The crucial step President Trump’s negotiators are overlooking to get 🇺🇦 peace...
It took Eisenhower’s team six months of fraught peace talks in Korea to realize one thing…
Upon taking office as newly elected Republican President, it took Eisenhower 188 days to end the Korean War – having campaigned on it forcefully. President Trump’s team has 87 days left to match the achievement: July 27th.
Many doubted Eisenhower could pull it off – notably including Winston Churchill. On November 4, 1952, Churchill told his Principal Private Secretary, Jock Colville: “For your private ear, I am greatly disturbed. I think this [Eisenhower’s election victory] makes war much more probable.”
President Trump today shares in having no shortage of doubters.
Here’s what Eisenhower’s biographer, Stephen E. Ambrose, wrote about the Armistice finally being reached in July:
“There were no victory celebrations, no cheering crowds in Times Square, no sense of triumph. Instead Republicans like Jenner, Dewey Short, McCarthy, and House Speaker Joe Martin complained because the Administration had not sought victory, while Lyndon Johnson warned that the armistice ‘merely releases aggressive armies to attack elsewhere’.
The armistice was, despite its reception, one of Eisenhower’s greatest achievements. He took great pride in it. Despite intense opposition from his own party, from his Secretary of State [John Foster Dulles], and from Syngman Rhee [President of South Korea], he had ended the war six months after taking office. Eisenhower [was] the only American who could have found and made stick what he called ‘an acceptable solution to a problem that almost defied solution’.”
There are lessons from precisely how Eisenhower did this that President Trump’s team don’t yet appear to have recognized.
I’ve put together a video with standout highlights. Here’s a 2-minute preview.
(Does Zelensky seem at all reminiscent of President Rhee?)
The full video (that’s 50 minutes) covers:
[*] A plan for territory no one is talking about (building on the minerals agreement just signed).
[*] A discovery from an MIT physics Professor Emeritus, that could reset relations with Russia – yet nobody in the (non-scientific) mainstream is talking about it.
[*] An out-of-the-box idea to get Belarus (Russia’s closest ally) on the side of US diplomats wanting peace.
[*] A plan for a security guarantee that could work for the US, Ukraine and Russia, shifting long-term responsibility to Europe, freeing the US to focus squarely on China.
[*] Little-known history that brought about the wording of Article 5 (that’s relevant for Europe today).
[*] Ultimately: How a ceasefire could be brought about FAST.
Serving Ambassadors in Europe, who’ve been taken through it, have remarked: “The best, serious intellectual work I have seen on the conflict – by far.”
The full video goes into ideas I’ve not yet published. (Given sensitivity, the video in its entirety could be anti-helpful to broadcast at this moment.) I effectively spent five months on the work that went into it, with my small research team. And we shopped it around to 30+ people, in a Jean Monnet-like way, getting feedback and ever-refining it. Figures all over the geopolitical spectrum: hawks, doves, academics, former practitioners… to have something up our sleeve, to share in case of a moment of near-crisis.
Given all latest: we’re hoping there’s an outside chance it can get the Administration’s attention. (We have made some in-roads.)
“Liking” this thread would be a very big help:
https://x.com/EdwardMDruce/status/1917884854038909343
I will at some point post the full video (either when an armistice has been reached, or talks have so fallen apart that there’s no risk of undermining anyone’s negotiating leverage).
What’s clear to me: a deeper look at this history could help.
Eisenhower’s biographer concluded:
“What stands out is Eisenhower the leader. The Supreme Allied Commander of 1945, the victor who would [in 1945] accept nothing less than unconditional surrender, had become the peacemaker of 1953... Eisenhower realized that unlimited war in the nuclear age was unimaginable, and limited war unwinnable.”
I’m rooting for the Administration’s diplomatic success. (Some of the ideas here could help them do it.)
⏰ 87 days on the clock, to get President Trump into the league of such company…
