Trump's Message Mishandling
by John Lawrence
Trump has given the impression that he has switched sides in the Ukraine war. There is a grain of truth in his statement that Ukraine started the war. That grain is that Zelensky might have prevented the war from starting if only he had pledged that Ukraine would not seek to join NATO. Former Soviet block countries joining NATO is a sore point from the Russian perspective, but neither Biden or Zelensky ever gave any credence to the Russian perspective with the result that thousands of people have been killed and millions of dollars of real estate destroyed. Biden's policy was to demonize and isolate Putin from the very start of the Ukraine war if not before. The Washington Post reported: "Over the past few weeks, Biden’s rhetoric on Putin — a man he once recounted telling to his face, “I don’t think you have a soul” — has become increasingly pointed. He has called him a “butcher”, “pure thug” and a “murderous dictator.” So saying that he should be removed from power could be viewed as the logical next step." Biden's making Putin into a pariah didn't leave any lines of communication open for diplomacy or any avenue for ending the war other than by Ukraine winning which required more and more powerful weapons supplied by the Biden administration at first reluctantly. Biden left no off ramp for Russia because of his demonization of Putin.
From Putin's perspective it was all about whether or not Ukraine could or would join NATO. Biden's attitude was that Ukraine had an absolute right to do so. There was to be no negotiation about this. Russia's sensitivity about former Warsaw pact countries joining NATO goes back to 1989 in which Gorbashev was given assurances that if he relinquished control over East Germany and let the two Germanies reunite, NATO wouldn't move "one inch eastward" which is exactly what NATO under the Clinton administration proceeded to do. NATO expanded during the 1990s largely due to the imprecations of President Bill Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright even though President Gorbachev had been promised that NATO would not expand "one inch eastward" as part of a deal to reunify Germany after the Cold War.
Politifact reported:
After explaining why the U.S. wanted the reunited Germany to stay within the framework of NATO, Baker told Gorbachev that "if we maintain a presence in a Germany that is a part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO's jurisdiction for forces of NATO 1 inch to the east."
"I put the following question to (Gorbachev)," Baker recounted in a letter to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. "‘Would you prefer to see a united Germany outside of NATO, independent and with no U.S. forces, or would you prefer a unified Germany to be tied to NATO, with assurances that NATO’s jurisdiction would not shift 1 inch eastward from its present position?’"
Those comments, along with similar remarks from Baker’s European allies, like Genscher and Kohl, were part of what researchers at George Washington University’s National Security Archive called a "cascade of assurances" offered to the Soviets.
But Baker and other officials involved in the events have denied that the conversation ever turned on expanding NATO to other countries.
So basically Gorbachev was sold a bill of goods that, if he consented to the reunification of Germany and with Germany as a NATO member, that NATO would not expand eastwards. However, "given assurances" is not the same as "legal and binding". Therefore, in July 1997, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic (where Albright was born) were formally invited to join NATO.
The question must also be asked does the fate of Ukraine in the current war affect one way or another US interests? What are US interests in Ukraine? According to Joe Biden it's all about the idea that any country should be free to join NATO if it so desires. Is this something that the US should be spending hundreds of billions of dollars to achieve? Might the money be spent in some other way that might better promote peace in the world? Russia obviously considers Ukraine to be in its "sphere of influence." The architecture of the war as designed by Joe Biden is that the US would supply weaponry to Ukraine to fight a defensive war to push Russia out of its territory. At the same time the war was not meant to expand to a larger conflagration that would imperil a world war. The consequence of that is that all the dying and property destruction would be by Ukrainians and in Ukraine. This is a formula for disaster if the war should become a war of attrition which it has. A whole generation of Ukrainian men mostly are being wiped out. Of course a lot of Russians are dying too, but property destruction is taking place mainly in Ukraine.
Joe Biden had personalized the war in Ukraine as a vendetta between himself and Vladimir Putin. This does not bode well for a future peace settlement, and a peace settlement must come at some point or Ukraine will essentially be destroyed by an ongoing war of attrition. Ukraine obviously wants to expand the war to Russian territory with the help of more advanced US weaponry, something that Biden has resisted giving to them because he wants the war contained within Ukrainian territory. He doesn't want an expanded war which could develop into a World War. This is to his credit, but it leaves Ukraine in the position of being totally dependent on US weaponry, and, since the US is a democracy and not an autocracy, ironically if the House of Representatives will not allocate the money for the continuance of the war in Ukraine, Ukraine will lose the war. Is there any kind of back channel communication going on about a peace settlement? And then Trump was elected, someone not on the same wave length as Joe Biden. In fact philosophically opposite regarding the war in Ukraine.
So Trump's reestablishing a relationship with Russia and wanting to end the killing in Ukraine is a good thing. After all Russia (and China as well) are on the UN Security Council along with the US, France and Britain. Therefore, Russia should be given at least respect as being a great power. Demonizing Putin does not accomplish anything other than prolonging the war and the killing. Advocates of "winning" mainly don't even consider that the prolongation of the war, any war, means that more innocent people will lose their lives. Trump's heart may have been in the right place when he at least seemed to recognize that there were Russian interests and sensitivities involved in the war in Ukraine, but he never clarified in any cogent fashion his position with the result that his utterances may have been misconstrued to mean that he supported Russia and not Ukraine. He did make clear, however, that he wanted the killing to stop. Nobody, it seems, wants to give him credit for that. The main thing is to get the negotiations started with all players being in the room so that this war can end in some reasonable fashion without further acrimony and vilification.
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