John Quincy Adams, Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash

We Need a President Who Will End the War in Ukraine with Diplomacy

I’m not usually a single-issue voter, but I’m getting to be that way.

I want to end the war in Ukraine with diplomacy, not escalation. But the current fashion is escalation, blue and yellow flags, and blue and yellow face paint. The current fashion says that peace talks are just capitulation.

But the present fad of supporting Ukraine against an adversary it has no realistic chance of defeating has been conducted by people who have failed to estimate the real danger to all of us with each day the war drags on. So I’m looking for a president who will end the war with diplomacy.

Ukraine’s protagonists will surely protest, “The best way to end the war is to defeat Russia!” Notice the exclamation point. That’s urgency. Defeating Russia is, at least in someone’s mind, a critical strategic interest for America. Then it’s defeating China. Then Iran. Then Belarus. Who’s next?

To give you a sense of American priorities, consider the budgets allocated to the Department of State, America’s agency of diplomacy, and the Department of Defense, America’s war-making agency. The State Department received a budget of $83 billion for 2023. The Department of Defense received a budget of $842 billion for the same fiscal year. That’s…