The debate in Washington over Ukraine peace talks has, since negotiations began in earnest after the August 2025 Anchorage summit between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, largely centered on feasibility concerns: Are the sides dealing in good faith and is there a viable path to a settlement? Lost in all the posturing over optics and narrative control is a clear sense of why the administration has worked around the clock to craft one of the most technically complex, geopolitically ambitious draft peace deals of the post-Cold War period. As the war enters its fifth year, it’s worthwhile, on this inauspicious occasion, to revisit the strategic basis for continued U.S. engagement in this peace process.
Top administration officials have reiterated over the past year that this is “not our war,” a stark departure from the Biden administration’s ideologized narrative of Ukraine as ground zero in a global battle between autocracy and democracy into which every American citizen is ipso facto conscripted. But that’s a rather different proposition from the idea that major U.S. interests are not at stake in this conflict. It is important here to proceed with due nuance.
There is unquestionably a level on which this is an attrition war between two Eastern European countries. Americans would be quite justified in the belief that U.S. interests do not hinge on where exactly the future line of contact between Russia and Ukraine is drawn and the other bilateral terms on which the war ends. But this has never been simply a bilateral conflict on NATO’s eastern outskirts. It is in essence a strategic confrontation between Russia and NATO that is unfolding on Ukrainian soil, and the U.S. is deeply invested in advancing a diplomatic framework not just to end the immediate conflict but to defuse the geopolitical confrontation underpinning it.
Take, by way of illustration, the guideposts that the administration set for itself in the National Security Strategy (NSS) and National Defense Strategy (NDS). The U.S. rightly seeks to retrench from Europe and to devote its scarce resources to other theaters, particularly the Western Hemisphere and Indo-Pacific, but this policy shift will prove difficult or even impossible to execute while the European continent is roiled by its most dangerous and destructive war since 1945. Though direct U.S. aid has been drastically scaled back, American arms and materiel are still flowing to Ukraine through European middlemen via the PURL program. Consequently, money that could have been spent by European states on bolstering European defense capabilities is being diverted to keep Ukraine’s war effort afloat. The Europeanization of European defense requires a credible defense-industrial base, which, in turn, demands significant long-term investments by the EU’s leading member states. But the war and its effects have crippled Europe’s macroeconomic performance in ways that, contrary to what this administration wants, will facilitate its continued dependence on the U.S.
Policymakers must reckon with the reality that the U.S. cannot scale back its military footprint in Europe and renegotiate its longstanding role as the continent’s offshore balancer while NATO remains locked in a spiraling confrontation with Russia. The only way to secure lasting retrenchment—namely, the kind that ensures America will not be sucked back into European military affairs somewhere down the line—is to work toward a new regional security architecture that stabilizes NATO’s eastern flank over the long term. Such an outcome can only come from a framework peace deal that doesn’t just end the bilateral conflict between Russia and Ukraine but also plants the seeds of East–West stability on the continent.
This means embarking on a set of deconfliction measures and confidence-building initiatives that have long been in American interests. Ukraine peace talks provide a uniquely opportune opening to, as stated in the NSS, end the perception and reality of NATO as a “perpetually expanding alliance” by formally agreeing to abstain from enlargement in the post-Soviet sphere in exchange for Russia’s concessions on its regional force posture. The relationship between Russia and Europe will be characterized by deterrence for the foreseeable future, but deterrence without dialogue and pragmatic engagement is a recipe for escalatory spirals. The dialogue initiated by Ukraine peace talks provides a diplomatic point of departure not just on nuclear arms control but on reciprocal limitations to conventional forces on both sides of NATO’s eastern flank, mitigating escalatory risks between Russia and Europe. Though many of these diplomatic linkages are valuable to ending the war on the best possible terms for America and Ukraine, they are also a vehicle for realizing aims that are inherently beneficial to the U.S. Not since the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 has there been a more attractive opportunity to advance a slew of American security and diplomatic interests in one go.
Anyone still unconvinced by the significance these talks hold is invited to explore the counterfactual: What if there is no deal? If the war ends with the exhaustion of one or both sides and a Korea-style armistice instead of a settlement that addresses underlying regional tensions, there is a serious likelihood that the conflict will either resume in the medium term or spread to other flashpoints (Belarus or Moldova being the most at-risk) in the post-Soviet sphere. Europe would find itself on the cusp of a new Cold War with fewer rules and safeguards than the last one, China and Russia will continue their consolidation into an anti-Western bloc increasingly capable of challenging American interests across the world, and retrenchment will become an ever-distant dream as the U.S. is forced to divert more resources to containing a hostile Russia.
The Ukraine peace process, from the standpoint of American grand strategic interests, is about preventing this kind of future. It’s about advancing a European security architecture that doesn’t just keep the peace between Russia and Ukraine but also lowers the odds of a conflagration anywhere else on NATO’s eastern flank, leaving the U.S. with maximum flexibility to pursue other priorities from a stronger geopolitical position. What’s at stake here is something much larger than an end to the war, painful and tragic as the past four years have been. This is the clearest chance at a course correction in European security since the Russia–Ukraine crisis began in 2014. That is the weight of this moment, and, if we stay the course, the promise of these negotiations.
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