"As a diplomat, ambassador and senior aide to two Secretaries General of NATO, Jack spent much of his life immersed in the long struggle for a lasting peace with Moscow. He was a key member of the delegation at the meetings of the 1970s of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which produced the Helsinki Accords, in turn setting the stage for multilateral agreements in Paris in 1990 that, in Jack’s words, constituted the official and practical end of the Cold War. A bit later, at the behest of Secretary of State Jim Baker, Jack visited all the old (and newly freed) satellite states, including Ukraine. Now, says Jack, Vladimir Putin would upend all that. Hell-bent on reviving Russia’s territorial reach, Putin wants these countries back, in one way or another. Hence Ukraine. As I write, President-elect Trump is floating the idea of a negotiated settlement. Jack Maresca’s warning, as I understand it, is simply this: the West cannot cave in, and indeed should pursue a collective, strategic response that counters both the immediate challenges in Ukraine and also Putin’s broader ambition to take back as much as possible the full territory of the old USSR. And the US, he makes clear, can’t go it alone." —Robert B. Semple Jr., senior editor at the New York Times; Yale Alumni Magazine, March/April 2025.

"As a diplomat, ambassador and senior aide to two Secretaries General of NATO, Jack spent much of his life immersed in the long struggle for a lasting peace with Moscow. He was a key member of the delegation at the meetings of the 1970s of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which produced the Helsinki Accords, in turn setting the stage for multilateral agreements in Paris in 1990 that, in Jack’s words, constituted the official and practical end of the Cold War. A bit later, at the behest of Secretary of State Jim Baker, Jack visited all the old (and newly freed) satellite states, including Ukraine. Now, says Jack, Vladimir Putin would upend all that. Hell-bent on reviving Russia’s territorial reach, Putin wants these countries back, in one way or another. Hence Ukraine. As I write, President-elect Trump is floating the idea of a negotiated settlement. Jack Maresca’s warning, as I understand it, is simply this: the West cannot cave in, and indeed should pursue a collective, strategic response that counters both the immediate challenges in Ukraine and also Putin’s broader ambition to take back as much as possible the full territory of the old USSR. And the US, he makes clear, can’t go it alone." —Robert B. Semple Jr., senior editor at the New York Times; Yale Alumni Magazine, March/April 2025.

"As a diplomat, ambassador and senior aide to two Secretaries General of NATO, Jack spent much of his life immersed in the long struggle for a lasting peace with Moscow. He was a key member of the delegation at the meetings of the 1970s of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which produced the Helsinki Accords, in turn setting the stage for multilateral agreements in Paris in 1990 that, in Jack’s words, constituted the official and practical end of the Cold War. A bit later, at the behest of Secretary of State Jim Baker, Jack visited all the old (and newly freed) satellite states, including Ukraine. Now, says Jack, Vladimir Putin would upend all that. Hell-bent on reviving Russia’s territorial reach, Putin wants these countries back, in one way or another. Hence Ukraine. As I write, President-elect Trump is floating the idea of a negotiated settlement. Jack Maresca’s warning, as I understand it, is simply this: the West cannot cave in, and indeed should pursue a collective, strategic response that counters both the immediate challenges in Ukraine and also Putin’s broader ambition to take back as much as possible the full territory of the old USSR. And the US, he makes clear, can’t go it alone." —Robert B. Semple Jr., senior editor at the New York Times; Yale Alumni Magazine, March/April 2025.