2. Europe has provided significantly more financial aid to Ukraine that the US
3. Europe (excluding Russia) has taken in over 5 million Ukrainian refugees; the US has taken in about 270 thousand or about 5% of the total.
Question: Why did Trump lie so blatantly about Ukraine? The first (and most obvious answer) is because he has found he can without any consequences for him personally.
But the more serious answer is that it lays the groundwork for his abandonment of Ukraine with minimal reputational impact on himself. He sees his only potential constraint as the implications for his reputation with the MAGA movement. When he cedes the territory Russia to from Ukraine to Russia (as in effect has already has) he leaves himself open to comparison with Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan. By painting Ukraine as the aggressor and the villain of the piece, abandonment would net be seen as a betrayal. That is reinforced by his exaggeration (i.e. lie) about of the cost to the US.
The implications for Europe are staggering. By abandoning Ukraine, Trump has greenlit Putin's ambitions in Europe. Those very likely include annexing all of Ukraine, and may extent to invading and annexing the Baltic states. It may even include occupying Eastern Europe to recreate the pre-cold war Soviet Bloc. Hungary, Romania, Poland, The Czech Republic, Slovakia, former Yugoslavia could be on Putin's shopping list. Putin is not driven by ideology so his vision is less of a truly Communist alliance against the capitalist West but rather a Russian empire that he would control. In abandoning Ukraine and signalling that he will not fulfill the US commitment under Article 5 of the NATO alliance, Putin knows that even if Europe tries to help defend Ukraine militarily, the US will not stand in his way. And he may be gambling that if he pushes further west, Europe will have neither the stomach nor the capability to stop him.
Just as the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, in 1914 was the trigger for the First World War, we, the American people, in electing Donald Trump for a second term, have perhaps unwittingly set in motion a train of events that will be the most consequential of this century and likely represent the most radical realignment of world political power since the Second World War.
1. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9814k2jlxko, https://thehill.com/policy/international/5153983-pence-denounces-trumps-claim-ukraine-started-war/,
3. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1312584/ukrainian-refugees-by-country/, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/us-admits-271000-ukrainian-refugees-russia-invasion-biden-rcna72177,
No comments:
Post a Comment