Washington — Making future military aid to Ukraine contingent on its participation in peace talks with Russia. Chinese nationals are prohibited from purchasing property within a 50-mile radius of US government structures. Filling the national security sector with supporters of Donald Trump.

One group attempting to prepare the framework for a second Trump administration if the former Republican president wins in November has released a new policy book articulating an “America First” national security strategy.

The book, which was shared with The Associated Press before its release on Thursday, is the America First Policy Institute’s newest endeavor. Like the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” the group aims to help Trump avoid the mistakes he made in 2016 when he entered the White House unprepared.

In addition to its policy activities, the institute’s transition project has been working on dozens of executive orders and a training program for prospective political appointees. Heritage has been developing a comprehensive personnel database and providing its policy manuals.

Both organizations emphasize their independence from Trump’s campaign, which has frequently made an effort to distance itself from such efforts by claiming that the only ideas the candidate supports are those that he has himself expressed.

Still, the book’s editor, Fred Fleitz, stated that he and retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who served as Trump’s acting national security adviser and wrote several of the chapters, have been in frequent contact with the former president, soliciting feedback and discussing topics such as Ukraine in depth.

We hope this is where he is. “We’re not speaking for him, but I believe he will approve,” said Fleitz, who formerly served as the National Security Council’s chief of staff.

A Trump Affiliated Group Has Released A New National Security Book Outlining Prospective Second-Term Approaches.

He thinks the book will serve as “an intellectual foundation for the America First approach” to national security and be “easy to use.”

“It’s a grand strategy,” Kellogg continued. “You do not begin with the policies first. You start with the strategies first. And that’s what we did.”

The group portrays the current direction of US national security as a failure, blaming the foreign policy establishment for embracing an interventionist and “globalist” strategy at the expense of America’s national interests.

While lacking in specifics, the book provides guidelines for how a potential Trump administration should address foreign policy concerns such as Russia’s war against Ukraine. Trump has stated that if elected, he will resolve the problem before Inauguration Day in January but has yet to specify how.

The war chapter in the book focuses on how the conflict developed rather than how it was resolved. However, it states that any US military help should be subject to Ukraine’s participation in peace talks with Russia.

It forecasts that the Ukrainian army would gradually lose ground and warns against the US continuing “to send arms to a stalemate that Ukraine will eventually find difficult to win.” However, once a peace accord is reached, it states that the United States will continue to arm Ukraine as a deterrence to Russia.

The authors appear to support a framework in which Ukraine “would not be asked to relinquish the goal of regaining all its territory” but would agree to diplomacy “with the understanding that this would require a future diplomatic breakthrough, which probably will not occur before (Russian President Vladimir) Putin leaves office.”

A Trump Affiliated Group Has Released A New National Security Book Outlining Prospective Second-Term Approaches.

It recognizes that Ukrainians “will have difficulty accepting a negotiated peace that does not return all of their territory or, at least for now, hold Russia accountable for the carnage it inflicted on Ukraine.” Their supporters will, too. However, as Donald Trump stated during the CNN town hall in 2023, ‘I want everyone to stop dying.’ That is our viewpoint as well. It’s a good first step.

The book blames Democratic President Joe Biden for the war and reiterates Trump’s argument that if he had been president, Putin would never have invaded. Its key argument in support of that assertion is that Putin regarded Trump as powerful and determined. Trump developed a close relationship with the Russian leader and hesitated to question him.

Most of the chapter outlines an, at times, inaccurate timeline of Biden’s management of the conflict.

Moving forward, it appears like Putin could be convinced to participate in peace talks if Biden and other NATO leaders offer to postpone Ukraine’s NATO membership for an extended time. It proposes that the United States develop a “long-term security architecture for Ukraine’s defense that focuses on bilateral security defense.” It needs to explain what this entails. It also proposes charges on Russian energy sales to fund Ukraine’s rehabilitation.

The book criticizes Trump’s 2016 transition operations, citing a general lack of preparation before Trump took office.

“The tumultuous transition of 2016/2017 did not serve President Trump and the nation well and slowed the advancement and implementation of his agenda,” the writers stated. For example, they point out that before the election, Democrat Hillary Clinton’s transition team submitted over 1,000 names for future security clearance. Trump’s team filed only 25.

The group claims to have identified over 1,200 national security-related roles that the future administration would need to fill and wants it to be prepared on Day 1 with Trump loyalists who support the “America First” strategy.

“It is not about retaliating against individuals or attempting to politicize official posts. “It’s about ensuring that government employees do their jobs while keeping politics out of it,” Fleitz added.

The book portrays China as the country’s most significant national security concern, eager to dethrone the United States as the world’s dominant force. It advocates a hardline policy that builds on methods taken under both the Trump and Biden administrations to render Beijing’s actions “largely irrelevant to American life.”

A Trump Affiliated Group Has Released A New National Security Book Outlining Prospective Second-Term Approaches.

It raises economic concerns about China to national security ones and advocates a reciprocal strategy that would deny Beijing access to US markets in the same way that American enterprises have been denied access in China.

The book also calls for more stringent screening of cyber and digital enterprises owned by US rivals, particularly China, to ensure they are not collecting sensitive information. It also advises prohibiting Chinese people from purchasing property within a 50-mile radius of any US federal facility.

It advocates for visa restrictions on Chinese students seeking to study in the United States and the ban of TikTok and other Chinese apps due to worries about data privacy. Conversely, Trump has spoken out against legislation that would force TikTok to sell or ban access in the United States.

Analysts’ interpretations of what constitutes an “America First” policy frequently reflect the writers’ own interests.

Ellie Cohanim, a former Trump senior State Department ambassador in charge of monitoring and combatting antisemitism, sees “America First” as a shopping list for Israel’s military.

The United States should provide Israel with a squadron of “25 Lockheed Martin F-35s, one squadron of Boeing’s F-15 EX, and a squadron of Apache E attack helicopters,” Cohanim stated.

The United States should give Israel some of its billions of dollars in military funding in Israeli currency so that it can spend it at home, and Washington should press Arab states to foot the bill for Gaza reconstruction and accept Israel’s suspension of any political talks with the Palestinians pending an indefinite period of compulsory deradicalization for the Palestinian people, she wrote.

SOURCE – (AP)