The failure and waste of the Ukraine war is a sign of globalism’s impending demise. 

The Ukraine war is nearing its end, and with it, the American superpower and its bid for global hegemony may end as well. 

As of this writing in late March 2025, Russian forces have surrounded Ukrainian troops in Kursk Oblast in the Russian Federation. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s gamble on invading Russia and attempting to trade territory in peace talks has failed. U.S. President Donald Trump has appealed to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to spare their lives. Putin responded by saying that if the Ukrainian troops laid down their arms and surrendered, they would be treated as prisoners of war according to international norms.

As Trump himself put it to Zelensky, the Ukrainian president has no cards left to play. The game is up, and Russian forces are advancing on all fronts. There is no point in restarting military aid and the flow of intelligence to the Ukrainian side, as the Trump White House said it would, should Zelensky accept the Trump administration’s approach to talks with Russia. In a phone conversation with Trump, Putin agreed to a partial ceasefire—halting attacks on energy infrastructure for 30 days—but wanted more assurances that a broader agreement would be reached, an agreement that would address the core issues that started this war in the first place, including ruling out NATO membership for Ukraine. Putin further called for a halt to military and intelligence support of the Ukrainian side. 

Zelensky has executed yet another flip-flop in his position. After being admonished by both Trump and Vice President JD Vance at a White House meeting in February for his lack of gratitude and demands for yet more aid, Zelensky wrote a letter to Trump insisting that he would work under the president’s leadership to end the war. As I write, however, no ceasefire has taken place. The two sides are exchanging drone and missile strikes. Zelensky, speaking in Helsinki, said Ukraine would never agree to relinquish territories annexed by Russia, including Crimea, and reiterated his demands for more U.S. and European aid, demands that will only prolong the war. 

Russia will never agree to return those territories. Indeed, polling in Russia by the Levada Center, considered a reliable polling firm by Russia watchers, has consistently shown that while the majority of respondents want peace, they do not want peace at any price. Russian poll respondents agreed that the annexed territories, which the Russian army paid a heavy price for, should remain Russian. 

Zelensky is calling for security guarantees for Ukraine, guarantees that the Trump White House does not want to give. I believe that Trump’s insistence on a rare earth metals deal with Ukraine, while simultaneously probing possible business cooperation with Russia, was meant as a substitute for military guarantees. Trump apparently believes that the presence of U.S. companies in Ukraine developing natural resources, while cultivating mutually profitable deals with Russia, would provide economic incentives for both sides to keep the peace. 

In any case, NATO appears to be moribund. The Trump administration, including the president himself, has made it clear that it does not see Ukraine joining NATO. The United States wants to end the Ukraine war and avoid a clash with nuclear superpower Russia. European leaders, led by French President Emmanuel Macron, have not yet been able to agree on forging a European peacekeeping force to send to Ukraine, a “coalition of the willing” that would not formally involve NATO and that would provide a security guarantee for the Ukrainians.

For their part, the Russians reject the presence of any foreign troops in Ukraine. And a number of EU states have refused to participate in a “coalition of the willing” if it means sending their own troops to Ukraine. Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni has opposed sending a peacekeeping force at all. Poland is going its own way, seeking a tighter bilateral security relationship with the United States, while Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has alluded to opting out of NATO in the recent past, and has not participated in European support for Ukraine. The Trump administration has repeatedly stated that Europe should take on more responsibility for its own defense. 

The wild card in this game is the Ukrainian hard-liners. There has been talk of a coup against Zelensky if he agrees to any deal with the Russians or shows any inclination to do so. The hard-line nationalists have threatened Zelensky’s position and his life in the past and appear to hold political veto power over Zelensky’s administration. A hard-liner coup would, to say the least, upend the entire process of probing for a ceasefire and a potential peace deal. 

According to Professor Nicolai Petro, author of The Tragedy of Ukraine, Ukraine remains a deeply divided country. The parties that represented the pro-Russian areas of the country have been renamed to avoid persecution, but even today they command substantial support in Ukrainian society. The Ukrainian army could be a political force of its own. As Petro notes, the war has glossed over many of the social and political fissures within the country, but they will reemerge if the war ends. As a result, Zelensky may wish to prolong the war in order to preserve a modicum of political stability, as well as his own position and safety. 

In a YouTube interview with Norwegian political science professor Glenn Diesen, author of The Ukraine War & the Eurasian World Order, Petro further commented that the most successful unifying political program in Ukraine over the last 10 to 15 years has been a peace policy. Peace at home. Peace with Russia. Zelensky himself ran as a peace candidate in 2019 and has thus been viewed as a questionable leader by the nationalists. So far, no unifying figure espousing those goals who could replace Zelensky has emerged—though the Trump administration has reportedly been speaking to his political opposition. 

At the beginning of this war in February 2022, it was clear to me that Putin had no territorial ambitions beyond Crimea. The armored force that invaded Ukraine and headed for the capital in Kyiv was meant to shake up Zelensky and force him to terms. Those terms included autonomy for the pro-Russian Donbass, where fighting had been going on between the Ukrainian armed forces and pro-Russian rebels since shortly after the 2014 Maidan Revolution, protections for ethnic Russians and Russian speakers, and a neutral Ukraine. 

Putin did not want this war. He had been probing for a security deal with the West for almost 20 years. The West reportedly discouraged Zelensky from seeking a peace deal in 2022 based on the talks that took place at that time in Istanbul. In fact, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel publicly admitted that the Minsk agreements signed earlier by the Ukrainian government, European leaders, and Russia regarding the fate of the rebellious Donbass regions were only meant to buy time for Ukrainians to continue the fight. 

The Western public seems completely unaware that one of the main reasons Putin decided to invade Ukraine was that Ukrainian armed forces appeared to be ready to renew the assault on the pro-Russian regions in the Donbass. Or that the Maidan Revolution in Kyiv in 2014 was backed by the West, especially the United States, intent on overthrowing a Russia-friendly government. 

At the time of Maidan, I was a contract Russia specialist and intelligence analyst working for the CIA. When Russia annexed Crimea, seeing the base for its Black Sea fleet potentially threatened, I asked just what the Obama administration had expected would happen under such circumstances. It soon dawned on me that a sharp Russian reaction was exactly what Obama’s foreign policy hands expected and wanted. The globalists were in the grip of a fantasy about using a war between Russia and Ukraine as a vehicle to overthrow Putin. The bloody, costly, unnecessary Russo-Ukrainian conflict was the result. 

We should also not forget the repeated broken promises of the West about not expanding NATO eastward as the Cold War drew to a close. Then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was told in 1990 by then-U.S. Secretary of State James Baker that NATO military structures would not advance toward Russia’s borders following the German reunification. Gorbachev did not get anything in writing, though he later complained that NATO expansion was a violation of the assurances he was given at the time. 

In 1994, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher told Russian President Boris Yeltsin that Washington would not support bringing new members into the alliance. Yet the inclusion of new NATO members went ahead anyway. 

In 1997, no less a figure than George Kennan, considered the author of the U.S. Cold War containment policy, called NATO expansion a “fateful error” that would “inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western, and militaristic tendencies” in Russia, reviving a new Cold War that was unnecessary and dangerous. And that is exactly what has happened.

So, where are we at this point? No matter what, this is not our war. The Trump administration’s priority appears to be, and should be, disentangling the United States from Ukraine and re-establishing normal relations with Russia. If this happens, the U.S. could negotiate matters of interest with Russia—strategic arms reductions, for example—even if the ceasefire does not take place and peace talks drag out. Independent of what happens in this war, avoiding a clash with a nuclear superpower is the goal. 

Time and again, the Trump administration has stated that Europe should take on more responsibility for its own defense and its role in the Ukraine crisis. That’s as it should be. Ukraine is not of vital interest to the United States. Nor is Putin’s Russia going to invade Europe. It has neither the capability nor desire to do so. At this time, it appears that Putin would be willing to halt the Russian advance if the West were to acknowledge Donbass’s two regions, Lugansk and Donetsk, and Crimea, as well as the Zaporizhia and Kherson Oblast, as Russian.

That would mean the complete withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from those regions. And if not? It’s conceivable that Russia would continue its advance and take Odessa as well, completing the conquest of what Moscow considers historically Russian territories in Southern and Eastern Ukraine. That would leave Central and Western Ukraine intact. 

Putin undoubtedly wants Zelensky to depart the scene. At the end of March, he even proposed instituting temporary “external management” of Ukraine by the United Nations so that a new presidential election could be held. Zelensky called off elections when he declared martial law following the Russian invasion, leading the Russians, and Trump, to question his legitimacy. It appears that the Russians will hold out, aiming to sign a peace agreement with a Zelensky successor. 

The Russian president has repeatedly stated his willingness to re-establish relations with the U.S. He has even stated that at some point he might be willing to consider Trump’s recent extraordinary proposal for the U.S., Russia, and China to eventually cut military spending by half. It’s also high time to consider what the Russians probably want to discuss with the European powers—a restructuring of European security arrangements that takes Russian interests into account. It does not appear that the Europeans are ready for that just now, but eventually, it’s a subject that must be broached. 

Regarding Ukraine, it struck me early on in the crisis that a Ukraine without the Donbass and Crimea would be a more coherent and viable state than the loosely knit entity, one patched together by the Soviets, that emerged after the Soviet collapse. Ukraine would be more Ukrainian. Kyiv’s trying to hold on to a recalcitrant Donbass after a bitter war would be counterproductive and only breed more animosity. 

The deep hatred the hard-liners in Ukraine have for Russia has fueled their determination to keep this war going. They seem willing to sacrifice the welfare of their country and its future to get back at the Russians. I do not believe that the Ukrainian majority wants that, but Ukrainians will have to work out the country’s future among themselves. It is not an American responsibility, and it is not within the capabilities of any American administration, nor is it moral or sensible, to micro-manage other states and to decide the fate of regimes around the world. It is not even possible to truly understand what is happening in the far corners of the earth. 

If I learned anything in the decades I spent in the intelligence community, it was that hubris and arrogance that came along with being the world’s sole superpower meant the end of anything like an America I knew and loved. Superpower imperatives relegated the welfare, lives, and treasure of our people to a distant place on the global empire’s list of priorities. The great game of establishing an American superpower’s global hegemony came first. 

If I learned anything in the decades I spent in the intelligence community, it was that hubris and superpower arrogance meant the end of anything like an America I knew and loved. Superpower imperatives relegated the welfare, lives, and treasure of our people to a distant place on the global empire’s list of priorities. The great game of establishing an American superpower’s global hegemony came first.

Seeking a balance of power among the world’s major players makes far more sense. Foreign policy realism is preferable to ideological crusading. But realism, as I understand it, has its limitations as well. Realism assumes constant tensions and conflicts among the great powers and, I think, can encourage policymakers to think of the world as a great chessboard on which they move the pieces in a far-reaching game.

It’s an addictive game, even without globalism. I have some personal experience with how stimulating that game can be, even for the lower- and mid-level players. The chief question for anyone taking part in foreign policy-related matters is quite simple, “What’s good for America?” We also need to redefine what “vital interests” are and what “national security” means to us. America has been declining from within, overwhelmed by mass immigration, the collapse of marriage, de-industrialization, bloated bureaucracy, and the spiritual malaise endemic in a post-modern technocracy. Those are national security issues at the most fundamental level and should be treated as such. 

If America First means anything, it is the focusing of our efforts and resources on ending the erosion of our country from within. It’s time to cash in on the “peace dividend” we fleetingly heard about at the end of the Cold War over 30 years ago. The Ukraine war has been a major failure for globalism and a terrible waste of energy, money, and human lives. Let’s hope it is a sign of globalism’s impending demise. 

The Trump administration is actively dismantling the administrative state at home and attempting to clean house in the intelligence and security agencies, the “deep state.” We have a window of opportunity available to us to reset priorities and truly make America great again by aiming for a revival that is healthier spiritually, economically, and socially. Whether Trump himself fully realizes it or not, he is headed toward ending the hegemonic American superpower. And thank God for it. He instinctively sees the world as an array of players that he can and should deal with. 

For decades, establishment figures told us that our goal was world peace, but my lifetime has seen little but war. The globalists waved the flag at us, and we charged at any target they designated as an enemy. They told us that we were “defending our freedom,” even as the managerial state eroded our freedoms at home. Trump, as inconsistent as he may be in these matters, is undertaking a “regime change” of sorts at home. I wish him success and hope for a Trump successor who can expand and consistently apply an America First policy at home and abroad.