Peace in Europe
Last weekend, there was a conference in Germany which discussed Syria, the Middle East in general, and the war between Russia and Ukraine.
One of the things which became obvious in the latter discussion was that Europeans tend to believe Russia President Vladimir Putin cherishes the fond desire to take over all of Europe. They believe the invasion of Ukraine was merely the first step. At the same time, only two thirds of European states are putting even 2% of their earnings into NATO’s defense fund.
President Donald Trump has called for the figure to be raised to 5%. A number of European attendees to the conference seemed to agree that the higher figure was called for. Trump, of course, also called for Europe to actually send an appropriate amount of money to Ukraine. He notes that the United States is protected by an ocean and does not run the risk that European states run. He is amazed, therefore, that the United States is paying more money and supplies into Ukraine than all the European states combined.
At the same time, Trump is extremely saddened by the number of Ukrainians and Russians that have been killed since the beginning of hostilities. He is appalled by Biden’s policy which was simply to keep supplying guns and ammo to Ukraine until every Russian soldier and every Ukrainian soldier was shot dead. What a heartless way to seek to destroy the military power of Russia.
America became involved in the Ukrainian controversy back at the breakup of the Soviet Union. Ukraine had ended up with a bunch of nuclear weapons left over from the Soviet era. We were attempting to prevent nuclear proliferation. Therefore, we posed a question to the leaders of Ukraine. Will you agree to give away your nukes to Russia if Russia agrees to remain at peace with you and if we agree to defend you if Russia breaks its word? The leaders of Ukraine said yes and turned over their nukes. Some years later Russia broke its word and invaded. We then broke our word by merely supplying Ukraine with weapons rather than also sending soldiers to fight.
Meanwhile, Putin periodically threatens to use nukes against Ukraine if we increase our supplies. He saber rattles but doesn’t go through with his threats because he realizes he’d be bringing nuclear Armageddon down on himself. Meanwhile, Putin has started importing North Koreans to fight in the war because of the horrific losses he’s suffered.
I wonder what would happen if the United States began taking the position that since both Russia and the United States had broken that non-proliferation treaty, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was entitled to the number of nuclear weapons the Ukrainian government had turned over to Russia. What if we committed to finding some for him unless Russia reaffirmed the treaty and got out of Ukraine? Would Putin go beyond saber rattling in his response? Would he opt to leave or would he attack?
One thing’s for certain. He would be absolutely shocked that the United States had the courage to take such a risk. We have been so risk averse under Joe Biden that we held back our best weapons for fear of angering Putin. You can’t win a war if you’re afraid of making your enemy angry.
We’re about to enter into negotiations with Putin with a view to ending the war. We already made a tactical error, however, when our new Secretary of Defense declared those negotiations would preclude Ukraine joining NATO and would not require that Russia leave all the territory which it is currently occupying. Donald Trump, author of “The Art of the Deal” would never make such concessions at the beginning of talks. It’s quite likely, furthermore, that Zelenskyy would not even agree to take part in those talks if such preconditions were in play. The old negotiator in chief, himself, will no doubt need to take a hands-on approach in these talks. He is certainly capable of presenting Putin with reasons why it is to Putin’s advantage to leave Ukraine. Remember, he almost convinced North Korea’s president Kim Jong Un to open up his country to Western tourism.
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Haughey is Senior Advisor of the Texas Republican County Chairman’s Association.