Trump Warns Zelenskyy: Accept Peace or Lose the Country
“Nobody is asking Zelenskyy to recognize Crimea as Russian Territory but, if he wants Crimea, why didn’t they fight for it eleven years ago when it was handed over to Russia without a shot being fired?”
President Donald Trump went off on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the latter criticized a U.S. peace plan.
Zelenskyy said, “Ukraine will not legally recognize the occupation of Ukraine.”
Zelenskyy is correct when he said the country’s constitution forbids it from recognizing Crimea as part of Russia.
Also, most Ukrainians want Crimea back. The snatch even upset Putin’s puppet, ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
Trump responded on Truth Social:
Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is boasting on the front page of The Wall Street Journal that, “Ukraine will not legally recognize the occupation of Crimea. There’s nothing to talk about here.” This statement is very harmful to the Peace Negotiations with Russia in that Crimea was lost years ago under the auspices of President Barack Hussein Obama, and is not even a point of discussion. Nobody is asking Zelenskyy to recognize Crimea as Russian Territory but, if he wants Crimea, why didn’t they fight for it eleven years ago when it was handed over to Russia without a shot being fired? The area also houses, for many years before “the Obama handover,” major Russian submarine bases. It’s inflammatory statements like Zelenskyy’s that makes it so difficult to settle this War. He has nothing to boast about! The situation for Ukraine is dire — He can have Peace or, he can fight for another three years before losing the whole Country. I have nothing to do with Russia, but have much to do with wanting to save, on average, five thousand Russian and Ukrainian soldiers a week, who are dying for no reason whatsoever. The statement made by Zelenskyy today will do nothing but prolong the “killing field,” and nobody wants that! We are very close to a Deal, but the man with “no cards to play” should now, finally, GET IT DONE. I look forward to being able to help Ukraine, and Russia, get out of this Complete and Total MESS, that would have never started if I were President!
This also confirms what I always say: This war started in 2014. It didn’t start four years ago.
The war started in 2014. Russia snatched Crimea from Ukraine without a peep from the West, except for its usual strongly worded letters.
Also, as I said before, Trump says the quiet parts out loud. NATO won’t bring in Ukraine. Everyone, including former President Joe Biden, knows Ukraine has to concede some land to Russia. The Wall Street Journal added:
British and French officials are open to a scenario where Ukraine would accept the loss of control of some of the territories taken by Russia in exchange for security guarantees and economic support, a person with knowledge of the negotiations said. But France and the U.K. would prefer a deal that acknowledges control of territories seized by Russia from Ukraine before the war only in a de facto way, like the cease-fire that ended the Korean War. A spokesperson for the U.K.’s foreign office said the U.K. shares the U.S.’s desire to end the war and “is working closely with our allies in support of this effort.”
As the front line has hardened over the past two years—with Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive failing to retake much territory and Moscow making only plodding gains since then—the Ukrainian public has slowly been warming to the idea that ending the war might require some kind of territorial concession.
A poll conducted earlier this year by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found that 39% of Ukrainians would be willing to give up territory as part of a deal to end the conflict, up from 8% in late 2022. Still, 50% of Ukrainians remain opposed to territorial concessions.
If the EU cared about Ukraine and wanted to take a real stand against Putin, then it would have brought it into the EU years ago. The same goes with NATO.
But we know that the EU has spent more money on fossil fuels from Russia than it has sent to Ukraine.
None of them have actually confronted Putin, unlike Trump. It’s not like it would only be between Putin and Trump.
Another fact: Russian President Vladimir Putin won’t stop. He will never stop, no matter what.
You know Putin has been looooooving all of this since late February 2014. I swear it gives him joy to watch the West tie itself into a pretzel over Ukraine, knowing full well he holds all of the cards, especially since he controls the fossil fuels.
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Alternative is the West keep sending money & arms to Ukraine, fighting to the last Ukrainian. There will be no European or American forces sent. Meanwhile, Russia sends its men and Koreans to the front. Maybe some Iranians and Chinese too. Oh wait… Chinese are already there.
The problem for the Ukrainians is that they are running out of trigger pullers.
And ammo. And weapons systems.
Trump promised to end the Russia/Ukraine was within 24 hours. Nothing to see here. Please move along.
Sneaky little Biden schilling dictator needs to take some of his money laundered cash out of his off shore account and go into exile.
You offering to host him at your house Paula?
If your name were Jose, my answer would be “No way”.
But since your name is ztakddot, my answer is, “Don’t be a crackpot”.
But it’s fun being a crackpot. It beats being my usual curmudgeon self.
You are always very pleasant, but it’s not easy finding words that rhyme with ztakddot.
Thank you, I look forward to your comments too Paula.
You are the best, Paula! I love your wit.
I’m sure you could rhyme something with todd katz!
You know some people are too smart for their own good.
The Europeans don’t even believe their PUTIN IS TEH EVILZ AND CONQUER EUROPE nonsense. They won’t even stop buying Russian oil and gas.
The EU actually thought their stupid stunt of inviting the cokemidget and making a big public spectacle out of giving him a couple billion was really going to somehow force Trump to fund their lunatic ‘plan’ of ‘hey just have the US keep pouring money into Ukraine and eventually Putin will give up and ask for peace’.
The EU has literally given Putin 10x as much money by buying their oil and gas through this whole EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO FREEDOM nonsense, than they have given to Ukraine.
We are through with this farce. If they want their forever war, they can fund it themselves.
Americans are done.
What is easy to see is that Europeans are basically whoers (sp), and they will talk a big game on freedom and personal rights, but when it comes to money, they will always give in. Trump told them not to depend on Russia for their petroleum products, but they didn’t listen, and now Europe is sending Russia more money than they are spending on Ukraine. They took advantage of the US and our umbrella of protection by going Socialist and progressive, knowing they didn’t have to spend the money on defense. Now they are overrun with Muslims who are destroying the culture of some of the oldest countries in the world. Look at England, Germany, and Sweden; all are crime-ridden, and their cultures are almost gone. Putin may be a monster but he’s had a lot of help!
I still like the idea of bleeding both Ukraine and Russia as long as it doesn’t cost us much money to do so. I like the idea of beating the EU over the head with Ukraine to get them to up their defense spending as well as send more aid to Ukraine. I like the idea of holding Nato admittance of Ukraine over Russia without actually doing so or even allowing it to come to a vote.
I like the idea even more of either pulling back our troops but leaving our equipment prepositioned or just leaving Nato completely and withdrawing everything. Drop the problem in EUs lap and wish them good luck, let us know how it all works out for you.
We should also withdraw our nuclear umbrella from Europe except Greenland. France keeps making noise (as they always do) about being able to provide deterrent. Let them.
We should concentrate on our hemisphere and keeping all foreign players out especially the chinese. Monroe doctrine and all that.
I’m not sure what we should do with the Middle East and the Pacific. I don’t care about Africa. It has always been a lost cause and I don’t see that changing.
I have another thought, Why not let Russia absorb Ukraine. Forget that whole nonsense about setting a precedence. That precedence has already been set a billion times.
I’m thinking Russia would just choke on the Ukraine. Forget guerilla warfare. They would have to garrison it. What a load of fun and expense for them. And so many Ukrainians have already left. Do you think Russia would be able to extract out enough rubles to pay for the cost? I have my doubts.
send all the leftists there to “reform” the ukraine
Naah. Leftists don’t care about helping whites.
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When will you culters WAKE UP about this moron? SMSH
We woke up about you as soon as you got here. No need to ask further.
Time for you to put down your margarita, kiss Abrego Garcia good night and go to bed.
Though not necessarily in that order.
He needs to kiss van Hollen too while he or she or it..or whatever is at it.
TeeVaJayJay is actually a 12 year old boy. While he may still kiss KAG good night, he’s definitely too young to drink a margarita.
It was Biden’s dupes that were sleeping. Where were you then, dupe?
It’s not nice to talk about Reselyup like that, Cornholio.
What did Obama or Biden do to either prevent war or stop it? Nothing. It’s easy to blame the person who tries to accomplish something and fails (although Trump hasn’t failed yet, although his timeline has slipped).
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
It began well before 2014 as the neocon/globalists needed a boogeyman to keep defense dollars rolling in along with all sorts of.grift, graft and corruption opportunities in innumerable across the former eastern bloc Nations. Having chosen to sell out middle-class Citizens and crippling their communities by offshore of US manufacturing sending their jobs to China the choice of boogeyman defaulted to Russia. Kind of obvious when we consider how much our Nat Security, foreign policy and Intel community both in/out of govt had invested in their careers to get advanced degrees in studying Russia, leaning the language. They had every incentive to use their positions to make.sure their CV stayed relevant. Probably didn’t hurt that China was paying for academic access and handing out incentives to gain entry into world financial markets.
If two eastern European dictators want to go at each other militarily they can have at it. None of our concern across the Atlantic ocean, certainly far less so than the Nations of Europe who cut their defense budgets down to near irrelevance in the post Cold War era with only a very few exceptions among former eastern bloc Nations.
I see the latest demand from Zalenski is the return of the Crimea…which incidentally was lost on Barry’s watch.
Zalenski isnt serious about peace and that being so then let him have the embers of his dead nation as his epitaph.
I saw two Ukrainians on cnn today, and they both said they would rather continue to fight than to give up ANY territory. Of course, it was CNN, so I figured they probably asked fifty people to find these two. They gave up Crimea eleven years ago with no fight, so why try to hold on to Russian speaking areas now?
I,m sure Z has planes loaded with loot for his ultimate escape to the South of France.
Ukraine has historically been anti-Russian. Especially after what Stalin did to them in the early 30’s. It ramped up after the German invasion in 1941. The Ukrainians were very helpful to the Germans in weeding out ethnic Russians and Jews to send to the concentration camps. After the USSR broke up in 1991 there was quite a bit of back sliding in Ukraine. Their hate for Russia was always just below the surface. It really presented itself in the border areas that contained large ethnic Russian populations. Donbas, Crimea. And those areas like areas of the former Yugoslavia contained a lot of nazi sympathizers. NATO came to the aid of the Muslims after Yugoslavia broke up, but ignored the issues with the ethnic Russians. When Russia comes in to help we ignore Crimea and then get involved in Ukraine. One of THE most corrupt countries in the world.
deport all ms13 gang members to Z
Ooh! They already know how to pull triggers! WIn-win!
And send the Tren de Arugula goons to Ukraine to join them.
I hope the Trump/Vance/Rubio peace plan succeeds. I hope that within the next few days, a permanent cease fire will be announced, and the parties will be working on the details of a treaty along the lines outlined here and elsewhere.
If that doesn’t happen, then don’t blame the Trump administration for walking away. This isn’t our war.
What happens to our aid to Ukraine at that point is anyone’s guess, but I don’t think the Ukrainians will want to find out.
The little troll Z must of been promised a ton to play the “big” man
I do think he is behind President Trumps assassination attempts along with the CIA
Vance isn’t going to lift a finger, well maybe the middle finger to the troll , so I don’t think this turns out as well as he thinks it will
Unless Russia is planning on abandoning China for America why exactly are we conceding everything to him?
This is one part of.the ongoing strategic realignment. Over an intermediate timeline the USA is going to refocus on its own hemisphere maintaining hegemony. Elsewhere we will be looking for those Nations with which an alliance benefits the USA at least as much as it benefits the counterpart. Russia is one such by location and blessed with Natural resources. India is another. Both serve to block Chinese ambitions.
IMO the biggest mistake was abandoning/rejecting Russia and choosing China in the late ’90s early ’00s. Unfortunately the lack of.strategic vision has hobbled our ability to confront China economically. We need allies who are ‘all in’ not just military allies but economic allies as well, who don’t use protectionist policies to harm US workers while US taxpayers fund their defense and these ‘allies’ cut their own defense spending to redirect the spending to indirect subsidies to support their economy.
I fully agree with you that we should be trying to detach Russia from China, and I would also agree that conceding Donbass and formally recognizing Crimea would (from an American POV) be an extremely cheap way to do it.
I just do not see any evidence Vladimir Putin is willing to do that.
I hope the Russians are making genuine signals of a realignment behind closed doors because both America and the world suffers when America is made to look like a fool.
Russia has a well founded fear of invasion given the history of invasion from east and west, the last major invasion less than 100 years ago FWIW. An expansionist China on their border is not something they take lightly. Then there’s the Islamist Terrorist threats. Russia has a smaller population than many of its neighbors. It sits on huge national resources, oil, gas, timber, minerals, rare earth deposits. It holds a very strategic location and needs reliable export markets. IMO lots of the bluster they use is performative, kinda like DJT does, to cultivate an image of barely contained chaos to keep rivals and foes off balance and in essence wondering ‘just how crazy are these SoBs’. IMO they do it for strategic purposes as a deterrent, not always successfully as NATO expansion shows.
They would jump at the opportunity to become a part of a new geopolitical alliance with the USA,. iIndia as the SR Partners v China and their flunkies and the EU. That’s the direct were going; three perhaps four groups of Nations who are not only military allies but economic allies. Where we reserve the best trade deals, open markets and access to capital and consumer markets to a smaller group of true allies. We will.still trade with the others but at less favorable terms and always with best interest of the broad US middle-class as the key criteria. The primacy of the financial market is coming to a close. IOW far less importance attached to short.term market gyrations and far more to the # of US manufacturing workers/jobs.
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and this offer is stupid on steroids – Putin gets everything he wants and then some, the West simply sells out.
In 1938 Hitler demanded the Sudetenland. Rather than risk war, it was handed over. Shortly thereafter Hitler invaded and took the rest of Czechoslovakia – well technically Slovakia broke away and became a Nazi ally but close enough.
How does that relate to now? Russia has seized it’s Sudetenland, and Trump is pushing for ‘Peace in Our Time’. He’s also refusing to permit Ukraine in NATO meaning Putin has no risk when he invades to seize the rest. Thus Trump isn’t after peace but a political victory to point to regardless of the actual cost – a war for the Sudetenland in 1938 would have been far easier and cheaper than what actually ensued.
If Trump wants to pull America out of NATO, then do it. But what’s the point of staying in a NATO he doesn’t want but keeping the Ukraine out?
Putin wants to restore Russia’s empire which means driving West, not simply accepting a bit of the Ukraine, China wants … a lot more territory which means seizing bit east, south, and west of them. Trump’s meek surrender empowers both nations to do what they want given the perception Trump has no desire to get involved. It also means countries probably need to rethink the NNPT – without American backing, the only answer to Russian or Chinese nuclear threats are nukes of your own.
Putin already hold 95% of the territory at issue. The Russians ain’t after more despite the breathless exclamations of the neocon/globalist. If you want to go to Ukraine and push the Russians out then pack your kit and book a flight, go get all of that you want. Leave the rest of us out of WWIII.
Interesting that you didn’t mention the land grab by Poland based on similar ethnic ID/language arguments about the badly crafted breakup of the Austro Hungarian Empire at the same time as the Germans made their land grab. Doesn’t make the Germans any more virtuous then nor the Russians today but it does demonstrate it isn’t unique.
To hell with them. If they’re not being serious then fine, let’s pull everything out. No more money, no more weapons, no more munitions. You want to try to reclaim your lost territories, you go ahead and push the Russians out on your own. We already know you can’t do that, but you refuse to accept any deal that would actually be workable. So go to hell
What does America have in the Ukraine to pull out? Trump has already stopped the flow of money, weapons, and ammo as far as I’m aware. Unless he plans to interdict supplies by other nations, what more can he do, other than side with Communist China and support Putin?
You can stop supporting Ukraine without siding with Putin and China.
Not to worry Z, Trump, the great flip flopper will change his tune,….soon
Have we cut off aid yet to this corrupt punk? If not, why not?
Trump is blaming Zelensky for losing Crimea 11 years ago, but Zelensky wasn’t president of Ukraine until 2019. Putin puppet Viktor Yanukovych was president in 2014, and his loss of Crimea was one of the factors in his ouster. Yanukovych fled to Russia, where he reportedly still lives in exile. Trump needs to get his facts right before he runs his mouth, but his ego and arrogance prevent him from ever admitting he’s wrong about anything.
oh, and BTW, the feckless Obama was US president at the time, and he’s also afflicted with the same massive ego and arrogance and inability to ever admit he ever did anything wrong. After all, he (thought he) knew more than any of his advisors.
No, disagree on this one. First, Ukraine was in no military position to challenge the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Yes, the West’s response was feckless back then. But at that time, nobody realized that this was just the beginning for Russia. Now we all know, and because we didn’t know it back then doesn’t mean we shouldn’t put an end to it now based on 11 years of better information.
didn’t THE MORON say he would end this in one day?
LAFFRIOT
OMFG- you redhats fell for his BULLS>>>T again.?
How embarassing.
BTW – Some of the rubes who voted for this incompetent buffoon are finally seeing the light.
”
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll released Wednesday showed just 37 percent of respondents approve of Trump’s economic agenda — compared with 42 percent who approved immediately following his inauguration in January.
Confidence in Trump’s handling of the economy also reached a low in Pew Research Center’s survey released Wednesday, where 45 percent said they’re confident in the president’s handling of the economy — the lowest rating in Pew’s surveys of Trump going back to 2019.
That’s a sharp downtick from the 59 percent confidence immediately following the 2024 election last November. With Republicans alone there’s been a 12 point drop since November.
In another blow for Trump, CNBC’s All-America Economic Survey from earlier this week said the president had his “worst economic approval numbers of his presidential career” — with 55 percent disapproval compared to 43 percent approval, his first net negative CNBC economic numbers while he was president”
REDHAT GOOBER: ” bb ….bbb…but ….he’s a businessman”
LAFFRIOT.
We can only imagine what the people of Ukraine think because they are not allowed to speak.
Of course Trump’s numbers for approval of his handling of the economy aren’t great – most of those people have late-stage TDS and wouldn’t approve of Trump curing cancer. The rest are sheep who are in a constant state of fear over everything they’re told by the media. This should not be surprising.
The Great One, Barack Hussein Obama, at one time had a 38% approval rating of his handling of the economy. Did this cause his supporters to reject him? Of course not. Should they have done so? If not, what’s your point?
Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, all are similar in that they are faced with enemies that want to destroy them completely and will do just that if given a chance. And by “destroy” I mean kill every living thing and salt the earth.
I can see, and respect, the conviction that it is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees, if the latter is a true option (which it may well not be), but to choose the latter (if available) leaves open the possibility, however remote, that the day will come when you or your descendants can stand up again. Rome defeated Carthage twice and let them live on their knees but the third time Rome said enough is enough and wiped them out to the last woman and child. Ukraine is now having to make that choice.
China doesn’t want to destroy Taiwan. They just want to control it like they control Hong Kong. They regard it as a chinese province.
Likewise Putin wants to absorb and control Ukraine. He doesn’t want to kill everyone either.
Muslims on the other hand would be very happy eradicating Israel and killing all the jews,
Ukraine has lost the war.
The first step is recognizing reality. Ukraine has no realistic prospect of victory. There is no plausible means, short of divine intervention, that can turn things around. Ukraine is rapidly running out of men to fight, and the EU, despite all their bluster, lacks the will to draft an army to fight in Ukraine. For all practical purposes, the war is decided. The only remaining question is where the line will be drawn on the map.
Hello. Thank you for posting this article which raises an important topic. I apologize in advance for this post/comment which I think might be a bit too long. I believe, however, that the issues around the insistence of President Trump (and others) that Ukraine accept territorial concessions in exchange for some kind of “peace” agreement demand close examination. As I will try to explain, to push President Zelensky into ceding territory would create an inflection point in international law and international relations which it could be difficult to turn back from if we later determine it was a mistake.
Here (with more apologies) I must mention the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. Although the concept obviously evolved through the 18th and 19th centuries, the foundation of the State System was set in this agreement (technically 2 documents). The basis of this system was that borders of states are sacrosanct. Two important elements of this are that states may not interfere in the internal affairs of other states, and that the borders of states may not be changed by the aggressive use of force (though if a state is attacked but wins, then the borders might be changed). Sovereignty of states is the key norm that underlies international law and the conduct of international relations.
The importance of this legal norm comes into focus when you consider what allows states (even small ones) to remain sovereign. There are mainly three reasons states are not constantly invaded. First, are the potentially aggressive states powerful enough to impose their will? Secondly, are they willing to risk invading? The third is the knowledge that there is an international norm prohibiting the act which is likely to be upheld in one way or another by the other states in the international system.
This principle has been repeatedly upheld and supported by the international system for going on 400 years. How it was sustained varied. Pre-WW I, the alliance system was thought to be a safeguard of the state system. But, on 1 August 1014, Austria-Hungary tried its luck against Serbia and we saw what happened…they thought they and their allies had the strength, and they were willing to try to use it. But the international system said “No” and it resulted in a calamity.
Post WW I the League of Nations tried to create a stronger international legal basis for upholding the state system but, in the absence of enforcement mechanisms, it was impotent. It could declare Japan’s attack on China and Italy’s attack on Abyssinia to be illegal but could do nothing about it. The key point though is that, again, the state system was upheld IN LAW. The invasions were declared to be illegal and never ratified.
And yet there was one occasion on which the international system ratified the change of borders due to the threat of aggressive use of force, in total betrayal of the Westphalia concept. This was the March 1939 Munich Agreement in which the European powers forced Czechoslovakia to cede territory (Sudetenland) to the Third Reich in exchange for Chancellor Hitler’s signature on “this piece of paper”. The border was changed to get “Peace in our time”. The lesson learned by Hitler (and other dictators) from the world’s inaction in Manchuria, Ethiopia and Czechoslovakia was that maybe the state system no longer held up. Since they had the power and willingness to enforce their will, they thought they could keep going. So, on 1 September 1939 (less than 6 months after achieving “Peace in our time”) Hitler invaded again and the world once again had to go to war, this time to defend Polish sovereignty and the state system.
Post WW II the sovereignty of states has become even more important. New states have formed from the end of colonialism. Others have formed from the collapse of the USSR (e.g., Estonia, Uzbekistan), out of civil war (e.g. Croatia, Serbia) or by consent (e.g. Slovakia and the Czech Republic).
But it is practically impossible to find the world accepting legally the change of a border by aggression (maybe Goa’s absorption by India?). On the contrary, the Charter of the UN asserts the sovereignty of states. We went to war against Iraq to defend Kuwait’s sovereignty…some cynics may say it was about oil but the legal principle, absolutely, was state sovereignty. And even when we have not gone to war, the international system has never recognized legally the change of state borders through aggressive use of force. No one recognizes Northern Cyprus. Russia continues to be under sanctions for its invasions of Georgia (Republic of), and Ukrainian Crimea in 2014 and Eastern Ukraine in 2023. These have never been accepted as legal and there have been international consequences for the states which embarked upon them.
President Trump’s proposal completely upends this principle. It is very like the 1939 Munich Agreement in which peace (“Peace in our time”?) is sought in exchange for territorial concessions.
It is important to recall a few facts. First, Crimea IS Ukrainian territory. Apart from the fact that Crimea was included within Ukraine under old USSR political structures, that fact was recognized by Russia itself in the 1994 Bucharest Memorandum in which Russia guaranteed Ukrainian sovereignty. Second, Eastern Ukraine is also Ukrainian territory. This is also recognized by Russia and the world. Third, the pretext under which Russia interfered with and attacked Eastern Ukraine has long since been debunked by international investigations. Fourth, President Trump is wrong when he says Ukraine did not resist the invasion of Crimea in 2014. No one expected the invasion since it was a clear violation of all the principles I have been discussing here, but Ukrainian forces (though under equipped and undertrained) did resist, and it was because of this resistance that the Russian invasion did not extend past Crimea at that time. Fifth, President Zelensky is wrong when he asserts that the world did nothing to stop the invasion of Crimea. The world has consistently declared its illegality and has placed sanctions on Russia which exist to this day. Recognition of the legality of this invasion has never been suggested by anyone. Until President Trump. Sixth, Russia has not only been the aggressor, but has committed horrific war crimes and atrocities in the process. Seventh, the states of the world have woken up too late to the threat caused by Russia’s invasion. Too much of the cost of resisting Russia has fallen on the US, and Ukraine; Europe has been dilatory. Nonetheless, this does not change the basic principles and issues at stake.
And so, this is profoundly dangerous, in my opinion because, for the first time since 1939 we see international pressure, led by the President of the United States, pushing for legitimizing the alteration of the internationally recognized borders of a sovereign state as the result of aggression in order to have “Peace in our time”.
President Trump proposes that Ukraine cede sovereign territory to the aggressor in order to get some kind of a “peace deal”. Under it, Ukraine would lose territory to the aggressor and have a sort of Finlandized sovereignty in which it would have very little security of its continuation as an independent state in the future. For his unwillingness to accept this, President Zelensky is excoriated by President Trump.
I think such a deal would be a huge mistake. Once the norm against changing the borders of sovereign states by aggression is evaporated the only things left protecting state sovereignty are the first two elements I mentioned above…is the aggressor (maybe with allies) strong enough to impose its will, and is it willing to take the risk? Once the legal prohibition is gone, that’s it.
Once we accept that Russia can change Ukraine’s borders by force, what stops China from claiming not just Taiwan, but the South China Sea, the East China Sea, northern India and/or Kashmir? What prevents India from taking a run at Nepal or Sri Lanka? And it goes on and on.
The principles founded in the Peace of Westphalia provide international stability and promote peace. Upholding them can come at a high cost. That is not to say, obviously, there have been no wars. But, until Russia invaded Ukraine, wars of conquest had not been a feature of the modern state system, certainly since WW II. President Trump’s “solution”, however, opens the door to further such wars. I believe it would “let loose the hounds of war”. It is dangerous. It is a mistake. And knowledgeable people need to speak up about this.
Again, if you have read this far, my apologies for the length.
No apologies necessary. It was very thoughtful and educational. But your analysis lacks a critical element; a proposed solution. You think Trump’s “peace in our time” solution is bad, and actually so do I, but what should replace it? What, for discussion’s sake, should Neville Chamberlin have done about the Sudetenland (where my mother was born in 1899)? I agree that getting promises and assurances from unprincipled megalomaniacs like Hitler and Putin are not worth much, if anything, but what else do you propose? The answer, is, and it must be, that the USA should credibly threaten the aggressor with war, and follow through if the agressor calls us on that threat. To say Europe should do it is not an answer, as we all know.
Thank you for your comment and words.
You are correct that it is often easier to criticize than provide solutions. And certainly I am not qualified to provide complete solutions. However, my approach would be found beginning in two comments I made, the first that upholding international norms can be painful and secondly that Europe has been dilatory. I would add that I do not concede that war, or the threat of war, is necessarily the solution to upholding the system (though obviously it is always a necessary implication) or preserving Ukraine’s sovereignty.
The world we live in is highly interconnected and I think this provides leverage over Russia that the West was unwilling to use. One often mentioned point is the funding of Russia’s war by purchasing their oil and gas exports. Stopping that could have frozen their economy. Also embargoing other Russian exports as well. But there were (are) other tools as well. They could have been denied complete access to the international banking system. Period. Denying then access to the SWIFT and other financial transfer methods could have frozen their economy. Freezing the trade in the ruble as well. And sanctioning states doing business with Russia as another tool would have been effective. I believe it would have been possible to bring the Russian economy to its knees (and it still might, though now they have arranged for support from China and others). Had not only the US, but Europe, OECD and other allied states worked together on this at the beginning it could have stopped Russia. I think that even now it could…freezing Russia out of the international financial system would be powerful.
All of these (especially the gas cut off) would be painful. BUT if the state system is worth preserving AND we want to avoid war, then this is an option.
When Finland and Sweden joined NATO it sent a strong message to Putin that we were serious about preserving state sovereignty and internationally recognized borders. President Trump also knows, however, that economic pressure when applied strongly can affect political policies. This underlies a lot of his tariff policies (at least I think so). Such pressure applied collectively at a macro scale, including with Europe, Japan and others, (together with NATO expansion) would have sent a strong message that the state system must be protected and that the world is willing to cripple Russia if it continues to try and undermine it.
I’m no expert, obviously, but these are some ideas I have been noodling on over time as alternatives to starting a war and, on the other hand, as ways to uphold the state system. And certainly it cannot all fall on the US…Europe, being in close proximity must carry a larger burden.
Cheers.
That sounds like fake news from the fake news media. Trump is getting old, but I don’t think he’s ready for a memory care facility just yet.