As 44th Vice President of the United States, Dan Quayle made dozens of diplomatic trips, many destined to help shape the Soviet Union after the Cold War. As a voter, Quayle has thrown his vote for Donald Trump in three consecutive presidential elections. But when these two things together, the current vision of the former VP reaches a pessimistic conclusion about the current position in relations between the United States and Russia and the war in Ukraine.
“We are not approaching the end,” said Tuesday, Quayle, who is now president of Cerberus Global Investments, at the CNBC CEO Council in Arizona. “Putin doesn’t want to see that this reaches a conclusion until Ukraine really dismantles,” he said.
While Quayle is clear about Putin’s thought, it is Trump’s strategy that baffles him. “I don’t understand Trump’s affinity by Putin and why he has not demanded anything here,” he said. “Everything you want to do as president is offers … So, if you are a merchant, what do you need? Leverage. What leverage is trying to put in Putin? Zero. Absolutely zero,” said Quayle.
During the weekend, Trump had published in Truth Social before the conversations with the Russian and Ukrainian leaders: “Hopefully it will be a productive day, a high fire will be carried out, and this very violent war, a war that should never have happened, will end,” in their usual comments totally capitalized.
On Monday, after a call for more than two hours between Trump and Putin, the president said he wanted the “bloodbath” to end, but there was little sign of an advance, even when Trump said that Russia and Ukraine would maintain direct conversations in a high fire “immediately”, on its social networks platform. He also spoke with the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Monday.
“Putin says he will not agree with a high fire, he just wants to talk, Trump says he is fine,” Quayle told Sara Eisen de CNBC in an interview at the CEO Council Summit. He said that the lack of pressure also undermines an American policy alliance with the European Union, that if Russia did not agree with a high fire, there would be secondary sanctions. “Putin said we talk, and Trump says yes, and European leaders have just taken the carpet from under them,” said Quayle. “I don’t think it’s over soon,” he added.
Quayle’s vision of the Russian play book is that all the time has been “dismantling Ukraine, and time is on his side.”
And although Putin has not been as successful as he would have liked him on the battlefield, “he has been very successful with Trump,” said Quayle, and added that the background of KGB of Putin do so and his circle well located to know Trump’s “weakness and vulnerability and how to deal with him.”
Photo of the Archive: The President of the United States, Donald Trump, and Russian President Vladimir Putin celebrate a bilateral meeting at the G20 leaders summit in Osaka, Japan, on June 28, 2019.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
While Quayle does not believe that Trump can “wash his hands” of the conflict when he finally realizes that Putin has no interest in a high fire: “Congress has something to say about it and there is still a bipartisan support for Ukraine,” said: Quayle says
To end the war, the United States needs “a lot of money in Swiss banks that are Russians delivered to Ukraine,” said Quayle.
Second, the United States needs to give Ukraine even more weapons.
Third, there must be secondary sanctions to Russia.
“Suddenly, Putin would come to the table if you do those three things,” said Quayle. “It comes to the table tomorrow.”
But Quayle does not believe this happens. “It’s not what he believes, he doesn’t want to do anything substantial to provide pressure or leverage to Putin,” he said.
The strategy in Russia leaves Quayle perplexed. “I don’t have an answer,” he said.
Although he pointed out that Trump likes to say that it is “the Biden War”, he believes that there will be political repercussions for the president’s already weakened popularity if Trump drops Ukraine. “He inherited this war, but is under his surveillance, and if he moves completely from Ukraine, which I don’t think he does, but it could, there will be a significant political price.”
“Americans don’t like war, but they don’t like to lose wars, and if you are seen as the loser in this, there will be a price to pay, so you need to solve it,” Quayle said.
“He wants peace. He doesn’t like war, but then he’s so unilateral, and that is a problem,” he added.
While Trump warned Zelenskyy who was risking World War II in his infamous meeting of the Oval office, Quayle says that the greatest risk is Trump’s current strategy: “You really want to talk about who is risking [WWIII]? Simply let Russia engulf Ukraine, and then to Poland, and then to the Balkans, and then you are going to talk about World War II. “
On the rates: ‘Do you call that a strategy?’
Dan Quayle, president of Cerberus Global Investments speaks during the CNBC CEO Council event in Arizona on May 20, 2025.
Chris coduto | CNBC
During the interview, Quayle also seemed perplexed by Trump’s rates strategy. “Do you call it a strategy?” He said in response to the framing of a question. “I do not think there is a strategy. It is so top down. But it is the theory of Mad Man or is a great incompetence, or perhaps at some intermediate point … we will have to wait and see. In the short term, I do not believe that there is a great impact, but in the long term, the capital expenses are delayed, the supply scales are bothering themselves. It will be inflatable on the road,” he said.
In China, he said there can be no total decoupling between the two nations that occur $ 600 billion in trade, but companies move away from China as much as possible and when possible as part of long -term planning. The Trump administration realizes that the much bigger question is how to “avoid a hot war between the United States and China, not tomorrow or next month or two years from now on, but in the future,” he said.
Quayle added that, although Trump’s recent trip to the Middle East was “successful” and agreements are a victory for the United States in terms of counteracting China’s growing influence in the rich and geopolitically sensitive region, his approach to Russia and Putin is not helping. Although the former vice president does not believe that there is a short -term threat of a complete taiwan invasion by China, certain smaller and relatively populated islands closer to Continental China could be attacked. “China is looking at Ukraine carefully due to Taiwan,” he said.
“Looking at the situation in Ukraine and observing how Russia avoids these sanctions, and Russia is doing a good job. China is seeing that. Xi Jinping is looking at that,” Quayle said.
