Okay, here goes: President Trump, you are acting like an idiot over Ukraine. And you are simply wrong on fact.
Ukraine did not “start” the present war with Russia. The war began with a brutal Russian invasion, green-lighted by then-president Biden’s comment that his Administration wouldn’t react to a “minor incursion.” So Vlad the Terrible decided to grab the country up. After all, it had been “part” of Russia since, well, forever in his mind. Ukraine resisted and the war was on.
Three years later the war drags on. Ukraine is exhausted and Russia is using both foreign troops and armaments. Clearly, now is the time to call a halt and sort out a reasonable settlement.
But meeting with one of the belligerents while the other party to the conflict is pointedly not at the table, or even in the next room? Sorry, the optics on that speak to Munich – and I don’t mean Secretary of State Rubio’s Security Conference appearance or Vice President Vance’s speech. No, I refer to the Munich confab of September 29-30 of 1938, in which British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sold Czechoslovakia to Adolf Hitler for another 11 months of shaky peace in Europe. Czechoslovakia’s President Edvard Beneš wasn’t invited to that meeting, either.
There are other eerie echoes. One of the questions in the Munich betrayal was the fate of the largest of Czechoslovakia’s national minorities, the Sudeten Germans, who had been whipped up into a successionist frenzy by the Nazis – exactly as the ethnic Russians of Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea regions had been stirred to revolt and armed by Russia during the Obama presidency. And just as France had guaranteed Czechoslovakia military assistance in case of an attack in a 1924 treaty, both the US and UK had – together with Russia – guaranteed the territorial integrity of the Ukraine in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.
It is no small matter that, in return for the Memorandum’s guarantees Ukraine surrendered its nuclear arsenal, inherited from the collapsed Soviet Union. It was the world’s third largest, and they gave it away in exchange for promises. Now, one of the guarantors is in possession of about a quarter of Ukraine’s national territory, taken by force in the largest military conflict in Europe since the Second World War. The other two guarantors have been looking around with a “Who, me?” expression on their faces since Vlad the Terrible went full Thug Mode on his neighbor. But now, the time has come.
If this administration really wants to “put an end to this war, fast…” it can. But you won’t do it by undermining the Ukrainian president, by not including him in the conversation and calling him an “unelected dictator.” Not only is that sort of language incorrect – the “unelected dictator,” regardless of the results of the last poll in Russia, is in the Kremlin and your people are having talks with his people, discussing the fate of a large European state. Calling president Zelinsky names only increases the feeling in the aggressor’s camp that you’re about to abandon a country whose safety our country guaranteed. There’s a name for that sort of heinous poltroonery, and “Great” ain’t anywhere near it.
Worse, the effects of your craven abandonment won’t be limited to Kyiv. Around the world, our allies and associates have leaders who are very calculating, many of whom are likely to think “If this man will abandon a country invaded while under United States guarantee, what are those guarantees – and by extension, the president’s words – worth? Apparently, not much.”
In international diplomacy, one’s word and character are everything; the same applies to nations. If one is known to do as one says, reaching understandings is far easier and quicker, particularly when important interests are involved. It one is known for false bravado and knavery on the other hand, coming to agreement is magnitudes more difficult. “Donald the Perfidious” is a title which will do neither the President, nor the country, any good internationally. So that sort of tripe should end.
By the way – the last I looked Sunday has passed and “all the hostages” in HAMAS’ hands aren’t back. Where’s this Hell thing that was supposed to result? Hmmm? This is the worst kind of weakness. It reminds me of Barry’s “line in the sand” in Syria.
In short, don’t make threats you aren’t prepared to carry out. Ever.
Don’t make promises you have no intention of keeping. Ever.
Your intention may be to make Europe shoulder the burden of keeping Ukraine – and by extension, themselves – free. This is not, of itself, a bad goal, but… we made a promise, and in a world that includes Iran and the Arab states; Taiwan and China and many other combustible mixtures, we need to make certain everyone knows we mean it when we say “You may depend on us.”
To continue as you’ve begun with the long-suffering nation of Ukraine will, I fear, make the world a far lonelier and more dangerous place for the country you promised you would make “Great Again.”
This is not the way.
