248 - Appeasing Putin: The Unraveling Continues
The security of what is left of the free world depends largely on the United States. Ever since World War II, oppression of whole peoples and innumerable countries has been countered by the United States. We have reliably, until now, vigorously fought Soviet and Chinese communistic attempts to subjugate weak nations and subvert world order to tyranny.
No longer. This Trump administration leans in so many overt and subtle ways to appeasement. It is not only Trump's personal affinity for dictators, kleptocrats, and even petty despots (witness his praise for El Salvador's President Bukele), it is his personal refusal to recognize Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky as this century's magnificent defender of freedom and global order. Trump is persistently attempting to cut deals over Zelensky's head with Putin. (Trump is also unwilling to recognize that both Putin and China's President Xi Jinping are smarter and far better diplomatic chess players than he is. Hence Trump's disastrous tariff war escalations. Xi counters quietly and effectively by shutting American access to heavy rare earth elements, essential as they are for every aspect of modern warfare and electronic commodities.)
American presidential ignorance, or maybe stupidity and a pronounced illiteracy, leads to the firing of our effective cyber combat chief, the shutting of bureaus that counter Russian disinformation propaganda and efforts, the hobbling of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's battle to inform Russian citizens of how Putin is harming their liberties and reducing their economic prospects, the halting of a similar service to the Middle East that exposed Iran's malevolence, and the depriving literally billions of Africans, Middle Easterners, and Asians of access to American health and other advances. Sudan's children starve as a result. Then there has been the crippling of U.S. help in earthquakes and other disasters (as in Myanmar most recently) and the truly incompetent decision to stop supplying corn and other grains, plus funding, to the UN's World Food Program. It feeds a quarter of Zimbabwe's population, a third of Somalia's, and so on. And by buying what we grow, it helps American farmers.
I have written somewhat about these atrocities before, but their number and their detrimental impact multiplies daily. Not only to each of these misguided exploits diminish the U.S. in the eyes of the world, and destroy everything that we had before in terms of soft power -- the power to influence behavior globally and country by country by example and good deeds -- but each of these lamentable actions gives direct aid and comfort to Putin and Xi. Trump is making desperate despotism seem attractive.
Trump and his devilish minions are even proposing to gut the U.S. Foreign Service and close the African bureau, plus many embassies. Why retreat in the face of Russian and Chinese competition?
Now, in the latest salvo of appeasement, Secretary of State Marco Rubio proclaims that Putin's invasion of Ukraine is not "our war." The U.S., he said Friday, may "move on" if no progress is made soon by the warring parties. "We have other priorities," said Rubio. His boss, the bright-eyed, orange-hued Trump, doubled-down, using typical insightful and smart words: "If for some reason one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we're just going to say you're foolish, you're fools, you're horrible people, and we're going to take a pass."
Putin doubtless clapped with glee. And Xi presumably smiled, rubbing his hands and calculating the odds of getting Taiwan without too much effort. Rubio and Trump's words implied selling out Ukraine. Recall the appeasement by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in Munich in 1938. Friday's utterances were our American gift to Zelensky and our implicit abandonment of not only Ukraine's security and the freedom of its 37 million people, but the freedom and security of much of Europe -- Putin's ultimate reconquest goal.
An Economist headline says it all: "The American president increasingly looks like Russia's willing dupe." Poland's foreign minister reported the obvious: the Kremlin was "mocking" Washington's goodwill.
As Fiona Hill, former U.S. National Security Advisor and biographer of Putin says, that "is exactly what Putin wants." There is no concrete evidence that Trump is beholden to Putin in some undisclosed way, but he nevertheless bends over backwards to assist Putin's nefarious ambitions. Note that among the very countries on which tariffs were not imposed, Russia topped the list. Ukraine got socked 10 percent.
Moreover, Steve Witkoff, Trump's envoy, seems from his statements ready to give Putin control of parts of the Donbas that Ukraine still occupies. There seems no end to the Trump administration's willingness to bend a knee to Putin.
Europe can defend Ukraine's sovereignty, but it cannot do so easily or affordably without U.S. assistance. Nor can it replace the materiel of war -- the aircraft, the armored vehicles, and the artillery shells -- that the U.S. gives to defend Ukraine against Putin's invaders. Critical above all else is American intelligence information passed to Ukraine's armed forces and our ability to surveil the skies for Ukraine. There is no evidence that our critical military support for Ukraine -- and thus for world freedom -- will continue. Indeed, the U.S. is withdrawing personnel and equipment from a vital staging area in Poland.
But there is the larger consideration which the Trump administration has never acknowledged. Ukraine's war is our war. Ukraine's war is on behalf of the global rule of law to prevent tyrants from running roughshod over less powerful countries and weaker peoples. Hegemony is decisive. Hence the era of better government and global affairs that past American presidents and their European and Asian allies enunciated after World War II and celebrated when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990 and, under Deng, China became a capitalist entity and a potential contributor to global prosperity.
Trump is stuck mentally in so many ways in the 1970s, or before. But by continuing to flirt with Putin and bully Xi he leads these United States backwards. If he lets Putin get his way in Ukraine, the free world is no more. We might then simply write off our helpful national role in the world. If that happens our own individual freedoms -- wherever we live and work -- become fatally compromised.
Massachusetts Governor Maura Healy, speaking Saturday at the 250th celebration of the onset of global freedom from oppression, reminds us of what we accomplished in founding the Republic and what we could lose, especially if we fail to support this century's struggle for freedom in Ukraine, in Sudan, in Myanmar, in the eastern Congo, and throughout a challenged world.
"Our founding values are being dismissed, undermined, and attacked from the highest office in the land," said Healy. 'The right to due process and a fair hearing. The right to speak freely. The freedom of the press. The independence of the courts. The right to study and learn and use your talent to advance human knowledge. The great flowering of freedom that grew from the seed planted...in Massachusetts is at risk. The rights and freedoms that America was built on. Our success. Our example. Our leadership." Every genuflection toward Putin puts us and the free world at risk.