With a foreign aid package getting caught up in Congress and the world on fire, typically we look to Republicans to be reasonable voices on American interests when it comes to foreign affairs. "America First," the mantra of the current crop of conservative Republicans who came up in the era of Trump, should mean that America's interests come first and our global foes' interests should not come at all.

The idea that America's interests need to be first is put to the test, then, after Sen. JD Vance of Ohio claimed that Ukraine should be willing to cede land to Russia as part of a peace agreement.

Vance also reiterated that he believes “there will be negotiation” and Ukraine should be willing to give up at least some of its territory to end the war, which began in February 2022.

“It ends the way nearly every single war has ever ended: when people negotiate and each side gives up something that it doesn’t want to give up,” Vance said.

“No one can explain to me how this ends without some territorial concessions relative to the 1991 boundaries,” he added.

A day earlier, Vance said on CNN's "State of the Union" that it was in "America's best interest ... to accept Ukraine is going to have to cede some territory to the Russians.”

But ceding land to Russia serves Russia's best interests, and as Russia is a geopolitical foe of the U.S., it seems odd that helping Russia achieve its goals would be in America's best interests.

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The fact of the matter is that this is far more complicated than a simple negotiation to end the war. Russian President Vladimir Putin is interested in returning Russia to its Cold War borders, not the borders of 1991, as Vance has indicated. Russia itself is very clear on what it wants from Ukraine.

Russia wants nothing less than Ukraine as, at best, a vassal state that the Kremlin controls. No real autonomy, no real power to make decisions for itself, and it's pretty clear that Putin will accept nothing less. The Russian military has proven itself to be far more of a paper tiger than anyone in Washington, D.C., could have anticipated, but Ukraine lacks the numbers or resources to fend them off forever. 

None of this is to say that the U.S. should fund Ukraine into perpetuity and without any sort of transparency as to where the money goes. On that, Senator Vance and I agree. My theory has been that the foreign policy establishment in Washington, D.C., does not care so much about Ukraine as it cares about forcing Russia to waste all its resources in an extended conflict. But the problem is that it's American taxpayer money paying for that extended conflict, not to mention our military resources subsidizing Ukraine's.

It's a very delicate situation. Russia is going to accept nothing less than total subservience from Ukraine and zero Western involvement. Ukraine will accept nothing less than full independence from Russia. The West will accept nothing less than Russian containment. Vance may be willing to compromise away Ukrainian land, but that only strengthens Russia.

It almost seems as though Vance wants Ukraine to be punished for daring to be invaded. It's bizarre.