Posted on Tuesday, August 19, 2025
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by Robert B. Charles
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0 Comments
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My prediction was wrong. A year ago, I imagined aloud that Trump could bring the ship into port by July 4, 2025. I had no special reason for that date, other than a good target for ending a devastating European war, one that has claimed an estimated one million lives. The President is trying.
No president since Theodore Roosevelt, without resorting to arms or the U.S. military, has ended a major war solely through moral suasion and the bold exercise of economic power. Trump may well achieve this.
The August Trump-Putin summit, which DC’s diplomatically uneducated and pathologically arrogant Democrats now deride, including Maine’s Chellie Pingree, may be a meaningful start.
Three historic facts explain why. They suggest that Trump is working as hard as any past president to conclude a deal that will bring peace to the tormented nations, the principal two nations, and others.
First, an enforceable, lasting peace in this region is worth diplomacy. It would have “first-order” effects on Ukrainians, able to rebuild, and Russians, able to mourn almost 400,000 dead soldiers.
The “second order” effects include ending sizable military spending by the U.S., Europe, but on the other side by China and North Korea, if not also Iran, preoccupied with…digging right now.
A looming historical precedent, worth close study, is how – over eight years, Ronald Reagan met and gradually changed the mind of Soviet President and Communist leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
Those two men were different from Trump and Putin, but you can bet both teams reviewed the sequence, expectations for early summits, and chess moves that ended the Cold War.
Point? Good things take time, and both Trump and Putin know it. This diplomatic kabuki dance – the one Trump started when Putin decided to ask, after Trump pressured India to stop buying oil from Russia – is just beginning. It could move swiftly, move slowly, or come to a screeching halt.
That said, President Trump’s leadership in 230 days blows out of the water anything Biden – or Obama – did in a similar period of time, or in all the time they had in office. Trump’s word is understood to mean something, which creates movement. Reagan’s was too, which did the same.
Third and finally, a historical precedent worth review is how Theodore Roosevelt – who served as Commander in Chief from September 1901 through early 1908 – deftly negotiated an end to the devastating Russo-Japanese War.
Theodore Roosevelt (TR), like Reagan and Trump, had a keen sense of human nature, America’s uniquely powerful position in the world, and how to leverage those understandings to end a major war.
TR negotiated the end of that war, which had led to the sinking of the Russian Fleet and high costs to Japan, by bringing the two nations’ leadership to Maine, where they negotiated the final treaty in the shadow of the Maine’s Bath Iron Works, shipbuilders founded 20 years earlier.
TR did not have a B-2 or F-35 stealth fighters to fly over the Russians and Japanese, but he did have a grand shipyard, and he used moral suasion and America’s emerging power to get to peace. The model is a good one, and one might imagine Trump is aware of the history he is making, as TR was.
Maine would also be a great place for a third and final peace summit with Putin. I am sure warships could be arranged nearby. One way or the other, even the dates line up.
I was wrong about July 4, but historic figures are drawn to historic dates. That treaty – ending a war by forcing Russia to give land to satisfy Japan – was signed on September 5, 1905. You just never know…Maybe history will be made again by an intrepid American. President Trump is trying.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, Maine attorney, ten-year naval intelligence officer (USNR), and 25-year businessman. He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (North Country Press, 2018), and “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024). He is the National Spokesman for AMAC. Today, he is running to be Maine’s next Governor (please visit BobbyforMaine.com to learn more)!
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