There are moments in American history when the actions of a few reveal the moral stakes for the entire nation. We are in one of those moments now. The story that Heather Cox Richardson has outlined over the past two days is not simply another troubling episode in the long record of Donald Trump’s accommodation of Vladimir Putin. It is something far more dangerous. It is an attempt by private actors, acting outside formal channels, to redraw the map of Europe for the benefit of a foreign dictator and for their own financial gain. Even worse, it is being met with silence from men and women in Congress who once claimed to believe that defending democracy abroad was central to American security.
We have seen this pattern before. It was there in the 1930s, when some in the United States believed they could negotiate with fascist leaders in Europe. It was there in the 1970s, when business elites convinced themselves that economic opportunity in authoritarian states outweighed moral concerns. It has appeared in every era when the United States has flirted with the idea that profit or domestic political advantage is more important than principle. Those episodes have never ended well. And this one will not either.
Richardson’s November 28 analysis lays out the basics. A twenty-eight point “peace plan,” reportedly drafted not by diplomats or national security officials but by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, real estate developer Steve Witkoff, unknown Russians and private figures, would require Ukraine to surrender large portions of its sovereign territory to Russia, accept permanent limits on its military, and forswear future membership in NATO.¹ There is no moral universe in which this is a peace plan. It is an instrument of capitulation. It would reward Russia for unleashing the largest land war in Europe since Adolf Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.
Richardson’s November 29 piece takes the story further, exposing the network of private interests tied to this proposal. Kushner, who secured billions in foreign investment from autocratic states after leaving office, and Witkoff, whose own financial dealings reach into Russia and the Gulf, are not working for a just peace. Their track record shows something else: a willingness to blur the lines between public purpose and private opportunity.² When American foreign policy becomes a vehicle for the enrichment of a small circle of insiders, democratic legitimacy dies a little.
History teaches us what happens when aggression is rewarded. When the world allowed fascist Italy to seize Ethiopia in 1936, it emboldened Hitler. When Hitler annexed the Sudetenland in 1938 and the Western democracies looked away, he concluded — correctly — that the international system was unwilling to defend the sovereignty of smaller nations. That path led directly to World War Two. The idea that any stable or lasting peace can come from awarding Vladimir Putin territory he seized by force is a deadly illusion.
Putin’s ambitions are not confined to Crimea or the Donbas. They reflect a larger project — the restoration of an imperial sphere of influence across Eastern Europe. A plan that validates these ambitions does not prevent future wars. It guarantees them. Ukraine is not the end point of Putin’s vision; it is merely the beginning.
The United States once understood this. For decades after the war, American foreign policy rested on the belief that territorial conquest could never be allowed to stand. Republican and Democratic administrations alike defended the principle that international borders are not bargaining chips. That principle kept Europe stable. It contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union. It strengthened a rules-based order that protected not only Europe’s freedom but our own.
Now we stand on the verge of abandoning that principle, not because it has failed, but because it conflicts with the personal and financial interests of a president and his circle.
What is most disturbing is the response of Congress. Or rather, the lack of one. For years, Republican lawmakers called themselves the party of national security. They rallied behind Ronald Reagan’s insistence that the United States must stand firm against autocrats who threaten global freedom. They spoke with righteous certainty about the dangers posed by Putin. Some of them sat in classified briefings where intelligence officials laid out the depths of Russian interference in our own political system.
Yet today, many of those same lawmakers stand silent as an American political figure offers Putin what he has long demanded. Their silence is not caution. It is abdication. They know perfectly well what this proposal would mean. They know that accepting Russian conquest would destabilize Europe for a generation. They know that it would signal weakness to every nation that watches how the United States responds to aggression.
The truth is that some of these so-called hawks were never guided by principle. They were guided by fear of Trump’s political power. But Trump’s political power is no longer what it once was. His legal exposure is growing. His coalition is shrinking. Voters who once saw him as an outsider now see a man surrounded by oligarchs and profiteers. If there was ever a time for congressional Republicans to rediscover their backbone, it is now.
A Congress that understood its responsibilities would do several things immediately. First, it would hold hearings on who drafted this plan, how it circulated, and what financial interests might stand to gain from it. Second, it would pass legislation reaffirming U.S. support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and prohibiting the executive branch from recognizing any Russian annexation that Ukraine does not accept. Third, it would increase oversight of private influence in foreign policymaking, including the use of back channels by politically connected individuals.
The United States cannot afford to let its foreign policy be shaped by those who see authoritarian regimes as business partners. And it cannot allow the map of Europe to be redrawn in secret meetings among private emissaries.
If we accept this plan, we accept a world in which the sovereignty of small nations depends on the whims of powerful men. We accept the idea that democracy is negotiable. We accept a principle that the United States has rejected for eighty years: that might makes right.
What Trump is proposing, and what his surrogates are attempting to normalize, is not just a betrayal of Ukraine. It is a betrayal of the entire post-war world that the United States helped build. It is a surrender of American leadership. It is a message to every dictator that the United States has lost its capacity for moral judgment. And it is a signal to our allies that our commitments can be erased if they conflict with the financial interests of those closest to power.
There will be moments, years from now, when historians will look back at this period and ask what the United States did when faced with a clear attempt by a leader to deliver another nation to an aggressor. They will look at whether we stood firm or whether we let fear and complacency guide us. They will judge whether Congress defended the principles that define us or whether it surrendered them for political convenience.
The world remembers who stands for democracy. It remembers who stands for autocrats. And history has a long memory.
This is the moment for Congress to choose. The moral lines could not be clearer. The stakes could not be higher. And the consequences of silence could not be more grave.
