What’s the Harm?

As the Trump administration prepares for a full-court diplomatic press ahead of the annual Munich Security Conference, where it will present its framework for a cease-fire in Ukraine, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth spoke plainly about the White House’s outlook toward Kyiv.

Hegseth said that Ukraine’s reacquisition of the Crimean Peninsula was an “unrealistic objective,” adding that “chasing this illusory goal will only prolong the war and cause more pain and suffering.” And while Hegseth restated the Trump administration’s view that any peace deal between Russia and Ukraine must be buttressed by “robust security guarantees,” he ruled out the prospect of Ukraine’s NATO accession.

This all sounds like commonsense stuff, right? The NATO alliance is not going to appropriate an ongoing hot conflict between a nonmember and its old, nuclear-armed adversary, so why not say as much? Likewise, the prospect of a Ukrainian advance into Crimea that liberates the peninsula is a fanciful prospect at the moment. What’s the harm in stating these truths aloud?

For Western audiences accustomed to idle punditry, there is none. But public commentators and practitioners of statecraft serve distinct masters and have unique objectives.

America’s enemies and allies alike may not have heard a harmless articulation of the likeliest near-term outcomes of this war. We can only hope they did not hear Hegseth throw his hands up in a tacit acknowledgment that Vladimir Putin’s adventurism had already redrawn the map of Europe by virtue of the facts on the ground. The West should not be in the business of legitimizing territorial expansionism via force of arms — not unless we want to see more of that sort of thing. Moreover, what precisely will we gain from such an admission? Likely not more than we would lose on balance.

Nor does the United States need to materially or even rhetorically support a fraught operation aimed at liberating the peninsula (should such a prospect arise) to avoid lending credence to the notion that might makes, if not right, at least unavoidable realities. Indeed, to do so sacrifices a noble conservative tradition of supporting the aspirations of the world’s freedom-loving peoples against their tyrannical oppressors.

In the twilight of the Cold War, Americans observed “Captive Nations Week,” in which the United States acknowledged the illegitimacy of all the Soviet Union’s possessions, its hostage “satellites,” and the regimes in its orbit propped up by little more than the provision of Soviet arms. “For those seeking to enjoy humanity’s birthright of liberty, independence, and justice, we serve as guardians of their dream,” Ronald Reagan proclaimed during one such commemoration in 1987. “Thus, we must and will continue to speak out on the plight of captive nations.”

Moscow and its fellow travelers insisted that such behavior was provocative, but it wasn’t. It was only discomforting for the members of this illegitimate regime to be confronted with their crimes. The Reagan administration’s posture did not preclude bilateral summitry or cooperation on arms control statutes. In fact, it might have contributed to the successful efforts of the USSR’s Baltic deputies to unseal Soviet archives. That initiative exposed Soviet citizens for the first time to the existence of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, which consigned the Baltics to Soviet domination — thus revealing the lie underwriting the USSR’s post–World War II origin myth as a state forged by its steadfast opposition to fascism.

“Captive nations” wasn’t just high-flown rhetoric. It was policy. And as policy, it was a success.

As for taking NATO membership off the table, it’s equally unclear what this act of radical honesty provides Western negotiators save for the relief it grants Putin. But Putin likely doesn’t need more inducements to get to the negotiating table than what is on offer already, which is a generous acknowledgment that Moscow will get to retain the Ukrainian territories it has taken by the most brutal display of force this century has so far seen; at least, until the Kremlin decides once again to secure its expansionist objectives in Ukraine at some later date.

Hegseth’s rhetoric would appear to confirm that Ukraine’s “security guarantees” won’t be backed by NATO’s security architecture, which should leave observers wondering what credible deterrent the West could bring to bear to ensure this deal is worth the ink that will be spilled over it. After all, Putin has demonstrated that he can dissuade the West from direct participation in the conflict in Ukraine. And it is unclear that this or any other Ukrainian government could survive the popular backlash it would invite if it conceded that Russia’s campaign of mass civilian executions, indiscriminate bombings, rape, ethnic cleansing, child abductions, and cultural eradication would beget no retribution. Far from advancing U.S. objectives, Hegseth’s admission might have made negotiations more difficult.

Diplomacy is not always well served by “straight talk” or “telling it like it is.” Surely, negotiating against yourself in public is typically unproductive. As I have written before, I reserve the right to be pleasantly surprised by the terms the administration will present to the aggressor and the aggressed in this conflict. But the signs we have so far indicate that what is on offer isn’t a peace plan but a prelude to Putin’s next war for control of the whole of Ukraine.