My advice to President Trump as he prepares for his summit with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday: …Continue reading →
My advice to President Trump as he prepares for his summit with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday: Keep your eye on the ball – and indeed, on the only ball that counts for American interests. That’s preventing the Ukraine war from spreading onto the territory of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members over which the United States has extended a nuclear umbrella if need be, and therefore possibly embroiling America into direct conflict with an adversary boasting its own formidable nuclear force. And all for a country whose fate has never been considered anywhere near a vital U.S. security interest.
This was a priority of course that former President Biden kept forgetting or at least fudging. On the one hand, he repeatedly insisted that resisting and even defeating Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would determine the fate of freedom and democracy and the liberal global order all over the world – all aims that sounded pretty crucial to the United States. Indeed, he vowed that U.S. support for Ukraine “will not waver.” (See, e.g., here.)
On the other, from the beginning, Biden decided that direct conflict with Russia must be avoided at all costs, as made clear by his refusal to put U.S. military boots on the ground, by his long-time determination to permit only defensive weapons to be supplied to Ukraine, and most strikingly by his opposition to admitting Ukraine into NATO – which would have declared it a vital interest worth running the nuclear war risk.
Yet by deciding to in effect defend all the crucial aforementioned goals on the cheap, Biden practically ensured that his policies would never achieve them, and at the same time guaranteed that the fighting would continue and threaten to escalate disastrously.
As a result, because from a true America First standpoint keeping the chances of a nuclear attack on the U.S. homeland as close to zero as possible, Mr. Trump’s overriding aims must be first achieving a ceasefire and then turning it into a longer term end to hostilities. Nothing else remotely compares in importance – not Ukraine’s sovereignty and independence, certainly not the control of specific pieces of Ukrainian (or Russian) territory, and not even keeping Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in power.
Other objectives mentioned variously by Ukraine’s supporters – like so-far-unspecified forms of security guarantees falling short of NATO membership, or massive arms shipments aimed at enabling Ukraine to fend off (and presumably deter) Russia going forward – are even less important.
All of which means that the president will need to pressure Kyiv and the major European powers to accept terms that they keep doggedly resisting (even though the latter, of course, still lack anywhere near the military capability to become Ukraine’s main weapons supplier). And because a genuine America First approach would never give another country a veto over matters affecting its own vital interests, there’s no special need to permit Zelensky to participate in the Trump-Putin talks.
Of course, the Ukrainians and their neighbors could always decide to reject such an America First approach. In which the United States – as Mr. Trump suggested in April – could leave them to their own devices. It’s true that the conflict could still spill into NATO territory, but the likelihood would be much less because American aid has been so critical to Ukraine’s defenses.
All the usual suspects will bitterly complain that such appeasement of Putin will only postpone Ukraine’s day of reckoning, prompt Moscow to move against other neighboring countries not yet within the NATO alliance, and even enable Russia to build up enough military strength to attack nearby NATO members and Western Europe. Acknowledging that Ukraine continues to lie within a Russian sphere of influence, it’s charged, would also embolden other bellicose leaders (like China’s Xi Jinping) to move against other targets (like Taiwan).
As mentioned above, though, even Ukraine supporters’ general reluctance to admit Kyiv into NATO reveals their recognition that the value of Ukraine to U.S. interests is considerably less than vital. By definition, the same goes for other Eastern European countries left out of the alliance.
That places those countries into a fundamentally, and decisively, different category than the NATO members – whose admittance into the alliance by the United States does establish them as vital interests. Therefore, American pledges on behalf of their defense (which are backed up by U.S. military units deployed on their soil to reinforce deterrence against Russia) are vastly more credible than any possible U.S. commitments to protect the non-NATO members.
Similarly, outside Europe, Washington can best deter aggression by strengthening its commitments to unmistakably vital interests (like Taiwan and its world-leading semiconductor manufacturing prowess), rather than by pretending it will go to the mat for interests that are just as unmistakably not vital.
Just as important, fears of “another Munich” completely overlook the fact that even before major outside arms aid flooded in, Ukraine was resisting the Russians very effectively on its own. And even if Moscow decided to call America’s nuclear bluff, its forces are going to roll across the rest of the continent? Seriously?
To close, I’ll infuriate the Ukraine interventionists further. In a 2014 article, I urged then President Obama to help ease a budding Ukraine crisis by apologizing publicly to Russia for expanding NATO right up to its borders soon after the Cold War ended. In order to cater to Putin’s glaringly obvious desire for international respect (not to mention propaganda victories), I recommended that Obama stipulate that the expansion decision wouldn’t be reversed, but admit that enlarging the alliance understandably alarmed Russia, and promise that no further members be accepted.
I still believe that such a statement would importantly mollify Putin, and it would be even easier for Mr. Trump to issue – since it would allow him a new chance to dump on his globalist predecessors.
There’s no doubt that ending the Ukraine war on these terms would not “make anybody super happy” (Vice President JD Vance’s words). In fact, let’s be honest: It’s going to reward an instance of aggression, reduce the number of democratically elected national leaders, and make the lives of Ukrainians (and maybe some of their neighbors) worse politically and materially (barring whatever postwar reconstruction can take place). But by recognizing the decisive roles played by geography and power in a still dog-eat-dog world, what it will also do is prevent much further bloodshed and draw the entire world further back from nuclear conflict. That would be good even for the Ukrainians.
