The following is an editorial by Armstrong Williams.

President George Washington would end the Russian war in Ukraine with the stroke of a pen.

Following his 1793 Neutrality Proclamation regarding the ongoing conflict between France and Great Britain and his Farewell Address decrying foreign entanglements, President Washington would withdraw the United States from NATO conditioned on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ending his aggression and returning to the status quo ante. It would be a deal Mr. Putin could not and would not refuse.

The United States is NATO’s torso. We make NATO an existential threat to Russia. Mr. Putin was not born yesterday. He knows NATO has mushroomed from 16 to 32 members after the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Empire. Even President Donald Trump, a harsh critic of NATO, brought Montenegro and North Macedonia into its orbit. Imagine how the United States would react if Russia formed a defense pact with Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Central America, and South America and deployed Russian troops and nuclear weapons accordingly. The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis bringing the world to the edge of nuclear destruction would have been a tea party in comparison.

President Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022 because he feared its imminent membership in NATO as stipulated by Ukraine’s 2019 Constitution. Russia would be further encircled. Regime change in Russia would not be far behind. In a Freudian slip, President Joe Biden in March 2022 roared that Mr. Putin “cannot remain in power.” Moreover, in 2014, the United States, through then Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, orchestrated the overthrow of Ukraine’s Russia-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych.

A sticking point in the Aug. 15 inconclusive summit between Trump and Putin was Ukraine’s ambition for NATO membership. That issue would be moot, however, if Trump withdrew the United States from NATO. Its existential threat to Russia would be over. Putin would be complacent with Ukraine’s membership sans America.

The United States grew from a tiny acorn into a might oak following the wisdom of President Washington’s Farewell Address: “The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.” The United States flourished with no defense treaties for more than 150 years. NATO, formed in 1949, was an aberration. It was born not to protect the United States. We were then the most powerful country in the world. NATO was created to defend Western Europe with interests that diverged from those of the United States. NATO was heedless of Secretary of State John Quincy Adams’ July 4, 1821, address to Congress warning against the endless, self-ruinous morasses invited by racing abroad in search of monsters to destroy.

Withdrawing from NATO would end Ukraine’s nightmare. NATO would remain far more militarily and economically stronger than Russia. President Putin would not be emboldened to new aggression. He remembers the folly of the Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan which marked the beginning of the end of the Soviet Empire.

It was predicted by ultra-hawks and profiteers off the American Empire that the United States’ abandonment of South Vietnam to conquest by North Vietnam in 1975 would ignite communist aggression everywhere. It didn’t happen. The Domino Theory was discredited. Indeed, Vietnam has become a semi-ally of the United States against China. Threat inflation is the health of the multi-trillion-dollar military-industrial-security complex.

Trump was elected President of the United States, not president of the world. The ball is now in Trump’s court to withdraw from NATO in exchange for Putin’s withdrawal from Ukraine-a codicil to Trump’s "Art of the Deal." He arguably would need congressional approval under a provision in the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act. But when Trump tells Congress to jump, House Speaker Mike Johnson retorts, “How high?”

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Mr. Williams is Manager/Sole Owner of Howard Stirk Holdings I & II Broadcast Television Stations and the 2016 Multicultural Media Broadcast Owner of the year.

www.armstrongwilliams.com | www.howardstirkholdings.com

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Editor's Note: Sinclair Broadcast Group has a business relationship with Armstrong Williams, who is a political commentator and the owner of Howard Stirk Holdings.