Have you ever watched a fight that should have ended years ago, yet keeps dragging on because someone on the sidelines keeps handing the weaker guy more weapons and whispering “just one more round”? That’s exactly what the past three years in Ukraine have felt like to a lot of us who’ve been paying attention from the beginning.
Last week something unusual happened. A draft peace plan surfaced, complete with all the usual diplomatic bells and whistles – ceasefire lines, security guarantees, the works. For a moment it almost felt like the nightmare might finally wind down. And then a veteran voice cut through all the noise with a much simpler take that stopped me in my tracks.
The One Voice Saying What Others Won’t
Ron Paul has never been one to mince words, and he certainly didn’t start now. While cable news panels argue over territorial clauses and neutral zones, he basically looked at the whole mess and asked the question almost nobody in Washington wants to hear: Why are we still here?
His answer is disarmingly straightforward. The fastest, cleanest, and – dare I say – most moral way to end this tragedy isn’t another elaborate international agreement. It’s for the United States and its allies to simply stop fueling the fire. No more weapons. No more intelligence sharing. No more billions vanishing into the war machine. Just… stop.
It sounds almost too simple, doesn’t it? Like telling someone with a gambling addiction to just walk out of the casino. But sometimes the simplest moves are the hardest ones to make – especially when powerful people have built entire careers on keeping the tables running.
How Did We Even Get Here?
Let’s wind the clock back a bit, because context matters more than most headlines let on.
Remember the Orange Revolution? That was the warm-up act. Then came 2014 and the Maidan protests that turned into something much bigger – and much more orchestrated than many realized at the time. American politicians were literally standing in the square cheering on the overthrow of an elected government. Senior State Department officials were caught on tape picking who would run things afterward. This wasn’t subtle influence; it was hands-on regime change.
The goal was never really about democracy in the abstract. It was about pulling Ukraine firmly into the Western orbit and planting NATO’s flag as close to Russia as geography allows. Anyone who understands great-power politics could see Moscow wasn’t going to shrug that off forever.
Imagine China engineering a military alliance across Latin America with Washington explicitly named as the main adversary. Would America just send a strongly worded letter?
Exactly. Yet when Russia finally pushed back, the narrative flipped overnight: suddenly they were the sole aggressors, and anyone mentioning NATO expansion got labeled an apologist. The gray disappeared; everything became black and white.
The Deal That Almost Happened
Here’s the part that still stings. Early in the conflict – we’re talking spring 2022 – negotiators were close. Really close. A framework was on the table that would have stopped the shooting, preserved Ukrainian sovereignty over most of its territory, and addressed Russia’s core security concerns without full capitulation.
Then a certain European leader flew to Kyiv and, according< to multiple reports, convinced the Ukrainian side to tear up the draft and keep fighting. The message was clear: the West had their back, more weapons were coming, victory was possible.
Three years and hundreds of thousands of lives later, we can see how that advice aged.
In my view – and I suspect in the view of many quiet observers – that was the moment the war stopped being about Ukrainian independence and became something closer to a proxy conflict. A tragic number of young men have paid the ultimate price for a geopolitical chess match they never signed up to play.
Why Complex Plans Keep Failing
Every few months another grand peace initiative surfaces. Twenty-point plans, thirty-point plans, roadmaps, frameworks – they all sound impressive in press conferences. Yet they share one fatal flaw: they try to solve through diplomacy a problem that diplomacy alone didn’t create.
- They assume both sides will honor commitments while billions in weapons still flow
- They pretend neutrality is possible when NATO membership remains the long-term goal
- They ignore the reality on the ground where Russian forces hold the stronger hand
- They require trust between parties that no longer trust each other at all
Paul’s point is brutal but logically airtight: as long as the West keeps the lifeline open, Ukraine has every incentive to fight on. Hope is a powerful drug, even when it’s killing you.
The Non-Intervention Prescription
So what does “walk away” actually mean in practice?
It means announcing – clearly and publicly – that the military pipeline is closing. No new contracts. No replenishment of spent stockpiles. Intelligence sharing ends. The message to Kyiv becomes honest for the first time in years: negotiate from the position you’re actually in, not the one we promised you could reach with infinite American ammunition.
Harsh? Absolutely. But compare it to the current path: slow bleeding of a nation until there’s literally no one left to hold a rifle. Demographic collapse. Entire generations lost or scattered across Europe as refugees. That’s not victory – that’s national suicide by proxy.
Sometimes the most compassionate act is to stop enabling destruction dressed up as help.
Look, no one with a conscience celebrates Russian aggression. But pretending Ukraine can win a conventional war against a nuclear superpower with ten times the artillery was never realistic. Encouraging them to try anyway borders on criminal negligence.
Could Trump Actually Do It?
Candidate Trump boasted he’d end the war in 24 hours. Campaign hyperbole, sure, but the core insight was correct: presidential authority over foreign military aid is massive. A single phone call to the Pentagon, a few executive orders, and the spigot closes.
No new appropriations needed from Congress for things already in the pipeline, but everything else? It stops. The message would echo around the world instantly: America is out.
Within weeks the calculus in Kyiv would shift dramatically. Serious negotiations – the kind that stick – would finally have oxygen.
The Bigger Lesson We Keep Ignoring
This isn’t really about Ukraine anymore, is it? It’s about whether the United States can ever learn to mind its own business.
We’ve been down this road before. Different countries, different decades, same pattern:
- Identify a government we don’t like
- Fund opposition movements
- Cheer when it falls
- Act shocked when the backlash arrives
- Double down with treasure and blood
At some point the cycle has to break. And maybe – just maybe – the breaking point is when enough people finally admit that blowing up other countries “for their own good” rarely ends well for anyone involved.
I’ll leave you with this thought. When your friend is in a bar fight he can’t win, at some point being a good friend stops meaning “hand him another bottle to swing” and starts meaning “drag him out before he gets killed.”
Ukraine has suffered enough. Russia has made its point. The only question left is whether Washington has the maturity to let both sides find the off-ramp.
Sometimes the most revolutionary act in foreign policy isn’t doing more.
It’s finally doing less.
