280 - Defending Freedom in Ukraine and Taiwan in a Madcap Time of Trump and Vance

But first--

Fortunately, President Biden will remain in charge until January. We will dearly miss him afterwards. In foreign policy, no one has a surer hand or greater knowledge of how free world security and progress can be assured. Putin would have overrun Ukraine if Biden had not been in charge. There might well have been a wider Middle Eastern war if Biden had not pressed the brake pedals. The other guy (as today’s column makes clear) has neither the knowledge nor the instincts to save the world from carnage and calamity. Domestically, too, Biden has had steady eyes on the prize. Indeed, his administration has achieved more legislatively than anyone thought possible. And he steered the nation sensibly through the Covid-19 crisis.  We will soon see that his wisdom and overall acumen are impossible to replace. Most of all, we can rely on his decency and integrity.  The other guy is a con artist, steeped in sleaze.  Biden is exactly the kind of president we have needed and will greatly regret losing.

Now to today’s column

            Ukraine is holding off most Russian advances along the 620-mile war front but is unable itself to attack effectively on the ground. It has used newly arrived heavy artillery and drones effectively to shell Crimean airfields and set alight ammunition dumps inside Russia. But it still has too few effective aircraft and is still unnecessarily hamstrung in its ability to hamper Russian bombardments of its cities by U. S. and German restrictions.

            Those imposed strategic handicaps make the defense of Ukraine’s freedom and, indeed, the freedoms that we all cherish, harder to accomplish. But equally vexing, because the credibility struggle is a factor that impinges importantly on morale along both the home and war fronts, is the battle that President Volodymyr Zelensky is now compelled to wage against Trump-instigated and inflicted pontifications that are pro-Putin and maliciously contrived to weaken the Ukrainian effort. As former Speaker Nancy Pelosi said last week, Trump is a “tool” of Putin. Long ago, she tagged it: “With him, all roads lead to Putin.”

            Trump and now J. D. Vance’s wholly ignorant, isolationist, harmful views on Putin, Russia, and Ukraine hardly make Zelensky’s boosting of his forces or his campaign to maintain support for his troops easy.

            Trump vowed Friday quickly to end the war in Ukraine -- “which would never have happened if he had been president.”  That’s nonsense, but what he means is that he would compel Zelensky to go to a tilted negotiating table, helping to give Putin the land and prestige that he wants by pulling U.S. arms and funding from Ukraine. Such a sabotage of Zelensky, to benefit Putin, is what one vain would-be dictator gives to another – to cement their transactional evil togetherness. “I could stop wars with a telephone call,” Trump shouts.

            Remember, Putin’s strategic calculus is built on the assumption that at some point Americans will get tired. Opinion polls show to the contrary that most Americans favor increasing support for Ukraine’s war effort. But Trump’s nonsensical reiterations could easily undermine public resolve, and condemn Ukraine.

            Vance, as in most of his interventions ever since he shifted from labelling Trump “Hitler” to auditioning cravenly for the vice-presidential place on the rabid ticket, now tries to out-Trump Trump.  He refused to meet with Zelensky at the Munich Security Conference in February. “There are a lot of bad guys all over the world. And I’m much more interested in some of the problems in East Asia right now than I am in Europe,” Vance said.

            He wants to halt U.S. “foreign adventures.”  And “I don’t care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.”

            Vance’s nihilist approach was welcomed, naturally, by Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister: “[Vance] stands for peace, for cessation of aid [to Ukraine],” Lavrov said at a press conference at the United Nations last week. “We can only welcome this because, in fact, it is necessary to stop pumping Ukraine with weapons, and the war will end.”

            Putin and Vance are clearly serving Putin and abetting his imperialist ambitions. When Lavrov talks of a diplomatic solution he talks of keeping the portions of Ukraine already annexed illegally to Russia and permanently severing Ukraine from Europe and NATO.  Zelensky’s position and the position of most of his countrymen is exactly the reverse.  But who are the Trumpers enabling?

            Even Sen. Lindsay Graham, no shining light on most Trumpian initiatives, is more nuanced than Vance: “I want to end this war in Ukraine, and it’s going to be a diplomatic solution,” Sen. Lindsey Graham said at the recent Republican convention. “But if Putin is seen as being rewarded for dismembering Ukraine, China will get the wrong signal.”

            Indeed, China will more than welcome Trump’s latest foolish transactional utterances about Taiwan: They “took about 100% of our chip business,” he says, and now also suggests that protecting Taiwan’s independence from China depends on whether defending Taiwan would be a good deal economically for the United States. “Taiwan should pay us for defense. You know, we’re no different than an insurance company,” he said. “Taiwan doesn’t give us anything.” 

            Trump wants to reward Putin and possibly China’s President Xi Jinping. He thinks of himself, also, as a consummate deal maker (but think of all of the contractors and consultants whom he has stiffed in his business dealings) and therefore as capable of giving Putin what he wants with little consideration for Ukraine or its people.  The same goes for Taiwan.

            Such outcomes, alas, are what we get if a convicted felon and his contriving vice-president designate receive more votes than the Democratic Party team or succeed in the electoral college.  As Maureen Dowd wrote yesterday, “it’s easier to rise if you are unscrupulous and you lie. That’s not part of a hero’s journey. “

            Even if a presidential contender and his unscrupulous running mate seek to do Putin’s bidding, at least Britain’s new prime minister has Zelensky’s back. Sir Keir Starmer, presiding over a European security summit at Blenheim Palace, north of Oxford, UK, assured Zelensky and Putin that “We will face down aggression [in Europe] …because the threat from Russia reaches right across [the continent.]” He and Zelensky also made it clear that Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who recently visited both Putin and Trump, cannot speak for or in any sense represent Europe.

            Trump, Vance, and Orban are all apologists for Putin and his aggression. In Zelensky’s presence, Starmer said that Britain was back, ready in many important ways to re-join Europe, especially its backing of the Ukrainian war effort. Britain has been a major contributor to Ukraine’s war effort. Starmer made it evident that Britain would do more, and would rally Europe behind Zelensky – no matter what a putative Trump administration might want to do to undercut Ukraine. 

            What has the U. S. come to when a wannabe president is prepared to sell out Ukraine and Taiwan to the highest bidders?  Biden would never meddle in such a dangerous manner.