Author
Daniel Fried
Ambassador Daniel Fried is the Weiser Family Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council. In his forty-year Foreign Service career, Ambassador Fried played a key role in designing and implementing U.S. policy in Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union. As Special Assistant and NSC Senior Director for Presidents Clinton and Bush, Ambassador to Poland, and Assistant Secretary of State for Europe (2005-09), Ambassador Fried helped craft the policy of NATO enlargement to Central European nations and, in parallel, NATO-Russia relations. As State Department Coordinator for Sanctions Policy when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, he crafted the initial U.S. sanctions against Russia.
Articles
When you want it bad, you get it bad: Steve Witkoff and the US push to end the war
"When you want it bad, you get it bad." That’s how one of my colleagues on the Clinton National Security Council staff described the problem when a U.S. administration chases after an objective so hard that it either forgets what it set out to achieve or simply goes for a "win," no matter the cost or consequence.
That’s the weakness of much of the Trump administration’s approach to seeking a deal to end Russia’s war against Ukraine: it sometimes seems to want any deal, not a sustainable deal.
