The Peace President returns – maybe

Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 15^th day of August in the year of our Lord 2025. I will be talking about the face-to-face meeting being conducted today between President Trump and Russian Premier Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska. Which player has the most at risk and the most to lose from this meeting? We don’t know the results of the meeting yet, but its promise is something to discuss.

Why meet in Alaska – because Russia once had to sell it in a fire sale

Why have this meeting in Alaska and not in some European Capitol. Who knows for sure but a reasonable guess would be that Putin is under sanctions that make it very difficult for him to travel in Europe and after all, Russia and Alaska go way back. I won’t go back any further than the 1860’s when both nations were involved in very disastrous wars with very different results. The U.S. Civil War resulted in a Union victory but cost many lives and split the country for over 100 years.

Russia was involved in a war in Crimea against England and France which it lost and which also had catastrophic loss of life and completely depleted the Russian treasury. Czar Alexander ll was desperate for cash and in 1867 he negotiated a deal with the U.S. to sell the Americans Alaska for $7.1 million. That seems like a bargain for the U.S. and it was but remember that was about 165 years ago when $7.1 million was real money. This week, in contrast, the U.S. passed $37 trillion in debt and is now dangerously close to $1 trillion per year in interest payments.

Modern advantages of Alaska as a meeting place

What about today, why Alaska. For one thing Anchorage lies 4,350 miles from Moscow and 3,400 miles from Washington so it is a comparable trip for both. It was hastily arranged and we are told that the meeting last week between Mr. Putin and Trump’s negotiator, Steve Witkoff, brought a request from Mr. Putin for a face-to-face with President Trump which was quickly agreed to. Vice President Vance told us that Mr. Zelensky will not be in attendance because his presence would not be productive.

I don’t blame the U.S. side for that and I would not have invited him either. This is a war between the U.S. and Russia and everybody seems to know that except Mr. Zelensky. His country has provided the bodies for the proxy grist mill but it is a U.S. war. My hope and my prayer are that Trump will continue his quest for the Noble Peace Prize but in regard to Mr. Zelensky, after 45 years as a lawyer and after countless mediations I have learned that more is usually accomplished if the two competing sides are kept separate with the impartial mediator going back and forth.

Two black marks on the record of a Peace President

Ukraine and Gaza are two blights on Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize resume at this point but this is a chance to resolve one of them, and it is right in his hands today. The Europeans have basically already rejected the deal even though they don’t know what it is yet. If he makes a deal with Putin and the Europeans reject it if I were him I would just say O.K. since you prefer war to peace you pay for it because there will be no more American weapons and no more American money poured down this rat hole. Polls show that 70% of Ukrainians want to end the war right now. Zelensky may want to fight to the last Ukrainian and last U.S. dollar but his people don’t.

 Let’s take a quick look at Trump’s peace resume thus far. I argue that in many ways he is the most anti-war President in recent history. In his first term he brokered the Abraham Accords that normalized relations between Israel and four Arab nations, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. The agreement ended hostility that had existed since Israel’s founding in 1948. This was the first real peace deal since President Carter’s deal between Egypt and Israel. Full relations with those four countries brought much prosperity with trade deals, embassies, air service, etc.

The President cements his peace credentials in Korea, ex-Soviet Central Asia,…

He met with the Little Rocket Man on his home soil of Korea, Kim-Jong-Un, and thereby lowered tensions on the Korean Peninsula and sent a message that diplomacy was at least possible if people could talk.  Just this week Armenia and Azerbaijan signed a formal peace agreement at the White House ending a bloody war that had cost thousands of lives. Trump brought the two Presidents together and brokered a deal thought to be impossible because the conflict had lasted decades.

A catastrophic war between Pakistan and India was well underway with both sides suffering casualties when Trump intervened with diplomacy. The agreement called for the end of military hostilities, communication channels reopened to coordinate security for both sides. Since both countries are nuclear armed the potential for disaster was obvious. Last month Cambodia and Thailand reached a Trump negotiated ceasefire in their cross-border war that killed many and left hundreds of thousands without shelter.

Of Africa and the Middle East

In June of this year Rwanda, where the genocide that cost perhaps a million lives occurred and the Democratic Republic of the Congo were engaged in a war that had gone hot and warm but never cold for decades. Trump negotiated a deal wherein both sides agreed to respect borders, end aggression against the other and perform joint security coordination. Those things that I have mentioned make up a pretty good resume for peace. Unfortunately, under most presidents, the CIA wants the wars hotter to feed the always hungry appetites of the defense contractors, but apparently not so much now.

Gaza is a problem and that’s for sure, but Israel is the one that has to be dealt with in solving that problem and dealing with Netanyahu is not so simple. Whatever hold he has over American leadership seems rather shameful to me and if I were an American leader and I didn’t carry any dirt I think I would be embarrassed at having to cow tow to our ally in such a fashion, but how can we know for sure. Israel is a problem but not the problem for today. Right now, Russia and Ukraine are before us to be considered. So, Mr. Putin, we are told, requested this face-to-face so he could let Trump know what his concerns are and thereby just maybe those concerns would be addressed.

High-stakes poker

If we think of this meeting as a poker game with Trump, Putin, and Zelensky as the players which player has the most at risk and which has the most skin in the game. I think Putin has the most at risk and the most to lose because even though Russia seems to be gaining momentum in the war Putin’s goals have not been met. Like the U.S. in Vietnam, even though your army is not defeated on the battlefield, by not winning you lose. Putin’s people are getting restless and wondering if any of the sacrifice is worth it if victory is not possible. In addition, the Russian economy is suffering under U.S. sanctions so a successful meeting is vital to Russia.

Mr. Zelensky also has a lot at risk but not as much as Putin. Ukraine has no pretensions about being a great country and its losses have been horrible. Zelensky may run around Europe begging for money but the truth is his army is almost out of manpower. Old men and boys now man the ranks and his lines are crumbling before the Russian attacks. Zelensky wants a simple ceasefire especially aerial ceasefire to stop the Russian drone attacks. Russia has been attacking Kiev with drones but in response to the Ukrainian attack against the Russian nuclear bomber bases.

Putin risks the most

Trump has only his own reputation as a peacemaker along with U.S. prestige at risk along with a few hundred billion of debt of course. Therefore, my conclusion is that this meeting is more important to Putin than anyone else. He can keep fighting and maybe eventually prevail but at what cost. Does he want Russia out of the sanctions and into the normal family of nations. Time will tell if Trump has those chips on the table.

Russia has apparently signaled the U.S. that it would like to end the war if it could keep Crimea and the eastern provinces that it currently occupies. Mr. Putin is at least willing and able to talk to President Trump, something he was unable to accomplish with President Biden or Victoria Nuland, Biden’s coup instigator.

The President’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt; “The president is agreeing to this meeting, at the request of President Putin, and the goal of this meeting is to walk away with a better understanding of how we can end this war…sitting face-to-face rather than speaking over the telephone will give this president the best indication of how to end this war and where this is headed.”

Meanwhile, Zelensky has a different view.

Any decisions made against us; any decisions made without Ukraine—they are simultaneously decisions against peace. These are dead decisions; they will never work. And what we all need is a real, living peace, one that people will respect.

Decisions against peace? Really?

To me that would be a very insulting and infuriating statement. As President of the United States I would not put up with it. But we will see how Mr. Trump views it. The Europeans seem to have Ukraine’s back on the issue and their statement is that any peace must include Ukraine. The Europeans, however, are irrelevant and don’t even have a seat at this table.

Well, then what would the best way out of this debacle look like. From my limited perspective Trump would say to them:

This is the deal, there is no other deal. If you don’t accept this deal and live with it then you are on your own so goodbye and good luck. 

The deal that I have agreed to with Mr. Putin is that Crimea remains Russian where it has belonged for hundreds of years. Russia keeps the Russian speaking Eastern provinces that it occupies as a buffer against Ukraine and NATO. We mutually pledge ourselves to maintain security and respect for each other’s territory. The sanctions imposed on Russia because of Russia’s initial invasion are hereby lifted and full economic cooperation between the United States and Russia are now in force. Furthermore, we acknowledge that the Nord Stream pipeline will be back in place with shared costs of rebuilding and repair. Europe will have plenty of cheap natural gas again and will therefore not have to buy it from the U.S. and transport it across the ocean. Everyone stops fighting immediately and with peace will come much prosperity and safety for the people of all three nations.

Conclusion

Finally, folks, that is what I think should and could happen, but there are many things such as rebuilding that time will not permit me to cover in this report.

At least that’s the way I see it.

Until next time folks,

This is Darrell Castle.

From CastleReport.us, appears by arrangement – Ed.