WASHINGTON DC – A growing chorus of discontent is emerging from within Washington’s foreign policy circles, with key figures from the establishment’s ranks warning that President Donald Trump’s diplomatic outreach to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin is a failing strategy and that the administration is being “played.”
The concerns, highlighted by a top Democrat in the Senate and a former US ambassador to Ukraine, signal a building frustration with the administration’s approach to the war.
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The Durbin warning: Putin isn’t serious
Senator Dick Durbin, the Senate Minority Whip, delivered a blistering critique from the Senate floor Friday morning, issuing a stark warning against a policy of appeasement toward Vladimir Putin, arguing that the Kremlin leader “isn’t serious” as he is “playing the United States and the [US] president.”
Durbin expressed concern that Trump’s repeated attempts to negotiate an end to the war – including a lavish red-carpet greeting in Alaska – have been met with increased aggression from Putin.
He lamented that after each personal attempt, Putin “thumbed his nose at the United States and instead started slaughtering more innocent Ukrainians.”
Adding to his condemnation, Durbin pointed to the human cost of the conflict. He noted that the abduction of Ukrainian children by Russian forces was “a horrible thing to do” and a key reason why “Vladimir Putin was declared a war criminal by the international court.”
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Durbin also brought up the broader geopolitical consequences, warning that the war is “not a political charade” but “the life-and-death reality of this dangerous world that we live in.”
He said that the US has an “obligation to stand by Ukraine – not to appease Putin,” especially since it has “severely weakened a formidable threat to Western security of Russian aggression.”
In a direct and powerful historical comparison, Durbin warned against repeating past mistakes.
“Students of history remember the catastrophic miscalculation of former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. He naively and tragically thought he made a deal with Hitler – Adolf Hitler – to secure ‘peace in our time.’ There is still a chance for President Trump to avoid this fate of history and bring an honorable end to this war, but it will only be through clear-eyed realism when it comes to Vladimir Putin,” he said.
“We’ve had now several months of concessions to the Russians as a way to persuade them, and gotten nothing.” – John Herbst, former US ambassador to Ukraine
The diplomat’s view: Putin’s “art of the deal”
This sentiment was powerfully reinforced by John Herbst, a former US ambassador to Ukraine. Speaking at an Atlantic Council event on Friday, where he serves as a senior director, Herbst argued that Putin is playing Trump and the Kremlin leader only agreed to the talks “not because he was interested in a deal, but because he felt he had to do something to reduce the odds of Trump taking strong steps against Putin’s war efforts.”
Herbst said Putin’s objective is nothing less than “effective political control of Ukraine” and that he has “zero interest in a ceasefire and zero interest in a peace agreement unless the Ukrainians accept his diktat terms.”
Herbst described the repeated diplomatic failures in stark terms, likening the situation to a comic strip where a character repeatedly pulls a football away. “I was thinking Putin aka Lucy... was picking up the football again and Charlie Brown, aka Trump, was once again kicking out a ball that wasn’t there.”
Herbst said the Trump administration has thus far offered “kisses and chocolates” to the Kremlin and has “gotten nothing” in return. He believes that Putin’s inner circle thinks “they can manipulate” Trump and that this will likely continue “ad infinitum” as it does in the comic strip.
Herbst also went into detail about the specific demands and tactics of the Kremlin. He explained that Russia will “claim that there’s no connection” between security and territory because their concerns are “much more about Ukraine being an independent, democratic state.”
Herbst also said that Trump is pursuing a “durable peace,” and it should not be confused with a just peace, which means that Ukraine remains whole and intact.
Herbst also outlined the specific tools that Trump should be using, advocating for “not just sticks, but a club.” He dismissed the idea that a “big enough carrot” would work, stating, “we’ve had now several months of concessions to the Russians as a way to persuade them, and gotten nothing.”
He also pointed out that while Trump wants to control policy and is holding back Congress on a sanctions bill, there are other ways to put pressure on Russia, such as going after sanctioned Russian banks and their “ghost fleet of oil tankers.”
Herbst added that a Russian victory would be a disaster for American interests globally, arguing that if Putin wins in Ukraine, “he’s going to do other things.”
The former ambassador believes that the “smart place to stop this revisionist actor” is in Ukraine – a large country with “an extraordinarily able fighting population which only needs our economic and military support, not our lives, not our soldiers.”
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