On the eve of Donald Trump’s second inauguration, we would do well to pay close attention to what he has said, over and over again about foreign policy — and not the words put in his mouth by others, frequently card-carrying members of the globalist foreign policy blob. Make America Great Again has a distinct foreign and national security policy component. Trump’s “America First” agenda has never meant the isolationism imputed to it by the globalist foreign policy establishment. He made this clear in his first administration, in important policy addresses, such as his famous Warsaw speech on July 6, 2017, a speech I’ve commended to American Spectator readers on more than one occasion.

His message then — and the message he continues to send, be it with respect to hemispheric security — think Greenland and the Panama Canal — or with his position toward China and Iran, is that the U.S. should always be “first” among nations, respectful of others who share our views, insistent that our support be matched by a willingness on the part of allies to do their fair share. Thus, Trump’s appreciation of the military spending efforts of NATO’s eastern European “front line states” and his abiding contempt for the continued underperformance of, for example, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom.

Trump respects those who respect themselves, who stand up for themselves, and he wants them to stand alongside us. Moreover, he understands that these are the only allies worth having in a world where others, notably China, wish to consign U.S. leadership to the “dustbin of history.” This vision also embraces the position he’s taken on the war in Ukraine. In his Warsaw speech, referencing the hybrid war Russia had initiated in Ukraine in 2014, he urged “Russia to cease its destabilizing activities in Ukraine.”

Throughout his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump focused on the tragic aspects of the Ukraine war, and insisted that finding peace was one of his highest priorities — which, by the way, is how his “peace plan on Day One” rhetoric should have always been read. Trump clearly wants the war to end, and he very much wants to succeed as a peacemaker — something very different, by the way, from simply being perceived as a peacemaker, as Obama and Biden have been wont to do. For Trump, the model remains the ”Abraham Accords,” an agreement of substance upon which lasting peace can be built, in sharp contrast to the performative emptiness of Obama’s Iran nuclear deal.

Bringing Ukraine to the peace table will be relatively easy, partly because U.S. leverage over Ukraine is obviously greater, but mainly because Ukrainian goals are more clear cut — end the fighting in a manner that minimizes Russian possession of its ill-gotten gains, accompanied by sustained support for a Ukrainian military capable of deterring a repeat invasion whenever it suits Putin’s purposes.

Persuading Russia to enter meaningful peace talks will be more complicated. Russia’s willingness to negotiate ebbs and flows, increasing with every military setback, declining with every Russian battlefield success. Moreover — and despite what many Putin apologists would have us believe — Russia’s war aims have always been expansive. Ridding Ukraine of “Nazis,” installing a puppet government in Kyiv, incorporating so-called “Russian” territories outright, eliminating the “NATO threat” — these are the terms upon which Putin has sold three years of national sacrifice to the Russian people.

Peace negotiations — genuine negotiations, not simply an enforced Ukrainian capitulation — require convincing Putin that continuing the war through 2025 comes at a price he can no longer expect to pay. As the new Trump team understands, the U.S. controls part — but only part — of the value proposition involved here, namely letting Putin know that, if he fails to enter negotiations, we will ramp up our military aid to Ukraine and remove some or all of the incoherent restrictions placed by Biden on the weaponry we have supplied.

Still, the larger portion of this leverage depends upon the continued staying power of the Ukrainian nation, and specifically its armed forces. Ukraine has suffered grievously. Many Western “experts” now assume that the Ukrainians can’t possibly stay the course against their much larger and richer neighbor, particularly since the restrictions placed by Biden on the use of long-range weaponry have meant that Ukraine has suffered disproportionate damage, forced to take repeated body blows without inflicting the same in return.

But I don’t trust these “experts,” many of whom have little or no time on the ground in Ukraine and little engagement with actual Ukrainians. Moreover, more than a few are slaves to the ever changing journalistic narratives, more attuned to each other than to what is actually happening in Ukraine. Some have become the handmaidens of the Russian propaganda machine. And some, sadly, have simply become bored as the war grinds into its third year. Events in Ukraine no longer move the news cycle in the Western press the way they once did.

Instead, I’ve turned to the son of a trusted friend and former national security colleague, a young(ish) man who has spent many months going back and forth to Ukraine as a private citizen. With both prior military experience and significant electronics expertise, he’s worked closely with his Ukrainian counterparts in weapons development and, in turn, learned much from them that could well inform a new generation of U.S. drone and counter-drone technology. We forget, after all, that the process of military assistance hasn’t simply flown in one direction — forced to improvise from the very beginning, the Ukrainians have refined vital new technologies in the crucible of battle, something many in the U.S. military still fail to understand.

My young friend has been across the length and breadth of Ukraine, and not simply in the rear areas — he’s spent many weeks under fire in the front lines. Unlike so many so-called “war correspondents,” his conclusions are informed by much more than conducted PR tours to safe areas or gossip between journalists in hotel bars. His is a unique and valuable perspective.

My first question to him concerned Ukrainian staying power, specifically the willingness of the ordinary Ukrainian, military or civilian, to go on fighting. He readily acknowledges that Ukraine has suffered mightily since the war began; he’s seen much of the damage first-hand. Do they long for peace? Absolutely, and none more so than the troops fighting in the front lines and the civilians driven from devastated towns and villages. But they have also experienced the Russian contempt for human life, both the contempt expressed in atrocities wantonly committed and the contempt with which Russian commanders expend the lives of their own soldiers.

So their longing for peace is tempered by an understanding of just what is at stake for themselves and their families. No one wants a peace that leaves them under Putin’s boot. The fruit of an unjust peace will be a guerilla war in Ukraine that will make the Russian experience in Chechnya and Afghanistan pale in comparison

This dedication — this will to fight on as the war goes forward — is the single most important element in the peace calculation. Ukrainians remain ready to endure, and have a measured contempt for the few among them who now speak in terms of giving up the fight. But this is not just a matter of will, decisive as that may be. My young friend also explains that the Ukrainians have become more effective and efficient in their approach to warfighting.

Take drones, for example. Early in the war, these were used mainly for reconnaissance and deployed in limited numbers. Now highly agile attack drones have been deployed in vast numbers by Ukraine, operated by veteran pilots immensely skilled in their use. Earlier, these drones might have been husbanded for employment against high value hardware, vehicles, weapons systems, or supply dumps. Now the Ukrainians are even using them to target individual Russian soldiers, a form of sniper warfare hitherto unimagined by Western armies.

And in this, and in other innovations, Ukraine’s warfighters have exacted — and continue to exact — a massive toll in killed or wounded Russians. Which brings us to most important factor in judging the “ground truth” as the war enters year three. While the Russian population is three times that of Ukraine, all the easy sources of military personnel have already been tapped out, and this is something that North Korean volunteers cannot redress given their horrendous casualty rates.

For the Russians to continue the war, at its present scale, for another year or more, means reaching deeply into the Russian working and middle classes. Putin has worked very hard to leave these groups relatively untouched, but as their sons go off to war, his current insistence that peace can only happen on his terms may change very quickly. Herein lies the real opening for Donald Trump in his efforts to bring about a negotiated settlement.

So let’s not indulge the hubris of our foreign policy “experts.” Cut off aid, and the war will not end. The only way to bring it to an end is by making it clear that Ukraine can count on our support at a level sufficient to force Putin to make hard choices, through continued economic sanctions on Russia, continued humanitarian assistance, and, above all, a sustained level of military aid sufficient to deny the invaders their objectives.

This doesn’t require unreasonable expenditure, unless one assumes, with the Russian trolls, that any support for Ukraine is unwarranted. The widely-accepted figure for U.S. military aid to date is around $65 billion. During the years of the Ukraine war, the U.S. has spent roughly the same amount on Halloween and Valentine’s Day. Surely deterring aggression and sending a signal of seriousness to China, Iran, and North Korea matters more than inflatable witches, plastic pumpkins, and Hallmark cards.

Don’t get me started about student loan “forgiveness,” and don’t pretend that aid for hurricane or wildfire victims versus military assistance to Ukraine is a zero-sum game — not when California has wasted billions on a high speed rail project that remains unbuilt and the billions appropriated for building EV chargers remain unused. Further, don’t pretend that this is the slippery slope leading to American “boots on the ground.” My young friend was very clear about this — the Ukrainians neither need nor want American combat troops.

The stakes for the U.S. couldn’t be higher. A recent study, “The Geopolitical Consequences of Ukraine’s Defeat,” has received wide circulation in the national security community, and deservedly so. I recommend it strongly, above all for its discussion of the implications for the U.S. ability to deter China’s ambitions in the Indo-Pacific, something too often ignored by those who hang their foreign policy priorities on a “pivot” to China.

The incoming Trump national security team clearly understands this. Our goal in Ukraine must be a genuine peace, not merely a sham and prelude to yet another conflict. Moreover, it’s clear that their goal is getting it right. The campaign rhetoric of a plan “on day one” has given way, more realistically, to “the first hundred days.” Clearly, the new administration takes this seriously, and means to get it right. President Trump’s most important national security promise has been “peace through strength.” Let this start with Ukraine.

READ MORE from James H. McGee:

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James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a national security and counter-terrorism professional, working primarily in the nuclear security field. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. His recent novel, Letter of Reprisal, tells the tale of a desperate mission to destroy a Chinese bioweapon facility hidden in the heart of the central African conflict region. A forthcoming sequel finds the Reprisal team fighting against terrorists who’ve infiltrated our southern border in a conspiracy that ranges across the globe. You can find Letter of Reprisal on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback editions, and on Kindle Unlimited.