Is President Donald Trump "coddl[ing] dictators"? That was what Joe Biden said when Trump met with North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un during the first Trump administration. And Democrats have begun rolling out the same lines of attack in response to Trump's summit last week with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska.
"The fact that this meeting even took place—at the invitation of President Trump, on American soil, without Ukraine present, and with zero concessions from Russia—is an undeserved reward for Putin, who has continued to bomb Ukrainian schools and hospitals, abduct Ukrainian children, and refuse to negotiate meaningfully about an end to the horrific war he started," House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Gregory Meeks (D–N.Y.) declared. "By quite literally rolling out the red carpet, Trump has legitimized Russia's aggression and whitewashed Putin's war crimes."
In other words, Democratic critics are treating the very existence of contacts between leaders as a surrender. And by doing so, they're boxing themselves into a dangerous, pro-war position. Of course, diplomacy should be judged by its results; both the North Korean outreach and the Anchorage summit were inconclusive. But if the president can't even deign to talk to foreign rivals, then it becomes impossible to avoid or end violent conflict.
The North Korean case was particularly illustrative. Although it's easy to forget now, the risk of a nuclear war felt very real in 2017. North Korea was testing missiles capable of hitting American soil, and the U.S. military was massing forces on the Korean peninsula, as Trump advisers called for a first strike. While the meetings between Trump and Kim didn't convince North Korea to "denuclearize"—probably an impossible demand to begin with—they did cool down the situation enough to avoid an immediate conflict.
And in other cases, the Democratic criticism was incoherent on its own terms. During the first Trump administration, Biden attacked Trump for bringing the U.S. to "the brink of a major conflict across the Middle East." Then, during the 2024 election, Biden's successor Kamala Harris attacked Trump for not escalating more against Iran. After Trump bombed Iran earlier this year, Democrats had a confused and muddled response.
Some Democrats believe that their party should stop trying to out-hawk Republicans in general. House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith (D–Wash.) declared earlier this year that Democrats should "much more aggressively embrace diplomacy," particularly with Russia, and avoid being painted as warmongers.
In the run-up to the Anchorage summit, Smith told NewsNation that "I don't think it's particularly bad that they have the conversation. What's bad, to date, is that President Trump has not shown, I think, the unity behind Ukraine to really put pressure on Putin." After the summit, he called it "very disappointing" that Trump moved away from his demand for an immediate ceasefire.
Indeed, Trump told reporters on Monday that "I don't think you'd need a ceasefire" because "we're working on a peace deal while they're fighting" and "we're not talking about a two-year peace and then we end up in this mess again."
The offer that appears to be on the table is a land-for-peace swap between Russia and Ukraine. Putin reportedly offered to withdraw from the Ukrainian border regions of Sumy and Kharkiv in exchange for Ukraine giving up the rest of Donetsk Oblast, which Russia claims as its own. According to The Times, the Trump administration has discussed a way for Ukraine to give up Donetsk without formally letting Russia annex it: putting it under an autonomous administration modeled off the Palestinian Authority under Israeli control.
U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff also said after the summit that Putin agreed that Ukraine could have international security guarantees. Sources who spoke to Reuters were more cautious, stating that Putin wanted Ukraine to be barred from NATO but seemed "open to Ukraine receiving some kind of security guarantees." An adviser to Trump told Axios that the guarantees might include U.S. troops in Ukraine.
These are all very serious issues worthy of public debate, particularly the prospect of putting American peacekeepers in another conflict zone. That's exactly why the debate cannot stop at Meeks' complaints about "rolling out the red carpet" for Putin. There may be better or worse strategies to end the war—but refusing to talk is no strategy at all.
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