Should Trump Disengage From Peace Efforts in Ukraine?
As Trump sours on Putin, experts debate the proper course of action for the administration moving forward.
The Quincy Institute held a debate regarding the Trump administration’s difficult choices in its attempts to settle the war in Ukraine. Jennifer Kavanagh, senior fellow & director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, recently published an article in UnHerd arguing that the United States has done all it can to end the war and has already secured its most critical interests of preventing Ukraine’s full occupation and avoiding direct conflict with Russia. George Beebe, director of the Grand Strategy program at the Quincy Institute, argues that stepping away from a lead role in peace talks would lead to bad outcomes for all parties involved, including the United States. Rather than walk away, Trump should refocus his aim away from an early ceasefire and toward reaching an interim agreement on the framework for a peace settlement. Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, senior advisor at the Quincy Institute and editorial director of Responsible Statecraft, moderated the conversation.
Program
Entities
Panelists
Jennifer Kavanagh
Jennifer Kavanagh is a senior fellow & director of military analysis at Defense Priorities. A political scientist by training, Kavanagh has spent her career studying U.S. national security and defense policy. Kavanagh’s research focuses on U.S. military strategy, force structure and defense budgeting, the defense industrial base, and U.S. military deployments and interventions. Previously, Kavanagh was a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She also worked as a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, where she led projects for defense and national security clients. She served for three years as director of RAND’s Army Strategy program.
George Beebe
George Beebe is director of grand strategy at the Quincy Institute. He spent more than two decades in government as an intelligence analyst, diplomat, and policy advisor, including as director of the CIA’s Russia analysis, director of the CIA’s Open Source Center, and as a staff advisor on Russia matters to Vice President Cheney. His book, The Russia Trap: How Our Shadow War with Russia Could Spiral into Nuclear Catastrophe (St. Martin’s Press, 2019), warned how the United States and Russia could stumble into a dangerous military confrontation. Prior to joining QI, George was Vice President and Director of Studies at the Center for the National Interest.
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos is a senior advisor for the Quincy Institute and editorial director at Responsible Statecraft. She comes to QI from The American Conservative, where for three years she served as the magazine’s executive editor. Before joining TAC in 2017, Vlahos served as a contributing editor to the magazine, reporting and publishing regular articles on US war policy, civil liberties, foreign policy, veterans, and Washington politics since 2007. She also organized the magazine’s major annual foreign policy conference for the last three years. Prior to that, Vlahos was director of social media and a digital editor at WTOP News in Washington, DC from 2013 to 2017.