The words one chooses to describe possible approaches to solve a problem tells you everything about their perspective.
On October 25, 2025, Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna met with Russian representative, Kirill Dmitriev, to discuss peace with Russia. The typical arguments followed. Reactions to these meetings fell into two general camps.
One side expresses disgust that Luna would meet with a representative of a murderous barbaric regime. This is mostly Democrats, Non-MAGA Republicans, and Reagan Republicans. The other side praises the effort. This is mostly the MAGA gang. They ask how we are going to solve any problems if we don’t “talk to each other”, without “constructive dialog”. They claim that this whole thing started because the two sides wouldn’t talk, negotiate, make “compromises” and “concessions”.
Lacking any additional context, it sounds so reasonable. Why not talk? Isn’t talking and getting along with Putin/Russia a good thing? It’s common sense. Right? How can we solve any problems if we won’t talk? And aren’t all conflicts like this ultimately solved at the bargaining table, not the battlefield?
It does sound reasonable… if you completely ignore all context and perspective. Allow me to illustrate with a hypothetical. Hypotheticals by their nature won’t match every detail – just try to stay with the big picture.
A Hypothetical Story
Let’s say Mike Smith buys a new car – maybe a Toyota Camry. On the drive home, it breaks down… the engine just stops and he’s stranded on the side of the highway. He calls the dealership. They agree to send out a tow truck to bring it in for diagnosis and repair. Of course it’s all completely covered under the warranty. The dealership even gives Mike a free service loaner car while they work on it.
Three days later his Camry is ready. They explain that it had a defective blah blah blah, but they replaced it and it should be OK now.
Mike nervously drives it home, and has no problems this time… But the next morning it won’t start.
Of course that’s also covered by the warranty. The dealership fixes it… it was a (different) faulty blah blah blah…
This cycle repeats itself another two times over the following two weeks.
Now Mike is pissed. The car comes with a full five year factory warranty that will cover all the repairs, but it isn’t going to be practical for Mike to have a car that needs to be repaired weekly, even if for free. He wants the dealership to either give him a replacement or a full refund.
The dealership explains they can’t do that. They can offer him a complimentary upgrade to the sport wheel package – for free. That’s normally a $3000 upgrade. But they will not give Mike a refund.
Mike refuses. He wants a full refund or a replacement.
The dealership offers Mike an additional $2000 worth of concessions – maybe the Super Duper Ultra Platinum Nationwide Roadside Assistance plan.
But Mike is furious. He refuses the additional offer and threatens legal action. He heard about something called the “Lemon Law” that sounds like it would apply. But when he consults with a lawyer he finds that there is no practical legal recourse. For some reason the “Lemon Law” doesn’t apply in this case. The $5000 of concessions the dealership already offered was far more than he’d likely get through legal action.
And the lawyer explains that since he considers the case to be fairly weak, he won’t work on contingency (work for free and only gets paid a percentage of any settlements). His hourly rate is $500/hour and requires a $10,000 retainer to get started.
So far so good… It’s getting heated, but everybody is still “talking”, “negotiating”, “compromising”, “making concessions”, trying to “make a deal”. They’re trying to resolve a disagreement rationally and peacefully, like civilized adults in the modern world.
So far it’s perfectly normal and natural to talk, negotiate, compromise, etc. At this point there are no clear “good guys” and “bad guys”, just two parties who disagree.
BUT Mike is a hothead, nothing the dealership offers is satisfactory to him, and he has run out of patience. He gets his AR15 and a few mags of ammo and goes back to the dealership to make his demands a little more forcefully.
At reception he aggressively demands to see the manager.
NOW, let’s pause the tape for a moment. At this point Mike has entered the dealership openly bearing a weapon with a clearly implied threat to use it. Now the nature of any possible “talks” are at a different level. He hasn’t fired yet or harmed anyone, but coming into the dealership with a deadly weapon implicitly threatening to use it if he doesn’t get his way changes everything. No longer are talks about refunds, exchanges, or concessions appropriate or relevant. Even without shooting Mike has already committed a half dozen felony offenses worth years in prison. Now there is much more of a good guy/bad guy situation. But it gets worse.
Let’s resume the tape.
Obviously the situation is tense. Mike is startled by some sudden movement in the corner of his eye and turns and shoots. He injures a customer on the showroom floor. The gunshot draws the attention of a security guard on site who approaches. Mike fires at him, killing him, then kills another security guard a minute later.
NOW the “good guy”/”bad guy” dynamic is black and white.
By now someone hearing shots has called 911. Three minutes later the dealership is surrounded by dozens of police, including SWAT, helicopters, etc. Mike is sheltering in the dealership office holding a few hostages, threatening to kill them unless the police withdraw and the dealership gives him his refund.
NOW what is the appropriate level of “talk”, and “negotiation”, “concessions”, or “compromise”? NOW what kind of “deal” can be made? Should the police pressure the dealership into offering Mike a full replacement including the upgrade concessions they’ve already offered? I mean all SWAT standoffs with armed murderers holding hostages end at the bargaining table, right?
The Moral of the Story
This illustrates that there is a point in a conflict beyond which a peaceful negotiated settlement is not possible. At this point in this story all the parameters have moved into an entirely different realm.
We started with two morally equal parties to a transaction negotiating on a mutually acceptable compromise. But it transitioned such that we have a villain and a victim – a “bad guy” and a “good guy”.
At this point there can be no more talk about refunds, replacements, or additional concessions. Those talks became irrelevant once he entered the dealership threatening force, and more so once the first shot was fired.
In a situation like this, at this point in the story, there are talks, but at a different level. Now the police negotiator is trying to talk Mike into surrendering. The deal they’re offering now will be something like: “You’re surrounded. Let the hostages go, throw down your weapons, lay face down, don’t move, and we won’t shoot…” Assuming they reach an acceptable agreement at this point (i.e. Mike throws out his weapons and the police don’t kill him on the spot), the next “negotiations”, “compromises”, and “concessions” will be between a prosecutor and a defense attorney over whether Mike does life in prison without possibility of parole or is sentenced to die by lethal injection, not whether he gets a refund or a replacement.
Two foundational realities are at play here:
(1) Once the first shot is fired, that is now the far greater wrong to be righted. Any reasonable grievances Mike may have had regarding the total lemon are now insignificant in comparison with the illegitimate violent ending of innocent life.
(2) Once the first shot is fired, it reveals beyond any doubt that Mike is beyond reasoning. At that point we know Mike is a psycho and we couldn’t trust him in any deal anyway.
That’s a local, domestic hypothetical intended to bring the realities involved in the Russia/Ukraine situation home to the average American. But this is a historical lesson we should have learned…
Hitler/Nazi Germany
In 1938 this happened on the global stage when Hitler/Nazi Germany built up a military far in excess of that agreed in the WW1 surrender treaty and started amassing that military right on the western Czechoslovakia border. This parallels our hypothetical “Mike” entering the dealership armed and threatening, but before the first shot was fired.
Still overcoming the PTSD of WW1, the whole world was alarmed. The West – led mostly France and the UK – tried to reason with Hitler.
UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain “talked” with Hitler and they came to an agreement… France and the UK – who were treaty-bound to defend European allies – would let Hitler take the tip of Czechoslovakia if he would just promise to stop there. [Interesting that Czechoslovakia wasn’t consulted]
The “deal” was celebrated worldwide as “Peace in our time”.
But history has rightly been harsh on Chamberlain for that “deal”. He basically assumed that one could make a legitimate deal giving into the demands of an armed barbarian threatening to kill people if he doesn’t get his way and assuming everything would work out. What could possibly go wrong?
Reagan was very critical of Chamberlain:
We do not repudiate man’s dream of peace. We must not. It is a good dream and one we share with all men, for the dream is as old as man himself. But we do repudiate an attempt to achieve that dream by methods disproven by all of our past experience, methods played against the background music of Neville Chamberlain’s umbrella tapping its sorry way to the slaughter of a generation of young men.
Source: Excerpts From Veterans Day Address by Governor Ronald Reagan (November 11, 1967)
The end result was that Hitler took all of Czechoslovakia by force. Then he invaded Poland, then the rest of Europe. By the end of it all Chamberlain’s error in judgment was ultimately responsible for 60 million deaths (the “slaughter of a generation of young men”).
But to Chamberlain’s credit, at least once Hitler violated his agreement, Chamberlain no longer sought, nor was even willing to consider further “talks”. Once Hitler started shooting up the “dealership”, the scene became exactly like our car dealership hypothetical. Then the non-violent negotiations and concessions were obsolete and irrelevant, and the new options were on a different level.
Of course on the geopolitical scene it’s not one crazed maniac surrounded by police, so the task is much bigger, far more complicated, and the outcome less certain, but the paradigm still applies. As Reagan also said, “There is no security, no safety, in the appeasement of evil”.
Other than the scale, as just described, this parallels the dealership example… Once the shooting started, that became the greater wrong to be righted. And maybe even more than in the dealership example we knew we couldn’t trust any future deal Hitler would make… He already showed that he doesn’t honor agreements.
Putin/Russia
This paradigm is repeating itself again in the present.
Putin entered and shot up the “dealership” in 2008 when he invaded Georgia (the country). His troops still occupy 20% of that country. Again in 2014 Putin seized Crimea and Donbass by force. And finally, on February 24, 2022 he went into the “dealership” (Ukraine) and murdered a half million people.
NOW the “police vs Mike” standoff is nearing the end of its fourth year. But now idiots like this Anna Paulina Luna advocate for the reasonableness of “talking” with Russia (not to mention Trump having U.S. military literally on their hands and knees rolling out the red carpet for Putin – the mass murderer/terrorist).
And again, the analysis of the dealership is relevant here. Even prior to the February 24, 2022 full scale invasion “talk” was unreasonable. By then Putin had already shot up other “dealerships” and entered the current situation armed and threatening (a quarter million soldiers were amassed on Ukraine’s border), but before shots were fired. Negotiation at this point was not really appropriate or reasonable, but it was complicated, and maybe negotiations could help…
And, in fact, between the first Ukraine invasion in 2014 (Crimea, Donbass) and 2022, Ukraine held around 200 talks with Russia, reaching 20 ceasefire agreements, all of which Russia violated. In February 2022 before the onset of the invasion other world leaders did talk. Everybody talked to Putin, reasoned with him, negotiated with him, pleaded with him to not go through with it. Then Putin shot up another dealership, bombs innocent Ukrainian civilians while they sleep, and murdered a half million people anyway.
And again, the hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded as a result of his barbaric attack is now the issue that would completely obscure any other previously potentially legitimate claims he might have had (of which there were NONE). And now that we know Putin’s 25 year history as president and the hundreds of ceasefires and other treaties he’s broken, and the hundreds of thousands murdered, we know there’s no point in “talk”. How many deals does someone need to break before you realize that he’ll violate any future deal too?
At least Chamberlain abandoned the appeasement approach after Hitler started shooting.
Present Day
When one talks about the Russian-Ukrainian war and what should be done using words like “compromise”, “concessions”, “negotiations”, “peace deals”, and so on, they clearly reveal a complete lack of accurate perspective.
Someone using such terms in this context clearly suggests that they are either manipulative, completely biased, consumed toxic doses of Russian propaganda, and/or otherwise have no idea what is really happening on the scene.
Terms like these have their place… in business deals, employee/employer interactions, family conflict.
But when one country embarks on a multi-year barbaric, murderous invasion of its innocent neighbor, WHAT COULD THERE POSSIBLY BE TO NEGOTIATE?.
In a case like this the only real, just, and lasting peace deal is one where Russia leaves Ukraine. Period. Reparations and criminal charges can all be addressed later – and must be addressed – but those are where the negotiations and deals can be discussed.
And what compromise could possibly even make any sense? Right now Russia bombs civilian Ukrainian cities almost nightly, burning people to death in their sleep, and leaving them crushed under collapsing buildings. What “compromise” or “concession” would be appropriate for Ukraine to make? Just asking that question makes my point. Should Russia agree to only burn people to death in their sleep a little less frequently? Maybe they could agree to only bomb hospitals on odd numbered months and kindergartens on even numbered months, but only if the U.S. and the E.U. stop providing air defense systems to stop them from hitting the hospitals and kindergartens?
The constantly-floated concession Ukraine should make is ceding the already-occupied areas. But wouldn’t this be a little like giving “Mike” the refund, a replacement car, and letting him live in the back lounge room of the dealership?
OK, OK, but if not talk, what is the solution?
The first challenge is to have the mindset that standing with, shaking hands with, bargaining with, compromising with, and chumming around with evil mass murderers is wrong. It is at least passive support for their barbarism. If I have convinced you of that, then we’re over the biggest hump of at least recognizing the problem. Where there’s a sober and accurate recognition of the challenge at hand we can at least head in the right direction in search of a solution. Then solutions that may sound extreme in other contexts become obvious in the current reality.
If after attempts at “talk”, “negotiations”, “concessions”, and “compromise”, both before the full invasion started and repeatedly since then, Russia still murders Ukrainians in their sleep NIGHTLY for four+ years (and counting), then what?
At that point the only real end answer is that Ukraine must win and Russia must lose. Period. No ceding of territory. No limits imposed upon the size of military Ukraine may possess. No agreement of “neutrality” (“neutrality” means Ukraine abandons bid to join NATO). No agreement to any demands of Russia as to how Ukraine conducts their own affairs, or what other nations they ally themselves with. Ukraine wins. Russian troops leave Ukraine and Russia stops attacking Ukraine from its own territory. That’s the only acceptable deal, just as the only acceptable outcomes in my hypothetical examples is that “Mike” (in the dealership story) or the armed invader of the family home are either arrested or killed in the process of arrest.
AFTER that outcome we can “talk” about how Russia is going to pay for the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of death, injury, damage, and destruction they have done. Perhaps this would be the time to talk about seizing that $300B worth of Russian investment in Europe to turn over to Ukraine as PART of these reparations.
Then the world can get together and talk and negotiate about how to prevent this kind of barbarism in the future.
Where the Hypothetical Fails
I hope that my hypothetical helps some see the dynamic at play in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but it is absolutely unlike the global real world parallels of Nazi Germany and Russia/Putin. And the difference isn’t only in scale, but in the depth of evil involved.
In the “Mike vs. the Toyota Dealership” Mike was “the bad guy”, without a doubt. But in his case he was only motivated to solve a problem… To right a wrong… and it was actually a legitimate grievance. It was an absolutely inappropriate criminal approach, but Mike started the whole interaction innocently enough, trying to buy a new car. Then through each subsequent interaction tensions escalated to the point where he absolutely crossed a line that could never be undone. Justice was required.
Mike became a “bad guy”, but it was rather random, and just raw, primitive reactions. It was a little more like a conflict at a bar between drunk guys that ended up in the parking lot with one of them dead.
With Hitler and Putin they simply had an appetite for empire, to subjugate entire other countries just out of a dark, evil desire. It’s calmly planned, premeditated. Sure, both claimed they had grievances that they were attempting to address, but their actions proved beyond all doubt that they are just pure evil to the core.
And in the case of Russia far more than Germany, it’s been their pattern for centuries. Russia has a five century rap sheet of invading, raping, torturing, murdering ALL of it’s neighbors. It’s not the hothead trying to make things right.