As talks open today in Saudi Arabia between Washington and Moscow to end the war in Ukraine, President Trump’s eagerness to be a peacemaker at all costs can’t override the real security issues for Ukraine and Europe that Russia’s horrible three-year invasion has exposed, but the exclusion of the Ukrainian victims of Vladimir Putin’s war at the talks is cause for great worry.
Trump has spent a lifetime as a salesman making deals and for him this war is just another dispute to be negotiated and settled, saying during his campaign: “They’re dying, Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying. And I’ll have that done — I’ll have that done in 24 hours.”
Whether 24 hours or 24 days (and it’s been longer than both) it’s not so simple, but Trump is very sure of his ability to persuade and get to yes. How much Ukrainian land will Russia demand? How much territory will Ukraine accept losing? Find that number and voilà, peace breaks out. But peace can’t be a surrender for the Ukrainians who have not lost on the battlefield, but have courageously under President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held off the Russians for three years of hard fighting.
The fairest peace is for Russia to withdraw unconditionally to the pre-invasion lines, but Trump is less interested in such a just outcome. Trump is focused on seeking finding something for Putin, who he so admires. As for Zelenskyy, as you remember, it was a phone call with him that precipitated Trump’s first impeachment.
It brings to mind another Western leader who was confident that he could haggle with a European tyrant and sacrificed a democracy for the sake of a deal.
In 1938, Hitler, having swallowed Austria, now demanded land from Czechoslovakia, the only democracy in Central Europe or Eastern Europe.
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, fearing a reprise of World War I said: “How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing.” The far away country was Czechoslovakia and so off Chamberlain flew to meet Hitler in Munich to decide the fate of the Czechoslovaks without them at the table with the big powers.
Sound familiar?
Returning to England, Chamberlain said outside of his airplane: “The settlement of the Czechoslovakian problem, which has now been achieved is, in my view, only the prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace. This morning I had another talk with the German chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine,” as he waved a useless document. He later added: “I believe it is peace for our time. Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.”
World War II broke out less than a year later when Hitler invaded Poland.
We don’t think Putin will be invading Poland, even if he wants to, as Warsaw is a member of NATO, triggering war with all 31 other members, including the United States. But the lesson is that aggressive dictators cannot be appeased as it rewards their ambitions and brings more aggression.
Yes, bring Putin’s war to an end, but don’t lay the ground for his next one.
