What in the world are they teaching in schools? Peace isn’t a deal? Their playground fights must be epic. Do teachers give weapons to the underdog to keep the fight going?

I still don’t understand the “peace is not a deal” talking point. How in the world is peace achieved if it isn’t negotiated? Without negotiations, how can there be peace? War seems to be the only other option. And in fact, the slogan has been updated now that the Left wants war: it is now foreign policy that isn’t a deal.

When did the term “foreign policy” and the concept of doing the right thing change into “doing a deal”?

This is so alien I clearly must be missing something. If peace is not a deal, if foreign policy is not a deal, where do negotiations about peace take place? There doesn’t seem to be room for much except endless war.

Doing the right thing is always a compromise that requires negotiations. Doing what you think is the right thing without negotiating with the recipients of your largess is dangerously close to war. Foreign policy has always been about making deals. That’s literally what it is. Ending the Korean war was a deal. Nixon going to China was a deal. The SALT treaties were deals. Obama sending aid to Iran was a deal.

The entire history of our policy in the Middle East has been a long series of deals. One of the most famous quotes about the Middle East is the apocryphal “We must deal with our enemies, because it is our enemies with whom we make peace.” It remains popular despite its lack of provenance because it embodies real truths about both peace and foreign policy: at its best, it involves deals with enemies as well as allies.

The formulation of foreign policy is the result of negotiations within the United States among parties with different interests. Implementing effective foreign policy is the result of negotiations with foreign powers, allies and enemies. It is, literally, the making of deals between multiple parties.

The only time foreign policy becomes not about making deals is when one party makes all of the decisions or one party is forced to accept the decisions of the rest. There is another word for this: when foreign policy ceases to be a deal, it is because it has transitioned to war. When Germany invaded Belgium, negotiations over the assassination of Franz Ferdinand became World War I. When Britain gave Germany the Sudetenland without listening to Czechoslovakian President Edvard Beneš, this signaled the imminent start of World War II. Had Chamberlain treated the Munich “Agreement” as a deal with Czechoslovakia rather than an imposition on Czechoslovakia, World War II might have been averted.

Nothing like Czechoslovakia is happening in Ukraine today. Europe continues to provide arms to Ukraine with no pressure from the United States to stop. Trump continues threatening Russia for not agreeing to a ceasefire, and the United States continues to provide military intelligence to Ukraine. As I write this, we’ve even announced a resumption of sending arms to Ukraine ourselves.

Agree or disagree with how Trump is conducting his negotiations with Ukraine and Russia, we will not see an end to the war without negotiations of some kind. We have been funding this war for years now. It is going nowhere. At some point soon if we want it to continue we will also need to provide men. Ukraine is looking a lot more like Korea than like Czechoslovakia: endless war that doesn’t change anything on the ground except create more casualties. Like the Korean war, Russia’s war in Ukraine will require negotiations to bring peace. That’s what an armistice is, after all: a deal.

After visiting the troops, their commanders and South Korean leaders, and receiving briefings on the military situation in Korea, Eisenhower concluded, “we could not stand forever on a static front and continue to accept casualties without any visible results. Small attacks on small hills would not end this war.” President Eisenhower sought an end to hostilities in Korea through a combination of diplomacy and military muscle-flexing. On July 27, 1953, seven months after President Eisenhower’s inauguration as the 34th President of the United States, an armistice was signed, ending organized combat operations and leaving the Korean Peninsula divided much as it had been since the close of World War II at the 38th parallel.

There are times when war is necessary to bring peace. War with North Korea and China was initially necessary to save South Korea. I’m not convinced that this is the case in Ukraine. I’m not going to do an analysis; you can find that all over the net from people who have suddenly become experts in Ukraine, Russia, and war. I am none of those things, so I could be wrong. But it does seem to me that if we deny the use of deals in peace and in foreign policy, we had better become experts in war.¹

Even if am wrong, though, if we choose to continue an open-ended supply of arms to Ukraine, that itself will be the result of negotiations with Ukraine. It will be a deal. Even in war, we negotiate with allies. Without negotiations toward peace, however, that deal will be a deal that must eventually mean American soldiers. We can send as many munitions as we want to Ukraine; it doesn’t solve their biggest problem, which is an increasing lack of manpower. And I don’t see anything in the Ukraine situation worthy of forcing American soldiers to give their lives for. Judging from the utter emptiness of “I stand with Ukraine” signs, none of the critics of peace negotiations do either.

I see a lot of “I stand with Ukraine” signs both in yards and in social media. I have seen no “I am volunteering for Ukraine” signs. And none of the people angry at Trump for trying to negotiate a peace between Russia and Ukraine have volunteered themselves or their children to help solve Ukraine’s shortage of soldiers to use the arms we’re sending them.

But without peace, and soon, soldiers will be necessary to continue the war on Ukraine’s behalf. Arms shipments mean nothing without the men to man them.

That will be a big deal.