Fighting Russia Over Ukraine Isn’t Remotely In America’s Interests. Despite Trump’s Claim To Put The United States First, His Ukraine Peace Plans Risk Putting America Last.
For years, even before he became president, Donald Trump criticized the Europeans for free riding on America. Today he has apparently proposed adding Ukraine as another defense dependent, with a possible trigger for war against nuclear-armed Russia.
The administration’s recent 28-point plan, criticized for leaning toward Russia, bars Kiev from joining NATO but offers “reliable security guarantees” instead. Although Trump officials did not detail the American role, they promised “a decisive coordinated military response” in response to renewed Russian military action. The European response added a “U.S. guarantee that mirrors Article 5.”
French president Emmanuel Macron has been particularly insistent that Washington put American wealth and lives on the line, stating that “the absolute condition for good peace is a set of very robust security guarantees and not paper guarantees,” including from America. The 19-point America-Ukraine draft has not been published but likely moves toward the latter. Presumably these issues were discussed in Monday’s Moscow meeting between Russian president Vladimir Putin and American emissaries Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, which revealed continuing disagreements on major issues.
For America, the details of a guarantee are the most important provision in any agreement. Not even Trump’s predecessors Barack Obama and Joe Biden, whom the president regularly accuses of weakness, were willing to make such a needless concession to the feckless Europeans.
That Kiev wants the American people to be ready to fight and die on its behalf is no surprise. Ukrainians have suffered greatly in a terrible war. Continuing combat is prodigiously consuming Ukrainian lives and wealth. However, alliances should be based on security, not charity. Although the conflict is a humanitarian tragedy, Ukraine’s future, and especially the details of any settlement, such as who controls the Donbas, are not vital American concerns.
Of course, Kiev is not alone in its desire for support. Much of the known world—almost every European nation, most of the Middle Eastern royals, and the richest Asian states—remains on the American defense dole. The wealthiest, most advanced foreign states continue to mimic suckling babies years, even decades, after the initial crises in which they first became reliant on Washington. America’s defense of Europe is at 80 years and counting.
Although the early American republic aggressively overspread the North American continent, it was initially reluctant to risk its citizens’ lives and wealth in other nations’ wars. That barrier was breached by President Woodrow Wilson, more delusional megalomaniac than charismatic idealist, as he has been typically portrayed. World War I was an idiotic imperialist war in which the American regime had no stake. However, Wilson was determined to remake the world. Which, unfortunately, he did, disastrously. His intervention wasted more than 117,000 American lives and resulted in another, even greater conflict. As Ferdinand Foch, the French general who served as supreme allied commander, described the botched Versailles Treaty ending the war: “This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years.”
Successive American administrations avoided the continent, soon wracked by communism, fascism, and Nazism. Even the Europeans were ultimately unwilling to defend Wilson’s and his allied compatriots’ handiwork, hence “appeasement.” World War II was the tragic but predictable outcome. America was dragged into the resulting imbroglio. After dispatching the horrific Third Reich, what remained of Europe faced the triumphant Soviet Union, headed by dictator.
So, Washington stayed that time. However, America’s continuing military presence, through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—which would have been more accurately named the North American Treaty Organization—was intended to be only temporary, until Western Europe recovered economically. Dwight Eisenhower, no left-wing peacenik, said in 1951: “If, in ten years, all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the United States, then this whole project will have failed.” Seventy-four years later American forces are still there and, if most Europeans have their way, will still be there in another 74 years, and probably beyond.
At least Washington then treated alliances as serious. They were extended to countries thought to be strategically important. There was Western Europe, which America had just fought to liberate, as well as South Korea and Japan, client states acquired in the aftermath of the same conflict. Security commitments also typically resulted from formal treaties, negotiated with other governments and ratified by the Senate. Multilateral agreements with less important participants, most notably the Baghdad Pact/CENTO, SEATO, and ANZUS, were looser and weaker.
In recent years, Washington has treated military commitments like hotel chocolates, to be placed on every guest’s pillow. In recent years NATO has inducted military midgets, such as Albania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia, with no strategic significance. Imagine trying to explain why an American soldier, airman, sailor, or Marine died for what amounts to little more than a celebrated movie set. Moreover, presidents have added informal guarantees without congressional approval—to the Mideast monarchies and even quasi-states, such as Rojava, the Kurdish region in Syria. Of late Trump has unilaterally declared America to be the guardian of absolute monarchy in the Middle East, turning the American military into a modern Janissary Corps to serve thousands of dissolute kings, emirs, and princes in Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Can the rest of the Persian Gulf be far behind?
Hidden History -- In The Making 