"I do think that it's sort of getting to peace quickly and ending and reaching a peaceful resolution where we make among other things, a hard commitment that NATO will not admit Ukraine to NATO is absolutely a must and an imperative," Vivek told Elon Musk during an online conversation on X platform on Friday.
"I think that the managerial class at the Pentagon, it's time to go. I think that this is an antiquated group… they haven't offered a clear statement of mission and purpose."
Vivek, in comparison to his other main runners for the Republican nominee, also surprised with his knowledge of history and lengthy answers.
"I'm not sure that the cut and dry Ukraine side of this versus Russia side of this is as clean as we make it out to be - in the sense that there's a lot of history here in the Donbass region and there's a lot of history for NATO saying that we would not expand," the entrepreneur said.
Vivek added that former US Secretary of State James Baker’s commitment to Gorbachev in 1991 was that the US would not expand one inch; that was the famous not one inch commitment beyond Germany, he added.
"And yet here we are now even not only admitting more nations to NATO after the fall of the USSR than we ever did during the USSR, but now even entertaining the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO, which was the one hard commitment that Putin required, or at least appear to demand prior to his decision to actually pull the trigger and invade Ukraine," the presidential candidate said.
According to a recent Rasmussen Reports poll, most Republican-leaning voters, 57%, will favor Trump as the party’s 2024 nominee. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis trails in second place at 13%, followed by former US Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie at 5% each. US Senator Tim Scott, former US Ambassador Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy also polled in the single digits.