, rushing back to a terrible arms control deal with Russia that Mitt Romney deemed the worst ever, almost saying to Putin before the invasion of 2022, well, if it’s mine or we won’t do anything. And then when the invasion occurred, he offered hope and prayed that Zelensky would take a plane ticket out despite all that, despite the incremental dribbling of aid that is responsible for Ukraine’s stalemate at this moment, had he been more decisive would have had a better outcome. At least, at least, Biden provided aid for Ukraine militarily, however inadequate, that at least gave Ukraine a chance to fight and achieve a quasi-stalemate. Trump has undermined even that unsatisfactory response by cutting off American military aid. And now he’s imposing a fait accompli on Zelensky, who admitted he’s in a very tough spot. This is a very, very dangerous time for Ukraine. The Russians are advancing. It’s slow, but it’s steady and Putin is immune to casualties. Zelensky’s had a deal with a corruption issue, which is not abnormal in wartime. And Zelensky is now between a rock and a hard place if he says no to Trump and antagonizes President Trump beyond the pale, the Western European nations have talked big, but they’ve historically carried a twig.

And this is really a dangerous inflection point, this may literally imperil Zelensky’s survival and Ukraine’s. Some of this seems to be deeply embedded in Trump. Some of it is deeply embedded, not in all, but the worst elements of the MAGA base, the Tucker Carlson’s and the Candace Owens’s, those who are anti-Semitic are usually anti-Zelensky, and sometimes the subtext is the same because of Zelensky’s background. So Ukraine here is in quite a predicament. And if Ukraine does fall by degrees or completely, this is not only a moral catastrophe, but a huge strategic defeat for the West. Putin isn’t going to just stop here.

If you read it, it says you evaluate what he’s done. This is just the first step to his dream of reversing the outcome of the Cold War. The repercussions are not going to stop in Europe, however dangerous. Xi Jinping will consider this a victory and our allies in the Indo-Pacific a defeat. Think if you were Taiwan, ⁓ the signal we’re sending.

We will cut and run even if we supported you early. So Trump really in search of another agreement, in search of perhaps his Nobel Prize boastings that he settled all these controversies. Trump is really risking in the long term a defeat of much greater magnitude than even the Afghani pullout.

This is bad all the way around. For the moment, people are going to cheer Trump. This happened in 1938 with Munich, except for Winston Churchill, who rightly warned what was going to happen, Neville Chamberlain came back after the sellout and was the most popular man in Great Britain. He waved this piece of paper. This is...Hitler’s last territorial demand, he promised. Trump, if he gets it, he’s going to wave this agreement. Putin has promised and the killing stops. Six months after the Chats had a seed, the Sudetenland rendering the country indefensible, Hitler invaded the rest of the country. Big shock And made a mockery of it and Chamberlain’s credibility vanished into the ether. Unfortunately, the same thing’s going to happen. This paper agreement, look at Putin ripping all the agreements he’s ever signed to shreds, is only a fig leaf to a major moral and strategic defeat if Zelensky has to give in.

Man of Steele Productions

What’s interesting about that with Chamberlain is that he believed that he could reason with Hitler. And what’s interesting about Trump here is that he has such clarity when it comes to Iran, when it comes to Syria, when it comes to Hamas. He uses power as a way to leverage the peace.

But when it comes to Putin, he says I’m going to make the concessions. What does Putin do? He escalates. He’s just escalated again this week. In other words, Putin almost taunted Trump in saying, no, you are wrong. Every time you bring peace to the table, I escalate. So the question is, why is Trump able to read everything over here so clearly, but when it comes to Putin he misses it. Or is there motivation or is there some other variable at play here?

Robert Kaufman

Well, let’s start with that there are elements of his base, and he could have shaped opinion otherwise, but he went along with it. There are elements of his base that demonized Ukraine. So he sees some political benefit.

Don’t underestimate the importance of Trump’s ego as a negative consideration. Remember, during the campaign of 2024, Trump boasted, I’m going to have this settled in a day. It’s Biden’s war. And when Putin made a mockery of Trump’s optimism, Trump has been desperate, absolutely desperate to get a deal. And when you’re desperate for a deal without regard to the principle underlying the content, that puts you in a tough position. This is, as you put it rightly, this appeasement of Putin and the way Trump’s gone about negotiating with Putin, putting no pressure on him, using no leverage and putting all the pressure on the victim is absolutely the opposite of what he did with Israel and Israel’s enemies. To use an analogy, if Trump had employed the same strategy, he would have been backing Iran, backing Hamas, pressuring Israel, refusing to send Israel weapons. It was the reverse. Let me, however, qualify Trump’s response, which I approved of, especially compared to Biden when it comes to Israel, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Israel’s enemies, Trump is really averse to using force. Trump is very reluctant, despite his bluster, to use force. And I’m not sure even though Trump instinctively is pro-Israel, I’m not sure that he would have acted with the 30,000 pound bombs to finish off the Iranian nuclear program, or at least set it back substantially, had not Netanyahu had the courage to send the IDF and the Israeli Air Force, A, to take out Hezbollah and then B, to strip Iran of its air defenses. But if you look at what Trump did with regard to Iran and Gaza, he backed our democratic ally. He didn’t put pressure on it.

He armed our democratic ally. He didn’t put an embargo on it. And according to the peace terms, Hamas, Israel’s enemy, has to disarm. And the provisions of the peace give Netanyahu the green light to do it if the UN or the multinational coalition does it. This is ex-exactly the opposite and some of this I think reflects the restrainers, the neo-isolationists or the selective isolationists in his administration, a group I call unrealistic realists, that they are under the delusion that by accommodating Putin, you can sever Putin from China. This is ridiculous.

Look at how they’ve acted. Look at their treaty of friendship of February 2022. China and Russia and Iran and North Korea are all in it together to undermine the position of the United States. China seeks world domination, not to become a responsible stakeholder. Putin seeks to decouple NATO from the United States and to destroy NATO. Putin seeks nothing less, he said it, than reversing the outcome of the Cold War. And he sees the principal obstacle to that as the existence of the United States. And so what we’ve done perversely, Eli, is we have betrayed or seem to be on the verge of betraying a country that’s kept the Russians further east, that has inflicted massive damage on Russia and saying, all right, we’re gonna give all that up based on the delusion, what Herman Melville called the white whale of Ahab, thinking that somehow we’re gonna flip Putin. And this is naivete, cowardness, a bad judgment dressed up as sort of real politique.

It’s not gonna fly.

Man of Steele Productions

What is Zelensky’s leverage here? What’s his power here? He’s got Russia physically against him. He’s got Trump pressuring him. What leverage does he have?

Robert Kaufman

Well, the only leverage Zelensky has, and it’s really very little, I’m afraid, because without the United States, Eli, the theoretical option is that the Europeans will step up to the plate. They’ve done better than they have in the past. Sweden and Finland are really tough customers. The Poles, the Baltics, they can be relied on. The main ⁓ countries of continental Europe, the main powers, France and Germany, and Germany has a better chancellor these days, Chancellor Merck. But that’s like saying when it comes to continental Europe, they’re doing more than usual. That’s like being the best person, the best person in the physics department.

The Poles are spending 4.8 % on defense. The Baltics are doing that. But for all the talk, France and Germany would have to step up significantly, Great Britain as well, to substitute for American power. And literally, even if they had the inclination, and it’s a problem for us because we’ve neglected our defense industrial base.

Even if in a ⁓ perfect world they were motivated, they were stalwart, they wouldn’t be able to do what the Ukrainians need them to do in a time certain because they’ve so neglected national defense. That’s the best case scenario. And if you look at Europe’s history of taking on Russia without the United States, it does not inspire confidence.

I wonder seriously if Zelensky is even going to survive this because if he gives in, he’s going to be the symbol of defeat. If he fights on, he’s the defiant Harry Hotspur of ⁓ Henry IV Part II and Henry V. We put him in an impossible position and put Ukraine in an impossible position. Think of how demoralizing Ukrainians are going to feel today, not only with this peace plan that sounds like two Putin’s talking points, but ⁓

Man of Steele Productions

I was a little boy in the 80s, so, you know, you grow up with the Cold War, you watch the movies, you hear about that, people talk about the possibility of a nuclear holocaust, so you have the image of the Soviet Union as the evil empire. You have Reagan, all of that. And what’s fascinating is that some conservatives have taken to seeing Putin as perhaps one of them. It’s a real form of identity policy where they sort of identify Putin as the, I guess, white Christian who upholds the tradition. So my thing is, what’s fascinating is that by doing this sort of weird identification with Putin whether he probably, he’s a smart guy playing a role, he’s masking himself, he’s obviously covering up his evil, whatever you want him to be, he appears as that. And the irony here is that Russia started the war. And here, if Ukraine rejects this peace deal, Ukraine would be labelled as anti-peace. So it’s almost flipping the morality in a way.

Robert Kaufman

Yeah, you’re right, it’s Orwellian. I’m gonna challenge a few points.

One of the things that Putin has manipulated, one of the underlying things that reinforced Biden’s instinctive hesitation is true with Trump, is Putin’s serial threats of escalating to nuclear weapons. And one of the reasons that those bluffs, and they are bluffs, seem credible to the timid is that we’ve so neglected our national defense and nuclear capabilities. That we’ve allowed for the perception that the Russians have an advantage to us in theater and nuclear weapons because when they built, we didn’t. Again, we’re reaping the whirlwind of weakness. Also, Eli, during the Cold War, during the 70s, there were a lot of people who were deeply pessimistic, thought the United States finished, the Soviet Union on the rise.

And you mentioned the key number, the 1980s. It wasn’t just the Cold War that you remember so as such inspiration. You remember Ronald Reagan’s waging of it, where he defined it as a moral and geopolitical struggle, and he put relentless pressure on the Soviet Union across the board, economically, politically, militarily calling it an evil empire. There’s none of that moral clarity or strategic fortitude coming out of Washington right now. For people are Reagan internationalists, it was comforting to blame that just on Obama, Biden and the progressive left. They sure deserve plenty of blame. There are however, people now on the Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Kevin Roberts, wing of the Republican Party, very susceptible to this neo-isolationism and viewing foreign commitments as beyond our national interests and demonizing those who say that it is in our interest, morally and practically, to keep our enemies over there and support free peoples doing that, rather than wait until a hostile power or set of powers dominate Eurasia, which controls three quarters of the world’s landmass and two thirds of the world’s GDP.

This obsession, hemispheric defense is important, but hemispheric defense alone, even if you have the United States dominant without question in the Western Hemisphere, if China dominates the Indo-Pacific, that’s going to be the first step in Chinese global domination. And for those who think that that doesn’t matter, you should take a look at what’s happening to the Uyghurs, what’s happening in Hong Kong, Xi Jinping’s social index system, the totalitarian nature of the Chinese regime linking absolute tyranny with technology using AI and facial recognition literally to achieve something that George Orwell wrote about.

Hitler and Stalin aspired to achieve it, but the Chinese now have the technology to do it. And for those of you who think that the United States is gonna be prosperous and free in a world like that, ⁓ wouldn’t it be nice as the Beach Boys would say, but we will become a garrison state and we will not prevail on that type of conflict. This is ⁓ an...example of Ronald Reagan’s adage. Reagan, before he passed, said that we’ve learned from the two world wars and the Cold War that the United States has to be engaged in major geopolitical areas on the Asian rimlands, Japan, Western Europe, Great Britain, to prevent a hostile power from dominating because if we wait, we’re not going to be as lucky as we were the last time. As bad as World War II was, the technology was such that D-Day, the liberation of Europe, even after all our mistakes, was possible. You’re not going to be able to cross 3,000 or 4,000 miles of ocean in the Atlantic, 7,000 miles of ocean in the Pacific with hypersonic precision guided weapons, lasers, all sorts of other weapons. If we’re driven out of these places, Eli, we can’t come back. And if we can’t come back, we and freedom lose. This example of Churchill’s adage that they didn’t listen to him in the 30s. Doing more sooner saves much blood, toil, tears, and sweat later. In the case of Ukraine, what’s really doubly tragic is they’re doing all the fighting.

They’re not asking for American troops, nor did Israel. These are the allies you want, allies with shared values, allies who will fight, allies who fight effectively. If you look at the Cold War, my gosh, we’ve had a lot of allies who are incompetent. These are dream allies. These are even dream allies by the criteria of MAGA that we should put American resources first. Trump legitimately complains, and many presidents have, that our allies have not borne their fair share. That’s not true of Eastern Europe, but it’s true of Western Europe. And it’s true of even the more willing countries to arm in the Indo-Pacific during the Cold War. That bargain has to be renegotiated. But that’s different than casting your allies

What we want is to renegotiate. We now have two countries on our side in critical regions. Not only do they accept burden sharing, they’re willing to bear the burden and they know how to fight. Why would you give up countries like that for the counterfeit promise of Putin, Xi Jinping, or the Iranians that they mean peace when they behave for war? Why would you do that? And some of it is a moral evasion.

Keep in mind though, Eli, that during the Cold War, during the 80s, to give you at least some optimism that we can overcome this perversity, do you know that in Germany in the 80s, they did polling, Ronald Reagan was ⁓ unpopular in Germany compared to Gorbachev. Gorbachev, the man who tried to save communism, had a 70 % approval rating to Reagan’s. It’s the Patty Hearst syndrome of with your killer, or the party menacing you, your kidnapper, rather than the person who’s going to save you. In the annals of American history, go back to Abraham Lincoln, ingratitude is not an unusual response to moral confusion.

Keep in mind, that Winston Churchill, who saved Western civilization and did that, contrary to Tucker Clausen’s claim that Churchill’s the villain and Hitler’s the hero of World War II, what did the British electorate do with Churchill? As soon as the war was over, the man who saved them, they threw him out. This is human nature, but there is an element on the MAGA Right and also not just in the United States, Viktor Orban, Slovakia, that finds Putin’s nationalism, blood and soil, the Turkish dictator is another one appealing, and you’re not gonna preserve freedom unless you’re willing to defend it.

Man of Steele Productions

My last question is going to return and put the onus on America. In the last several years, we’ve had this phrase emerge, which is America First, or the latest iteration of America First. And it seems to me that this version of America First has some ideological constraints to it that could perhaps undermine the foreign policy in terms of, everything’s gotta be America first. We need to be isolationist, we need to be doing this and that. And Trump is sitting on top. I’m not saying that he’s America First himself, but he’s sitting on top of that party. So what is your view of this version of America First? And how is it affecting our foreign policy, our ability to see reality or behave rationally?

Robert Kaufman

Well, I’m for America first, but not America alone. Of course, it should be America first, but it’s not in our interest or consistent with our ideals for America to be alone. One of the problems with the America first movement, Charles Lindbergh’s version, that said, it doesn’t matter who wins World War II, we should stay out of it, he’s sympathetic to Hitler, is that’s not putting America First. That is actually imperiling America, because a world in which Hitler wins is gonna be a world that American freedom is gonna have a very difficult time surviving, along with America prosperity.

I think we have to emphasize is that if you want to win against this axis of tyranny with China in the lead, you want reliable allies. Now I use the adjective reliable. Trump and others have had a point that we’ve had freeloaders. Trump and others are right to say that the Germans and the French in particular have often worked as a constraint on what we ought to do. So Don Rumsfeld of Bush 43’s Secretary of Defense for the first six years, we need coalitions of the willing. Allies can’t substitute for American power. There’s no coalition that can stop China without the United States. But allies can certainly supplement it.

When you look at our struggles with China, Russia, Iran, if we realize that democracies don’t fight one another and we have, despite our differences, some shared interests and values that won’t be fought about on the nine out of the 10 strongest economies are democracies. Why would you cast that aside?

If you want to stop China, there’s one version who say, well, if we let Ukraine go, we can focus on China. That’s not what the East Asians think. Japanese and the Koreans who are supporting Ukraine, that if Ukraine goes down, it’s going to give Xi Jinping the idea that the United States lacks the will and the fortitude not only to defend its allies in but the Indo-Pacific. America alone, which is this version of America First, America alone, which is a rejection of the Declaration of Independence, where rights in here are in individuals. These America, this version, this Lindberghite Tucker Carlson version of America First, is indefinable to the Declaration of Independence. It’s more John Calhoun. It’s a blood and soil nationalism that is has a gravitational pull to demonize people who disagree with it. Not just they disagree with it, but the people who argue otherwise are working for someone else. This is the subtext of Tucker Carlson and Charles Lindbergh, that the Jews are not real Americans. They’re doing this for Israel.

The internationalists before World War II aren’t doing it for America. They’re bailing British chestnuts out of the fire. The people who advocate this nationalistic version of America alone, they’re not only bigots, they’re not only violating the Declaration of Independence guarantee that all of us are individuals, not identity politics. We’re individuals endowed by rights by our creator, Martin Luther King: We are individuals judged not by a category, but content of character. If we’re just going to be a just like everybody else, A, we’re betraying the American founding, B, we’re betraying the best of America, and C, it’s not only immoral, we’re gonna lose. That doesn’t mean there aren’t legitimate criticisms of access. ⁓ Reasonable people disagree, and you want people to disagree without demonizing them as your default position. There are demons.

But let’s start this discussion assuming that we are people of goodwill until proven otherwise. And the progressive left doesn’t do that. Mayor Mamdani doesn’t do that. Candace Owens doesn’t do that. Tucker Carlson doesn’t do that. And Barack Obama doesn’t do that. So how’s that? I’m going to get a holiday card from no one after this is over. ⁓ So be it.

God bless you, Christ.

Man of Steele Productions

Thank you very much again, Professor. Always a pleasure to talk to you.

Robert Kaufman

Pleasure to see you again. You are one of my pride and joys, one of the reasons when I ever get depressed that I went into an academic career, you’re a reason why it matters. So thank you for being who you are and giving me this opportunity. Happy Thanksgiving, Eli, and give my best to your parents.

Man of Steele Productions

Thank you, thank you.