Staff Reports
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Breitbart’s Washington bureau that the United States has been forced to step into diplomacy over the Russia-Ukraine war because European leaders “won’t even engage,” bluntly warning that “if you don’t talk, you can’t stop it.” His blunt assessment should be a wake-up call for every American who has watched Brussels posture while the fighting grinds on.
Bessent made the remarks during a Breitbart policy discussion with Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle and others on September 8, 2026, speaking not as an academic but as the nation’s Treasury secretary in the Trump administration. He is no lightweight pundit; his office carries real authority on sanctions and economic pressure, tools the United States must use wisely.
Let’s be honest about what this means: European elites prefer moralizing press releases and photo-ops to the hard, messy work of diplomacy and deterrence. While our allies craft statements and wring their hands, American taxpayers and soldiers are left to shoulder the real burden of a continent-defining conflict. This abandonment is not only costly—it’s dangerous.
Bessent specifically defended the U.S. move to ensure the Russian delegation was present at the G20, arguing that you cannot solve a “horrendous war” if parties refuse to sit down and negotiate. That stance is practical, not pacifist; it recognizes that isolation without leverage yields neither peace nor security.
But make no mistake: talking is not the same as appeasing. Conservatives should demand that any American-brokered engagement start from strength—ironclad sanctions, arms for Ukraine to defend itself, and clear demands for a durable ceasefire that protects sovereignty. If Washington is to lead where Europe will not, it must do so with firmness, clarity, and the national interest first.
Hardworking Americans deserve a foreign policy that protects our people and our friends, not one shaped by timid diplomats and virtue-signaling bureaucrats in Brussels. Support for leaders like Bessent—who acknowledge reality and act—is the only responsible course while Europe wakes up to its obligations. If European leaders refuse to lead, then yes: the United States must step up, negotiate from a position of strength, and make sure that talking leads to stopping the slaughter, not enabling it.
