Flynn’s Rules of Diplomacy for American Officials

Moving Toward a Nuclear Conflict

I have never been a Diplomat, although at times had to be diplomatic. Even though I had interactions with the State Department during my 33 years in the U.S. Army, I really am not sure about how American diplomats are instructed to speak to or about other great powers, specifically the Russian Federation. What I hear coming out of the mouths of officials in both the Legislative and Executive Branches leads me to believe the American government has little to no standards. In my judgment, these comments are made to denigrate Russia, but they also degrade us as a nation. This is not how great powers should deal with each other. If there is a rulebook of diplomatic speech these people are following, it needs to be thrown out the window. The same is true about how we treat all other great powers. To what standard should we then hold ourselves?

Rather than proceed toward a nuclear standoff, my basic message is that all American officials must speak about and treat the Russian Federation and its President Vladimir Putin with the respect due a great power (and a nuclear power). As our nation inches toward a senseless and avoidable nuclear world war, I am willing to risk being criticized for weakness or naivety or anything else that the Deep State may choose. I don’t care.

These same forces already tried their best to destroy me when I was appointed as President Trump’s first National Security Advisor and tried to calm the waters with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. People forget now, but the Obama Administration lied about Russian hacking of the Democrat National Committee servers and the 2016 election, and unfairly expelled 35 Russian Diplomats on December 29, 2016. Among other topics I spoke with Ambassador Kislyak about was to urge him to not overreact, as a new Administration would be taking over soon. For this, I paid a heavy price. In one of our calls, the transcript reflects me telling the Ambassador, “you are not talking to a diplomat; you are talking to a soldier. I am a very practical guy. It’s all about solutions.” That is how I still feel. Perhaps that put a target on my back then, and perhaps it will now. So be it.

For the sake of reducing the risk of nuclear war, and for the sake of having decent relations with Russia, and for the sake of our children and grandchildren, this is a time for American officials to stop mouthing off at Russia like spoiled children. And, we must follow some basic rules about behaviors like not lying, cheating, and stealing. Many in Congress are probably impossible to control, but here is my effort to lay down the rules that I would urge we follow regarding how we speak about and treat the Russian Federation, its leadership, and most important, the people of Russia.

The Rules:

Rule #1. The U.S. should not lie.

I was head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. I know people lie. I know governments lie. The establishment press lies and the CIA lies. However, great world power leaders cannot lie to each other. I am not saying that the White House press secretary should answer questions about military operations or the like, or be required to give away all information in response to a question, but that is an entirely different matter. Lying between great nations never accomplishes anything except breaking the trust that great nations must have in each other.

It was before my time, but I remember studying the damage done to our relationship with the Soviet Union when President Eisenhower lied about the U-2 flight by Francis Gary Powers. I was a child at the time, but from studying history, I know that relations were harmed when President Kennedy lied about U.S. involvement in the Bay of Pigs invasion into Cuba. By the time the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred, Kennedy had turned the corner and was dealing straight with the Soviet leadership (at the time, Nikita Khrushchev). That tough, but honest, straightforward talk helped avert a World War.

Some may say that lying is part of the game. That everyone lies. Rubbish. I am reminded of the scene from the 1955 movie The Sea Chase where John Wayne played the captain of a German freighter trapped in Sydney, Australia at the outbreak of World War II. Wayne discusses strategy with the German Consul-General and tells him using his best cowboy drawl: “I won’t lie for you.” The German diplomat’s response is classic: “Of course not! I wouldn’t think of asking you to lie. You haven’t had the necessary diplomatic training.” Lies may be the currency of covert operations, but not the direct communications between great nation leaders. And these days, with much more sophisticated intelligence capabilities, our adversaries can figure out we are lying almost as soon as the lie is stated. We simply cannot lie to our adversaries.

Rule #2. The U.S. must not break its word.

In recent years, it has been proven that the U.S. promised Russia that if it allowed the dissolution of the Soviet Union, we would not expand NATO eastward. Secretary of State James Baker promised in 1990 that NATO would move “not one inch eastward.” West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher repeated the assurances. But we lied. NATO expanded under President Clinton (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic); under President George W. Bush (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria); under President Obama (Albania and Croatia); and even under President Trump, two small countries (Montenegro and North Macedonia) joined NATO. Russia consistently has pointed to the U.S. breaking its word with the eastern expansion of NATO as the principal reason it viewed the Ukraine as an existential threat. How might the lives of the people of the Ukraine be different if we had kept our word and NATO had not expanded?

Rule #3. The U.S. should not insult, demean, ridicule, or threaten.

When I heard President Biden call President Putin “a pure thug,” a “murderous dictator” and a “war criminal,” I cringed. John McCain used the same terms. Even then-Senator Marco Rubio called President Putin “a gangster” and “an authoritarian thug,” although those days appear to be over in his current role. Now, Secretary of State Rubio, a man with a lot on his plate, comes across as a diplomat of the highest order. Lindsey Graham has also called President Putin a “thug.” What good does this kind of sound bite do? Perhaps Graham believes that the voters of South Carolina want to hear such nonsense, but I think soon, he will find out that South Carolina voters have had enough of his stirring the pot of war.

On July 16, 2025, for reasons no one has explained, Army General Christopher Donahue suggested that the U.S. and NATO might invade the Russian city of Kaliningrad, a small city surrounded by Lithuania and Poland. Donahue’s remarks are highly provocative and should be cause for his removal. That said, as Donahue noted, “Kaliningrad, Russia, is roughly 47 miles wide and surrounded by NATO on all sides and the Army and its allies now have the capability to ‘take that down from the ground in a timeframe that is unheard of and faster than we’ve ever been able to do…. We’ve already planned that and we’ve already developed it. The mass and momentum problem that Russia poses to us … we’ve developed the capability to make sure that we can stop that mass and momentum problem,’ Donahue said.”

Not surprisingly, Russian lawmaker Leonid Slutsky responded to the threat to invade Russian territory. “An attack on the Kaliningrad Region will mean an attack on Russia, with all due retaliatory measures, stipulated, among other things, by its nuclear doctrine. The US general should take this into account before making such statements,” Slutsky said.

What possible positive outcome Donahue thought would come from a comment about invading Russia remains unexplained. Nor is it explained why Russia should act any differently from the way Americans would react if Russia threatened a naval invasion of Alaska’s remote Aleutian Islands.

Rule #4. The U.S. should never support assassinations.

I could use Lindsey Graham for several of these points about what not to do, but after the Russians moved into the Ukraine, Graham said, “The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out... You would be doing your country — and the world — a great service.” Such comments are a disgrace. Have we not had enough assassination attempts on President Trump that we still want to legitimize assassination of world leaders? President Reagan signed Executive Order 12333 in 1981 banning the assassination of foreign leaders. This must be enforced.

Rule #5. The U.S. should never call for regime change.

On March 26, 2022, President Biden said in Warsaw, Poland: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” Neocon and former National Security Advisor John Bolton has said, “Putin must go: Now is the time for regime change in Russia.” Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul has called President Putin’s government “illegitimate” and accused him of “war crimes.” And, McFaul is supposed to be a trained diplomat. How would we feel if President Putin called for the downfall of President Trump? None of this is acceptable behavior.

Rule #6. The U.S. should always be willing to negotiate.

I confess with my background growing up in an Irish Catholic Democrat family in Rhode Island that I have always had great admiration for President John F. Kennedy. As I have traveled the country giving speeches, I have often referenced President Kennedy, and sometimes drew strange stares from my conservative friends as a result. However, I believe he often gave us wise counsel, including his January 1961 inaugural address when he said: “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy had to work around his own appointees, particularly at the Pentagon and the CIA, to establish a direct dialogue outside of normal channels with President Khruschev to resolve the crisis. It worked, and war was averted. Thank God he was willing to negotiate. From all appearances, it seems President Trump is attempting to do the same despite great pressure from the Neocon-Right and Left.

Rule #7. The U.S. should view this dispute from the other nation’s perspective.

Perhaps the most relevant illustration of this principle is the way many in our government view what the Russian Federation calls its Special Military Operation in Ukraine. The American people have been lied to incessantly that the Russian move was an unprovoked act of aggression. However, there is another side to this story as to why the Russian Federation believes it was forced to take the action it did, provoked by Western nations, including the endless expansion of NATO. But even if they refuse to face (or admit) the fact that there is another side to the story, our leaders need to have a moment of introspection. There is always another side to the story, even if it is not as persuasive.

Again, JFK explained this point much better than I ever could, this time in his American University Commencement Speech. He said,

But I also believe that we must reexamine our own attitude – as individuals and as a Nation – for our attitude is as essential as theirs. And every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward – by examining his own attitude toward the possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Union, toward the course of the cold war and toward freedom and peace here at home. [Emphasis added.]

Rule #8. The U.S. should never back a nuclear power into a corner.

Here I go again, with another example of John F. Kennedy’s American University Commencement Speech:

Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to (a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war). To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy – or of a collective death-wish for the world. [Emphasis added.]

It may make us feel good to try to humiliate the leader of a great country, but it is among the worst types of mistakes we could make given Russia’s nuclear arsenal.

Rule #9. We should never assume that only the U.S. wants peace.

One last time, JFK said at American University:

Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war. Almost unique among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other. And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and farms were burned or sacked. A third of the nation’s territory, including nearly two thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland – a loss equivalent to the devastation of this country east of Chicago. [Emphasis added.]

In a 2025 poll, over 80 percent of Russians say their country should seek a closer relationship with the United States. The idea that Russians are irrevocably hostile to America is simply not true.

Rule #10. The U.S. should never steal.

After the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, the U.S. and its allies froze at least $300 billion in Russian assets, as well as property belonging to wealthy Russians. The G7 has proposed to use the interest earned on this money to fund the war against Russia. Is it any wonder that such treatment causes other countries not to trust us? Is it any wonder that other countries are motivated to create an alternative financial structure to avoid the West, such as BRICS? BRICS was created in 2006 by Brazil, Russia, India, and China, soon joined by South Africa (the nations’ initials created the BRICS acronym). BRICS “was designed to bring together the world’s most important developing countries, to challenge the political and economic power of the wealthier nations of North America and Western Europe.” Given how much we took of what belongs to others, should we be surprised when Russia looks for more trustworthy economic partners?

Some Concluding Thoughts

As the leader of a great country, would you have confidence in dealing with a nation which violated these basic rules of diplomacy? Would you be willing to negotiate with a nation which routinely showed disrespect? It is no wonder we are moving toward a nuclear conflict with Russia, the world’s other great nuclear power.

President Kennedy’s speech at American University explained that it is nuclear weapons which force us to pursue peace with all our energy:

I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War.

Our nation has seen endless wars for decades, but those wars have always been “over there.” A nuclear war would not be like that. As President Kennedy explained,

[War] makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.

It is time for our leaders to control their emotions. It is time to guard our tongues. It is time to show respect to our adversaries as well as our friends. If we behave with respect, perhaps then we could find a way forward with our adversaries.

So, if I were advising him now, I would urge President Trump to implement these 10 rules for the Executive Branch.

I urge the voters to reject candidates for Congress whose irresponsible rhetoric brings us closer to nuclear war.

And perhaps most importantly, I ask that all Americans pray for our elected and appointed officials, that God would give them the wisdom, the discernment, and the character required to lead our nation. For we are told to pray: “For kings and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.” (I Timothy 2:2.)

I pray that if we demonstrate such an act of self-control, God would honor it, bring us back from the precipice of nuclear war, and protect the United States of America.