The US should make peace with Russia before triggering ‘Armageddon’, Trump Jr. and RFK Jr. have said
Washington should initiate direct talks with Moscow immediately and cease misinterpreting Russia’s restraint as weakness, according to Donald Trump Jr., the son of the Republican presidential nominee, and former Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
RFK Jr, the nephew of President John F. Kennedy, endorsed the elder Trump last month, citing the Russia-Ukraine conflict and its potential escalation into a nuclear war as a key reason.
The US and its allies permitting Ukraine to utilize their weapons for long-range strikes into Russia “would put the world at greater risk of nuclear conflagration than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis,” Trump and Kennedy wrote in an opinion piece published by The Hill on Tuesday.
Titled “Negotiate with Moscow to end the Ukraine war and prevent nuclear devastation,” the article advocates that the US must prioritize finding a “diplomatic off-ramp to a war that should never have been allowed to take place,” accusing the White House of pursuing a policy that Russia has explicitly stated would constitute an act of open war.
“Some American analysts believe Putin is bluffing, and favor calling his bluff,” Kennedy and Trump wrote. “These analysts are mistaking restraint for weakness. In essence, they are advocating a strategy of brinkmanship.”
Noting that the US has steadily increased weapons deliveries to Kiev, ranging from HIMARS rocket artillery and cluster munitions to Abrams tanks, F-16 fighter jets and long-range ATACMS missiles, Trump and Kennedy stated that each step “draws the world closer to the brink of Armageddon.”
“Their logic seems to be that if you goad a bear five times and it doesn’t respond, it is safe to goad him even harder a sixth time,” they said. “Such a strategy might be reasonable if the bear had no teeth.”
The Biden-Harris White House appears to have “forgotten” that Russia possesses nuclear capabilities and has repeatedly declared its readiness to utilize such weapons if threatened, the authors argued.
“Imagine if Russia were providing another country with missiles, training and targeting information to strike deep into American territory. The US would never tolerate it. We shouldn’t expect Russia to tolerate it either,” they said.
Launching US missiles into Russia would inevitably lead to a nuclear exchange, Trump and Kennedy argued, cautioning that “this game of nuclear ‘chicken’ has gone far enough.”
No American interest is at stake in Ukraine, they asserted, labeling it “madness” to risk nuclear war for the sake of “the neoconservative fantasy of global ‘full-spectrum dominance’.” Such a war would culminate in the end of civilization and potentially even humanity, thus de-escalating the Ukraine conflict is “more important than any of the political issues our nation argues about.”
The American public must “demand, right now, that [Vice President Kamala] Harris and President [Joe] Biden reverse their insane war agenda and open direct negotiations with Moscow,” Trump and Kennedy concluded.
Peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine collapsed in the spring of 2022, with both sides accusing each other of making unrealistic demands. The US has since insisted that a peace deal can only be established on Kiev’s terms, and repeatedly vowed to support and arm Ukraine for “as long as it takes.”