In fact, at the start of talks between
US and Ukrainian officials this week in Geneva, Secretary of State Marco Rubio
ended up having to deny that the Russian government had anything to do with
drafting the plan.
Summed up briefly, the plan’s talking
points—which were clearly unacceptable to Ukraine, and would be to any country
that had been the victim of such massive foreign aggression, and that had
fought as long, as bravely, and as hard as Ukraine has—included measures that
would basically have tied the hands of both Kyiv and the leaders of Europe,
while opening the way for further expansionist aggression by the Putin regime. Indeed,
if it is true that the document—reportedly leaked to the press by an official
of the Ukrainian government—was formulated solely on the suggestions and demands
of President Donald Trump and his Secretary of State (“Little”) Marco Rubio,
then these two top-ranking US officials should, from here on out, be considered
Russian agents.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
expressed satisfaction with advances made in the Geneva talks on November 23rd
and 24th and the Trump administration and Ukrainian delegation
released a joint statement expressing optimism when the preliminary talks
ended.
According to that statement, “Both sides
agreed the consultations were highly productive. The discussions showed
meaningful progress toward aligning positions and identifying clear next steps.
They reaffirmed that any future agreement must fully uphold Ukraine’s
sovereignty and deliver a sustainable and just peace…
Ukraine and the United States agreed to continue intensive work on joint
proposals in the coming days. They will also remain in close contact with their
European partners as the process advances.
Final decisions under this framework will be made by the Presidents of Ukraine
and the United States.”
 |
| President Volodymyr Zelensky |
It was obvious to everyone, apparently,
except Trump that the original 28-point plan wasn’t going to fly. At least not
with Zelensky…or the EU…or, it would seem, either of the two main US political
parties.
First, from what we know about the
original document—the terms of which continue to be re-discussed, not only Ukrainian
land illegally annexed and militarily usurped by Russia, but also parts of
Ukraine’s territory that Russia has yet to be able to successfully wrest from
the hands of its rightful owner would be summarily handed over to Putin.
Second, if some sort of peace deal were
reached (by some miracle), Ukraine and the world would simply have to take Moscow’s
word with regard to not only the future security of Ukraine, but also of the
rest of Eastern Europe. Ukraine is a key piece in the European security puzzle,
and, according to Trump’s plan (which was never consulted with the EU), neither
Europe nor NATO would be able to post troops in Ukrainian territory as a
guarantee against future Russian aggression.
Third, not only would Ukraine be forbidden
from having European troops on its soil, but it would also be required to reduce
the size of its armed forces, and of its cache and variety of weapons, with
long-range arms capable of striking back against Russian aggression being
specifically prohibited.
Fourth, the resulting treaty would have ensured
that Ukraine could never become part of NATO—a stipulation that flies in
the face of the best interests of both Ukraine and the rest of Europe.
Fifth, Ukraine would have received no US
military aid, meaning that its only supply of additional war materiel would
have to come exclusively from Europe.
Trump had originally given Ukraine an
ultimatum to accept the US deal by Thanksgiving (that’s this coming Thursday).
Trump told White House reporters that President Zelensky could either accept the
US deal, or continue to “fight his little heart out”.
Following the leaking of the so-called
plan, the Trump administration came under withering attack from Democratic and
Republican lawmakers alike.
Former Senate Majority Leader and senior
Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said: “Putin
has spent the entire year trying to play President Trump for a fool. If administration
officials are more concerned with appeasing Putin than securing real peace,
then the President ought to find new advisers.” He went on to say that, “Rewarding
Russian butchery would be disastrous to America’s interests…And a capitulation
like Biden’s abandonment of Afghanistan would be catastrophic to a legacy of
peace through strength.”
The chair of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS), warned that, “This so-called ‘peace
plan’ has real problems, and I am highly skeptical it will achieve peace.
Ukraine should not be forced to give up its lands to one of the world’s most
flagrant war criminals…Vladimir Putin.” Wicker added that, “Any assurances
provided to Putin “should not reward his malign behavior…in particular, any
suggestion that we can pursue arms control with a serial liar and killer like
Putin should be treated with great skepticism.”
Republican Representative Don Bacon of
Nebraska accused the Trump administration of trying to force Ukrainian
capitulation. Specifically, he said, “They’re pushing a surrender plan on
Ukraine…It looks like Russia wrote it.” He opined that, “In the war between
Ukraine and Russia, the first to surrender was America…This will be President
Trump’s legacy if he forces this surrender plan on Ukraine.”
Reiterating Bacon’s sentiment, Senator
Mike Rounds (R-SD) said, “They want to utilize it (the 28-point plan) as a
starting point…It looked more like it was written in Russian to begin with.”
On the other side of the aisle, ranking Senate
Foreign Relations Committee member, Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), said, “This
is a Russian proposal … There is so much in that plan that is totally
unacceptable.” She went on to say that, instead of acquiescing, the US should
“put pressure on Putin, provide long-range weapons, impose secondary
sanctions…and force Putin to the table for real negotiations…We should not be
representing Russia’s interests in this agreement.”
 |
| So one-sided "Little" Marco had to publcly deny it was penned by the Kremlin. |
Maine Independent Senator Angus King
succinctly said that, “It rewards aggression. This is pure and simple. There’s
no ethical, legal, moral, political justification for Russia claiming eastern
Ukraine.” King added that, in talking to Secretary Rubio, he had concluded that
this was “not the administration’s plan,” but more like a “wish list of the
Russians.”
These opinions were echoed by the Royal Institute of International Affairs, a
London-based think-tank better known as Chatham House, whose stated mission is "to help governments
and societies build a sustainably secure, prosperous, and just world."
Criticizing the Trump plan, Chatham House foreign relations experts posited
that it read “more like a demand for capitulation than a peace deal.” They
highlight that many of Russia’s long-standing war aims were fully baked into
the proposal, including territorial concessions, limits on Ukraine’s military,
and constraining its sovereignty by, among other things, dictating when
elections would happen there.
Chatham House also warned that Trump’s
plan would weaken Ukraine’s long-term deterrent capabilities by restricting its
military and future NATO prospects. The think-tank’s experts pointed out that,
bottom line, without strong, legally binding security guarantees (comparable to
NATO’s Article 5), Ukraine’s future protection remains uncertain.
Virginia Democrat, Senator Mark Warner, made
the point, on Fox News (of all places), that the draft plan was “total
capitulation (and) a historically bad deal, rivaling Neville Chamberlain giving
in to Hitler before World War II.” He argued that many of its terms—territorial
concessions, military reductions, barring Ukraine from NATO—“are likely to make
Xi Jinping happy, just like they make Vladimir Putin happy.”
His reference to the appeasement of
Hitler at the start of World War II was spot on, but not original. From early
on in Trump’s presidential career, observers have repeatedly mentioned Trump’s
almost slavish appeasement of Putin, comparing it to Chamberlain’s appeasement
of Hitler. Among other places, the danger of appeasing the Russian dictator was
made clear here, in A Yankee At Large, back in early 2022. https://yankeeatlarge.blogspot.com/2022/03/appeasement-history-repeats-itself-in.html
That danger remains, despite reported
advances in the Geneva talks, particularly because Trump has repeatedly proven
himself not to be a trustworthy
negotiator—when the chess game doesn’t go his way, he simply kicks over the
chess board, and can never be counted on to keep his word. The comparison with
Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler with the terms of Trump’s original “peace
plan” was stunning, since there are major parallels between the two men’s
actions.
In the late 1930s, rather than
confronting Hitler militarily, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain made
concessions to the German strongman, most famously in the Munich Agreement
(1938). This pact between Britain and Germany allowed Hitler to annex the
Sudetenland (a region of what was then Czechoslovakia) in exchange for a
promise of what was called "peace in our time" (basically a vow from
Hitler that he could annex Czech territory if he would go no further).
Chamberlain’s motivation was that his
country had been deeply scarred by World War I, giving rise to strong pacifist
sentiment, fear of another devastating war, and a hope that reasonable
negotiation could avert conflict. But the British PM was completely misjudging
Hitler—much as Trump has Putin since 2016.
There was simply no way that Hitler’s territorial ambitions could be quelled
by limited concessions, or that he would not risk a broader war if given some
of what he wanted. Many international affairs analysts also believe this to be
true of Putin, who, they indicate, is bent on returning Russia to the power it
wielded under Stalin and the Soviet Union, or to even before that, when it was
still the czarist Russian Empire.
By giving in to Hitler’s demands,
Britain (and France) signaled to him that aggressive expansion would be
rewarded. This emboldened Hitler to push further. This policy weakened the
deterrent effect of collective security. Rather than a unified front standing
up to German expansion, appeasement led to fragmentation and uncertainty.
In the end, Chamberlain’s gamble failed.
With each concession, Hitler gained new strength, and the following year, Germany
invaded Poland, leading directly to WWII.
To understand the comparison, you need
only look at what Trump’s 28-point plan included: namely, a freeze on the front
lines roughly where they are now, meaning Russia would forestall further
military advances but retain control over significant occupied territory;
reduction of the size of Ukraine’s military; the relinquishing of Ukraine’s
NATO aspirations; the lifting or easing of sanctions currently enforced against
Russia, and only the weakest of security guarantees for Ukraine against renewed
Russian aggression.
 |
| Zelensky needs full EU support |
In the end, after seeing the terms of a
truly terrible plan, any improvement negotiated will tend to look better. But
that doesn’t guarantee that a clearly Russian-prone US administration will
eventually agree to throw out the 28-point plan entirely and forge a deal that
will be frankly advantageous to both Ukraine and Europe as a whole, which are
clearly the aggrieved parties in Putin’s unprovoked aggression and
expansionism. According to the US
Council of Foreign Relations, “This plan
comes at the worst time for Ukraine and its partners,” adding that, “at
minimum, Russia will try to put the blame on Ukraine for preventing peace in
the eyes of Trump.” The CFR points out that, “Territorial concessions…the
international recognition of this territory as Russian …would surrender
Ukraine’s most formidable defenses.” The
CFR adds that, “The entire agreement is structured to work via incentives and
carrots with Moscow, instead of sticks and punishment.”
This US-based Atlantic Council suggests
that Trump’s influence on any final peace deal should be tempered by
congressional discretion. The non-partisan suggests that, if a deal is made, it
should go through formal US legal and institutional processes (e.g., Senate
ratification) to demonstrate seriousness and to create a durable commitment.
The European Council on Foreign Affairs
is specific and adamant about the shape any peace deal with Russia should take.
The ECFA makes it clear that “Borders
cannot be changed by force? … All gone in the 28 points … which seem to stem
from a different assertion: the strong do what they want and the weak suffer
what they must.” The foreign relations group believes that forcing Ukraine to
accept the loss of territories to Russian aggression “would create a material
threat to Ukraine’s independent existence.” According to the ECFA, “It would strip Kyiv of its defensive
‘fortress belt’ in the Donbas…and send a powerful signal of impunity” to
Russia.
The ECFA concludes that a weak deal like
the one proposed by the US, “would, of course, be immoral…But more than that,
it would also be a mistake. It would embolden (Russia), teaching Moscow all the
wrong lessons. The council adds that such a deal “would trade a bad war now for
a worse one within a few years.”
To date, Trump has stubbornly and
egotistically sought to keep America’s European NATO partners entirely
marginalized from the Ukraine peace negotiations. It is easy to speculate that
he has done this because the EU, from the start, would have resisted Trump’s
consistent tendency to act as an agent for Putin in the framing of any peace
plan.
But the outrageously one-sided 28-point
draft plan has so weakened the administration’s credibility both at home and
abroad that the EU has been emboldened to insist on a more active role in the
negotiations. Clearly, Europe must have a major role in setting the stage for
ending the war, and Europeans should be actively providing Zelensky with their
backing in insisting that Putin not be rewarded for international aggression
and for waging an illegal and illegitimate war.
Because, in the end, how this war ends
isn’t a question of Ukraine’s security going forward, but of the future
security of both Eastern and Western Europe. And that is far too important an
issue to be left solely in the hands of a man as erratic, self-interested,
arrogant and willfully ignorant as Donald Trump.
No comments:
Post a Comment