Authored by Ron Paul,

Last week’s surprise release of a draft Ukraine war peace plan has raised hopes that the nearly three-year bloody conflict may finally come to an end. Ukraine has suffered horrible losses that may change the demographics of that country for decades to come.

If this peace plan can be negotiated in a way that satisfies all sides and the guns finally go silent, I will be the first to cheer.

However, the continued failure to understand the nature and origin of the current conflict leaves me skeptical that a real peace can be reached this way.

From the Orange Revolution in the early 2000s to the Maidan revolution in 2014, the US and its NATO partners have been interfering in Ukraine’s internal affairs in attempt to manipulate the country into a hostile position toward its much larger and more powerful neighbor, Russia.

We must remember how directly coordinated the 2014 coup was by the United States.

US Senators, including John McCain and Lindsey Graham, were on the main square of a foreign capital demanding that the people overthrow their duly elected government. Victoria Nuland was caught on a telephone call planning who would run the post-coup government.

Outside intervention led us to the terrible situation of today. This peace deal is another chapter in that same intervention, with the US and its partners desperately trying to manage and solve a problem that they created in the first place. Can you solve a problem created by outside intervention with more intervention?

For the entirety of this conflict politicians and the media have been unwavering in blaming Russia entirely for what has occurred. I agree that they’re no angels. But the real villains here are the US neocons and their European counterparts who knew it was suicidal for Ukraine to take on Russia but pushed Ukraine to keep fighting anyway. Early in the conflict a deal was on the table and nearly signed that would end the war, but the neocon former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson demanded that Ukraine keep fighting.

Ukraine is the victim here, I agree. But it is as much a victim of the US and European neocons as of the Russians.

They believed they could put NATO on Russia’s doorstep and face no consequences. If the tables were turned and a hostile China set up a new Latin American military alliance with the US as its designated enemy, would we sit by idly as military bases were constructed on our southern border? I don’t think so.

President Trump promised he would end the war 24 hours after he was elected. It was an unrealistic boast, but he actually could have ended it rather quickly. The antidote to intervention Is non-intervention. Biden drug us into the war, that is true. But Trump could have pulled us out by quite simply ending all US involvement. No weapons, no intelligence, no coordination. No need for sanctions or the threat of sanctions, no need for elaborate peace plans.

A real peace deal would realize that it was always idiotic to believe that Ukraine could stand up to Russia’s war machine – even with NATO’s backing.

It is unimaginably cruel to demand that Ukraine keep fighting our proxy war down to the last Ukrainian.

No 28-point plans can fix this. The real fix is much simpler: walk away.