The chances of this widening into a much more devastating conflict demands the West explore what may be possible.
By Harry Kazianis, Responsible Statecraft
U.S. foreign policy is filled with overused and tiresome cliches designed to resonate with a preferred partisan audience. For example, hawks like to label any resistance to aggressive strategy “appeasement,” or say that world leader X is “weak” or Y politician has “no strategy” towards whatever the foreign “threat” of the day may be.
We hide behind these phrases and tropes and often substitute toughness and machismo for what is needed most of the time — and that’s talking, complicated negotiations, and compromise.

All of this is precisely what is happening today with regard to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and why the United States and its allies won’t do the one thing that might help end the bloodshed: talk to Moscow.
Clearly, Washington and its allies should be finding ways to open up communications with Russian President Putin to try to end the fighting — hard and politically difficult that will be, given his latest annexation of Ukrainian territory and jeremiad lambasting the United States and the West on Friday. But it is nonetheless clearly in our national interest to do so. Right now, new sanctions and and even a new U.S.-led military command are being set up for the long hard slog, but what about back-channel diplomacy?
Recent Posts
The Ancient History Of Socialism In North America
October 14, 2025
Take Action Now There was nothing simplistic about moving — in many ways back to earlier traditions — to a system of governance not…
New Mexico Is Providing Free Childcare For All. It’s Time For Others To Do The Same
October 14, 2025
Take Action Now The state is setting a powerful example with its first-in-the-nation plan. But the policy has support across the USBy Katrina…
Nobel Peace Prize Winner Supports Israel’s Genocide & Trump’s War On Venezuela
October 14, 2025
Take Action Now Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado is a far-right Venezuelan coup-plotter funded by the US government. She supports…
Israeli Historian Ilan Pappé: Despite Ceasefire, Palestinians Still Face “Elimination, Genocide”
October 13, 2025
Take Action Now “I hope that the world will not be misled that Israel is now ready to open a different kind of page in its relationship with…