Expert Q&A: Former Trump Ambassador on Why Ukraine ‘Must’ Win

By James S. Gilmore III

Ambassador James S. Gilmore III was the 68th Governor of Virginia from 1998 to 2002. He chaired the Republican National Committee in 2001. He also served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe during the first Trump administration.

EXPERT Q&A — As the Trump Administration takes the reins for a second term, it has pledged a 100-day end to the war in Ukraine, and put out a mixed set of messages in terms of future support for Kyiv and how it may approach a negotiation with the Kremlin. Above all, President Trump has said – and he said it again this week – that the war must end, and that he will meet Vladimir Putin as part of his efforts to be sure it does. 

The Cipher Brief turned recently to former Virginia Governor James Gilmore, who also served as U.S. Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) during the first Trump administration, about what is at stake in Ukraine.

“If Putin prevails in this war and reduces Ukraine into a vassal state or divides it and demonstrates to Europe that they’re prepared to commit their people and their resources to conquest, it will alter the politics of Europe,” Gilmore told us. “The Eastern Europeans at that point will become much more tentative about their pro-Western support, which is universal right now. Western Europe could become more neutralized. Europe could cease to be a strategic partner of the United States. In my judgment, that threatens the existence of the United States of America. So – what’s at stake for the United States besides the money? The answer is everything.”

Governor Gilmore spoke with former Senior CIA Officer Glenn Corn for an episode of The State Secrets podcast. Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity. You can also listen to the full discussion on Spotify and Apple Podcasts


Corn: What is your assessment of the situation in Ukraine up until now and your thoughts going forward?

Gilmore: Direct answer is that the United States ought to be supporting Ukraine as much as possible. They need to win. This is a critical moment in European history and therefore in American history. And the U.S. needs to be steadfast in this and to be as supportive as we possibly can be.

I was in Ukraine in 2021 and took the measure of the people that were there. I met with about 12 different cabinet ministers. The message that I was hearing from Ukrainians was that they were relentless in their determination to prevail against Russian aggression.

I know from my time as United States Ambassador in Vienna at the OSCE, I interacted with and met in concourse with the representatives and ambassadors from Ukraine. Ukraine is not an appendage of Russia. It is an independent nation. It may have been conquered in the past, but it is not conquered now. The Ukrainians told me that they are not Russians, that they’re determined to not be Russians, and that they intend to be sovereign and independent. They do not want to have a society like the Russians have that is authoritarian tyranny. They want to be part of the West. That determination to be part of the West is probably the reason why the Russian dictator decided to attack them.

 Corn: What is your assessment of the European response to what Russia has done?

Gilmore: The Europeans are actually contributing more money and more resources to Ukraine than the United States is. They are providing some financial support, some refugee support. America is best equipped to provide military support, and we are the leading provider of military support, but not the only ones.

The Europeans understand what’s at stake here, and we just need to try to teach the Americans what’s at stake here. This determination of the United States to end the war is very humanitarian because this is a terrible war that Putin has inflicted on an independent country. But you can have peace just by surrendering. And the Ukrainians, the last time I looked, are determined to not surrender.

The question really is what’s in it for the United States of America? That’s the issue in all this debate that’s going on. I’ll give you two things that are at stake for America in this war. 

Number one, the money that we’re sending over there. So far, I think it’s been somewhere around $175 billion. It represents about 5% of the defense budget of the United States. As far as the federal budget of the United States overall, it represents one and a half percent of that. So I suppose that someone could say that degrading the Russian aggression capacity and threat to Europe is not worth the money because the money is all that’s at stake. In my view, this is a priceless opportunity to stand up against aggression. There are no American lives at stake being put at threat in this war. I think that this is a very good expenditure of money.

The second thing that’s at stake for the United States is – everything. If Putin prevails in this war and reduces Ukraine into a vassal state or divides it and demonstrates to Europe that they’re prepared to commit their people and their resources to conquest, it will alter the politics of Europe. The Eastern Europeans at that point will become much more tentative about their pro-Western support, which is universal right now. Western Europe could become more neutralized. Europe could cease to be a strategic partner of the United States. In my judgment, that threatens the existence of the United States of America. It probably leads to World War III, where the US would be fighting on two fronts, one in the Pacific and one in Europe, if we decided at some point that an authoritarian world is one we can’t live in.

So I say once again, what’s at stake for the United States besides the money? The answer is everything.


Are you Subscribed to The Cipher Brief’s Digital Channel on YouTube? Watch expert-level discussions on The Middle East, Russia, China and the other top stories dominating the headlines.


Corn: How has the Russian narrative been able to be so successful here in the last few years in terms of promoting the idea that it’s a waste for the U.S., some of the claims that have been made about the Ukrainians, that they’re not really a nation, that they don’t have their own history, that Ukrainian is the Russian language, that they’re anti-church. Why do you think that’s happened? 

Gilmore: The Russian disinformation program is very great. I think that it works on the minds of conservatives. I think conservatives are suspicious of spending any federal money on anything. And so, they are amenable to this argument.

The second thing is there’s always been an isolationist sense in the United States of America. It re-emerges every so often. It was very powerful right before World War II. It was our sense that Europe was not our problem. They harken back to George Washington, who was leading a very different America at that time, who was saying, Well, we need to not get in entanglements with greater powers in Europe. But once Hitler began to actually conquer Europe, and we had a true worldly person in FDR who understood the threat, he began to move the United States towards supporting Europe, and particularly Britain during that time of crisis. But remember, the United States never did get into the war until Pearl Harbor, until the Japanese forced us into the war. And then at that point, it was perfectly obvious that the central point of that war was Europe because if Hitler had conquered Europe, that would have once again been a launching pad and a threat to the existence of the United States.

Corn: A lot of people think that Putin is in the driver’s seat now, that he is in a good situation, that Russia is more resilient than the US and the Europeans, that he can wait us out, that the Russian economy really isn’t suffering. What is your assessment of that?

Gilmore: On the battlefield, we’re getting mixed reports. We don’t know exactly who’s winning and losing there. The conventional wisdom is because Ukraine has less of a population, less money, is less developed, that they’re the weaker of the two countries. I’m not so sure that’s true.

All the reports we’re seeing right now is that the economic sanctions that have been imposed by the United States and its allies are starting to bite on the Russian economy. We’re seeing that really the oil economy is the only thing that’s keeping [the Russians] afloat. They have lost over 700,000 people wounded or dead in this conflict. They’re out of soldiers. That’s why they went off to North Korea and hired basically mercenaries to come in and supply their army. Frankly, I find that astonishing that you would inject North Korean soldiers into the European theater. So I think that by all evidence, Russia is cracking.

If the West stays resolute, I believe that Russia will not be able to continue this war. That doesn’t minimize the damage that’s being done to Ukraine. But to surrender politically now to Vladimir Putin would be a catastrophe in my point of view.

Let’s be real clear that this war is being fought by the Ukrainians for Ukraine for their future. They must make that decision. It’s not the role of the United States to keep them in a war they don’t want to be in. If Zelensky and the Ukrainians want to make a compromise at this point, it’s their country and their war, not ours. We’re in a supportive role, not an engaged role.


Everyone needs a good nightcap. Ours happens to come in the form of a M-F newsletter that provides the best way to unwind while staying up to speed on national security. (And this Nightcap promises no hangover or weight gain.)  Sign up today.


Corn: To those people that say that we’re wasting energy and effort in Ukraine when the PRC is the real problem and we need to focus on China, what is your response to that line of thinking? 

Gilmore: First of all, I don’t minimize the threat of China. It’s very frustrating to me that China is behaving the way they are. They have had leaders like Russia did, as a matter of fact, that opened themselves up to the opportunity to do something better for their populations. Somehow that has gone haywire. Now they have more or less a dictator in charge who has a different goal, which is the domination of the Pacific, the domination of that part of East Asia. 

We’ve done everything we can do to trade with [China] and to open up our economy to them, to enrich them, to give them an opportunity to be a better country. This belligerence is not on us. It’s on them. 

Fortunately, we do have allies in the Pacific that understand this with clarity in the same way our European allies do — Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea. These are countries that understand exactly the situation. So we’re not alone in the Pacific. 

And the Chinese are smarter than the Russians. They have not launched a feckless, ridiculous invasion of Taiwan in order to try to open themselves up to the rest of the Pacific, if they could capture that. They have not done that. And frankly, I think it’s a very difficult task for them. If you think about how hard it was for us to get across the English Channel to Normandy during World War II, [China has] to cross 110 miles of open ocean to get an occupying army into Taiwan. They can missile Taiwan, they can blow up Taiwan, but it’s pretty tough to get over there to conquer it.

The point is that in the long run, I don’t minimize the danger of China. But I think a pivot to China at this point opened up the door to the invasion in Europe, which is the more immediate problem. 

Corn: I often argue you have to view all these regions as a whole. Russia’s not separate from what’s going on in Iran, in the Middle East. We’ve seen some very serious changes have taken place in Syria. What is your assessment there?  

Gilmore: I think you’re very insightful when you begin to address the linkages between all of this. My view is we’re at a moment in which the authoritarian powers have made a decision about what kind of world that they want to live in. It’s a society where people are under dictatorships, they have to be afraid of the knock on the door in the middle of the night, with somebody being hauled away to a cellar to be tortured or beaten and ultimately murdered. That is the world that these authoritarians believe is best. We don’t. And as a result of that, I think that we need to recognize that all of this is linked. 

I just want to introduce the idea of hybrid warfare, which means that you project your entire national power against an adversary. It isn’t just military, it’s diplomacy, going to the bargaining table and making your enemy quit or give up something precious. It’s information, messaging, propaganda, and economic sanctions. And we have seen reports that there’s sabotage going on in Western Europe and other places. If you’re gonna see that kind of sabotage against Western Europe, it means that we all are engaged in a global conflict right now. I think the United States has to wake up and prepare itself for the conflict that is right before us.

It’s astonishing that the Russians would engage in terrorist activity, in sabotage, murder, undermining things. I don’t know what they think they’re going to accomplish. None of that stuff is going to weaken American resolve whatsoever. Are we really going to be frightened by that kind of thing? We’re not. So all they’re really doing at this point is announcing that we’re at war. We’re at a hybrid war. If somebody is attacking us with cyber attacks, that’s an act of war. If they’re blowing up our cables, that’s an act of war. If they’re actually engaged in disinformation and propaganda in order to weaken our political system, that’s war. Just because you are not engaged in a nuclear exchange or we’re not sending the 101st Airborne to France doesn’t mean you’re not at war. It’s a low-level war, but I think we have to get serious about it.

Furthermore, we’re going to very soon have to begin to seriously invest in America’s economy and the ability here to actually prepare and engage in this war. We’re not really ready right now. I’ve heard people say that we’re not really ready to engage in Europe and in the Pacific at the same time. Well, if our enemy knows that, that’s what’s going to happen, isn’t it? We just have to begin to prepare in a much more serious way.

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals.  Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field?  Send it to [email protected] for publication consideration.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

Categorized as:Alternative Perspectives EuropeTagged with:

Related Articles

Search

Close