Donald Trump is once again the president and there is no greater foreign policy challenge he has promised to tackle than how to resolve the Russia-Ukraine War.
In the frenzied rush to save Ukraine from Russian aggression, there has been scant attention paid to the origins of the conflict. However, an important memoir published in 2024 by John Sullivan, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2020 until 2022, could provide some answers.
Ominously titled “Midnight in Moscow” the book shows just how belligerent towards Russia the Biden administration was at a fraught moment — and how little key American diplomats seemed to think of real diplomacy.
A careful study of Sullivan’s account reveals he was the wrong man at the wrong place at the wrong time. Sullivan had prior experience as an attorney and this helped shape his sheriff-like, good-versus-evil worldview. The result was an escalatory spiral in U.S.-Russia relations that ended in catastrophe for Ukraine.
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