President Trump is making an aggressive push to bring the almost-four-year-old Ukraine war to a negotiated settlement. And Atlanticist hawks on both sides of the pond are doing all they can to thwart him. First came baseless claims that the peace deal was the product of one faction in the administration (led by Vice President JD Vance) and opposed by another (led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio).

Now comes a leaked recording, reported by Bloomberg, in which peace envoy Steve Witkoff is heard conferring with a Russian counterpart. “I know what it’s going to take to get a peace deal done,” Witkoff told a top Kremlin foreign-policy aide. “Donetsk and maybe a land swap somewhere. But I’m saying instead of talking like that, let’s talk more hopefully because I think we’re going to get to a deal here.”

Cue the overheated rhetoric from Capitol Hill, with congressional Republicans leading much of the charge. The recording is proof that “these ridiculous side shows and secret meetings need to stop,” said Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.). Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), meanwhile, characterised Witkoff as an “actual traitor” who serves Moscow.

Let’s be adults here. Holding secret negotiations is pretty much part of Witkoff’s job description. Negotiated peace settlements rarely occur without some element of secrecy, from the Paris peace talks that ended the Revolutionary War to the negotiations at Ghent that concluded the War of 1812.

Would the Nixon administration have been able to end the Vietnam War if held to the trial-by-social-media standards of today? Richard Nixon authorised secret negotiations with North Vietnamese soon after his first election, carried out by Henry Kissinger. Meanwhile, it’s only a slight exaggeration to say that under Ronald Reagan, secret negotiations were practically the only kind that mattered to Washington.

Witkoff’s alleged advice to a foreign country is also not without precedent. American negotiators in 1812, for instance, advised their British counterparts on the US’s domestic red lines. Fast-forward two centuries, and in 2012 Barack Obama told then-Russian President Dmitri Medvedev that he would have “more flexibility” to make deals once re-elected.

The truth is that Ukraine cannot win this war. It lacks the demographic and industrial capacity to overcome a country with a much larger population and industrial base. The onus is on the Euro-hawks and DC Atlanticists to explain why one more round of sanctions, or the transfer of this or that fancy weapons system, will change this fundamental dynamic. They can’t. These interventions will only prolong suffering, deepen economic strain across Europe, and make a negotiated settlement ever more elusive.

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Sohrab Ahmari is the US editor of UnHerd and the author, most recently, of Tyranny, Inc: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty — and What To Do About It

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