Kryptonite

As the Trump Administration proposes uncomfortable compromises to end the Ukraine War, Americans are asked: what kind of country do we wish to be?

On November 18, the news website Axios leaked news that certainly shocked the world. The Trump Administration had been negotiating a final, binding peace agreement to end the nearly four-year-long war that has not only devastated Ukraine but also damaged Russia’s critical oil infrastructure and remilitarized the now deeply hostile relationship between Russia and Europe. Two days later, Axios followed up with another bombshell by publishing a full list of the 28-point peace plan. This plan, negotiated by Trump associates Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner together with Russian officials and claimed by the president himself as a mere starting point to a more comprehensive settlement, contained several provisions highly favorable to Ukraine, especially Point 5, which ensures Ukraine receives a robust security guarantee akin to NATO’s own famous Article 5, a longstanding Ukrainian demand. However, there were several provisions which for Ukraine are not merely frustrating, but unacceptable non-starters.

And with this plan, and Trump’s peace initiatives in general, public opinion has coalesced into completely opposing camps.

Munich all over again?

For those in both the United States and Europe who have resolutely supported the Ukrainian cause, whether from day one of the invasion in 2022 or even since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, most of the 28 points were heretical. Chief among them was Point 21, which would not only codify Russian sovereignty over the lands they already control (a diplomatic taboo dating from the ill-fated 1938 Munich Agreement), it would also require Ukraine to withdraw entirely from the heavily fortified Donetsk Oblast. One harsh critic of this concession is Republican Congressman Don Bacon from Nebraska. Bacon, a 30-year US Air Force veteran who retired with the rank of brigadier general in 2014, is one of the many legislators calling it quits from an institution, once deeply respected, that has essentially functioned for the past year as an appendage of the White House. And if one considers the deluge of death threats, and the tragic fate of Charlie Kirk, no wonder Bacon and others have had enough. I would too.

Upon first learning of the 28-point peace plan, Bacon, a staunch military hawk and self-described “Reagan Republican”, was outraged— so outraged that he briefly considered quitting Congress entirely before his term ends in 2027. Attacking the proposed peace agreement as the “Witkoff Ukrainian Surrender Plan,” Bacon ultimately backed off his threat to resign out of his self-professed duty to the constituents of Nebraska’s 2^nd district, which includes most of Omaha, while airing his grievances with House Speaker Mike Johnson. During an appearance on the ABC program “This Week,” Bacon again condemned the Trump-Witkoff-Kushner peace plan: “We need moral clarity dealing with Putin. He does not want a peace agreement with Ukraine that leaves Ukraine a sovereign country, that can be allied with the West, that can be part of the EU and free markets. He wants to control another third of Ukraine. He would like to make Ukraine a vassal state. So I don’t know why the administration keeps pursuing the pointless here.”

I am quite aware that many of my most loyal readers are among Don Bacon’s constituents, so I look forward to hearing your Cornhusker opinions to the 28-point plan. While Trump supporters insist, with good reason, that circumstances have changed since Ronald Reagan’s presidency, it’s clear that the Republican Party of 2025 is not the Republican Party of 1985.

Sharp attacks on the 28-point peace plan have also sprung up across the Atlantic Ocean— no surprise considering Europe’s uncomfortable geography vis a vis a revanchist Russia, and European governments’ uncompromising, sometimes even to their own detriment, support of Volodymyr Zelensky’s embattled government. In the conservative British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, for example, commentator David Blair called the plan a “recurring nightmare,” warning that “if (Russian President Vladimir) Putin is given a large measure of what he wants, he will inevitably come back for more and launch yet another blood-soaked invasion in the years ahead.” Likewise, Dagens Nyheter, the most prestigious Swedish legacy media publication, held nothing back: “Another word for this is ‘capitulation.’ Vladimir Putin won’t be allowed to devour the entire country in one go, but he is being given a large bite, and everything is being done to ensure that the rest can be swallowed very soon. It’s a disgrace that the US can negotiate like this at all.”

I took it upon myself to reach out to my friends and contacts in Eastern Europe, Polish, Ukrainian, and Lithuanian, since they likely have a far better idea of the conflict than Americans ever will. Unsurprisingly, the Ukrainians I reached out to were resolutely opposed. One called the 28-point peace plan “capitulation dressed up as a deal” that “looked more like a high-school political science paper from a student who just discovered where Ukraine is on the map.” He urged our leaders to “see the long-term picture, understand history and the cost of freedom, and not treat a major war in Europe as just another transaction to manage with a quick deal.” Another described the plan as a “profound humiliation for Ukraine and destabilizing given the sacrifices made to defend this land.” The Lithuanian was equally harsh. He accused the Trump Administration of “reluctance to defend our ally (that) will embolden Russia to recrate its former sphere of influence not only over the rest of Ukraine, but Moldova, Georgia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia as well.”

As an American, a citizen of the country I have always been taught always stood up for, in the words of a Mr. Clark Kent, Truth, Justice, and the American Way, the Trump Administration’s approach to the Ukraine conflict feels so… out of character. After all, even if Russia felt legitimately threatened by NATO, President Vladimir Putin made the conscious decision to occupy and take over Ukraine through unilateral military force. Aren’t we, as the most powerful nation on the planet, supposed to stand up for the victim? Haven’t we always drawn a clear line in the sand at tyrannical overreach, especially when it regards one of our oldest adversaries? According to President Trump’s political base, already hostile to Ukraine, the answer appears to be anything but a clear yes.

The Other Side of the Coin

MAGA world’s arguments are indeed powerful and hard to dispute, however morally repugnant they sound to Ukraine supporters. For Donald Trump’s core supporters, the story of Ukraine is clear. Just as Trump insists the war in Ukraine was the fault of the Biden Administration and the Kabul debacle of 2021 and would never have started if not for the “rigged election” of 2020, his defenders are deeply tired of any sort of American involvement in Ukraine. After all, since Europe is within a few thousand kilometers of an active war, why should they expect our country to pay most of the cost? Thus, the Superman argument does not impress them. And it never helps whenever there’s yet another media report about yet more corruption in Ukraine. While I may never fully come around to this point of view, arrogantly dismissing the beliefs of this cohort will do nothing to gain their understanding.

Another justified complaint from defenders of the Trump Administration peace plan relates to Ukraine’s ultimate Achilles heel, a weakness even more dangerous than any kind of Ukrainian corruption: manpower. As this author and other Ukraine supporters have known for a long time (though the latter will not admit so), Ukraine is far too depleted of men to keep on fighting forever— let alone win. After Zelensky controversially withdrew the ban on young men aged 18-22 leaving the country, it should surprise absolutely no one that thousands of young Ukrainian men are doing just that. Poland, a country running out of patience for the same Ukrainians they welcomed four years ago, has witnessed the immigration of more than 121,000 Ukrainian men since August when the new Ukrainian policy was implemented. Even worse, 311,000 Ukrainian soldiers have gone AWOL in 2025, a record number of desertions since 2022. It seems that for any Ukrainian man who can escape the war, he will escape the war.

In summary, while Ukrainians will fiercely oppose compromises over land, few seem interested in actually fighting for it in the Donbas.

The essence of MAGA’s approach was articulated through Vice President JD Vance, a longtime critic of Ukraine war aid who famously dressed down Zelensky in the Oval Office in February. On social media last month, Vance attacked DC’s Ukraine hawks: “The political class is really angry that the Trump administration may finally bring a four-year conflict in Eastern Europe to a close. … Much of what these people have said about the Ukraine war has been proven wrong, but whatever. We can agree to disagree. But the level of passion over this one issue when your own country has serious problems is bonkers. It disgusts me. Show some passion for your own country.” In Vance’s mind, as well as millions of MAGA minds across the United States, the Washington elite have been far too focused on perpetuating a conflict in faraway Eastern Europe to care about the daily struggles of the American people.

And the MAGA approach is also gaining ground in Europe as well, even in Poland. While the Polish government has condemned the Trump Administration’s peace efforts in Ukraine, other Polish figures have taken a different approach. One Polish friend of mine called comparisons with the Munich agreement “stupid,” since unlike with Ukraine, Western leaders in 1938 surrendered an ally, Czechoslovakia, “without any fight,” and that it’s simply in the American national interest to be more interested in China, rather than the weaker Russia. However, he did not agree with the infamous Point 21, as it would give a “green light” to countries to redraw borders by force. This opinion has been reflected by other right-wing leaders in Europe, including Polish opposition politician Sławomir Mentzen, the most popular politician among Polish youth, who this week addressed his followers on YouTube with the message that because there is little chance of Vladimir Putin’s Russia collapsing like Nazi Germany, “an agreement will have to be reached” that satisfies the concerns of both warring nations.

Conclusion

In the West, we bicker over an endless number of political disputes. Whether affordability and the cost of living, immigration, or LGBTQ rights, it seems we are always fighting about something, making a pure ‘resolution’ to these challenges largely unachievable for the foreseeable future. While the debate over Ukraine is far more existential in Ukraine or even Poland and Lithuania than for us Americans, here it is a debate over what kind of country we want to be. Should we be Superman, fighting injustice wherever we uncover it, or instead should we acknowledge our own Kryptonite and protect our interests as best we can? For proponents of the former school of thought who resolutely support the Ukrainian cause, the latter are irresponsible appeasers or even puppets of Vladimir Putin determined to betray vulnerable allies. For proponents of the latter school of thought, the former are quixotic war hawks determined to bankrupt their own countries in service to a hopeless cause only leading to more death and destruction.

In turn, the chasm between these vastly dissimilar schools of thought, opponents and supporters of the Trump Administration’s 28-point peace plan for Ukraine, is simply too vast to bridge. In the first group sit old-school Reagan Republicans and most congressional Democrats, European governments and establishment political parties, legacy media publications, and much of the Washington DC think tank apparatus. On the other side sit the Trump Administration, the majority of congressional Republicans, alternative media platforms, and European right-wing nationalist politicians such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Whether it’s purely philosophical or even psychological, these are two groups in fundamental opposition to each other, with little if any room for compromise. And to you I present this question: which side are you on?