Word is out that the Trump administration, working together with the Kremlin, has put together a 28-point “peace plan” and is demanding that Ukraine accept.
The key points of the plan are as follows:
- Crimea and Donbas be surrendered to Russia and be internationally recognized as sovereign Russian territory.
- The Kremlin-run Russian Orthodox Church be allowed to operate freely in Ukraine.
- All sanctions against Russia be dropped.
- Ukraine’s fortress line defending its eastern front be surrendered to Russia.
- No foreign military forces other than Russia’s be allowed in Ukraine.
- Ukraine to give up all of its long-range weapons.
- Ukraine’s army to be reduced to 40 percent of its current size.
While all of these points are bad, the final four are decisive, as they would render Ukraine helpless. Once Ukraine is disarmed, all other points are moot, as there will be nothing to stop Russia from occupying the entire country.
In this respect, the Trump-Putin plan to annihilate Ukraine precisely mirrors the method by which the governments of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French President Edouard Daladier worked with Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler to coerce Czechoslovakia into suicide in 1938.
According to the Munich Pact, foisted upon Czechoslovakia by Chamberlain, Daladier, and Hitler, peace could only be achieved if the Czechs surrendered their highly fortified Sudetenland border region to Germany. However, once the Czechs agreed to this, they were defenseless.
Within five months, Hitler invaded and occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia, ignoring, as did Chamberlain and Daladier, the solemn territorial guarantees they all had offered to the Czechs as bait for their acceptance of the Munich Pact.
It is a fallacy to say that Russia can be no threat to the West, because it has had such a hard time handling Ukraine.
The Trump-Putin plan closely resembles the Munich Pact in its betrayal of democracy’s own strategic interests. By surrendering Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain and Daladier eliminated 35 well-equipped Czech divisions from the West’s order of battle, added the excellent Czech armaments industry to the Nazis’ defense industrial base, and extended the border of the Third Reich around the south of Poland, thereby rendering that Western ally defenseless.
Then, when Hitler predictably took advantage of these gains to invade Poland, Britain and France declared war but did nothing, allowing Poland and its 50 divisions to be wiped off the map. So, when the next spring Hitler turned his greatly enhanced war machine West to destroy France, 85 divisions, or almost half the armed forces that could have resisted him (the British and French together had 94 divisions) had been eliminated before the battle for France had even begun. The result was a catastrophe.
In the same way, forcing the destruction of Ukraine invites total disaster for the Western democracies today.
It is a fallacy to say that Russia can be no threat to the West, because it has had such a hard time handling Ukraine. Ukraine has stopped the Russian advance by deploying hundreds of thousands of men into combat and taking tens of thousands of casualties, paying a price in blood that is far higher than the United States or any of our Western European allies are likely to be willing to bear.
It is only because of the existence, courage, and endurance of the Ukrainian army that the front lines have been made static, and the war reduced to a contest of technological virtuosity.
This is a fight that the West can now readily win if it were to provide Ukraine with the benefits of airpower, satellite communications, and scientific excellence. Take the Ukrainian army out of the equation (and add Ukraine’s massive drone production capability to that of Russia) and everything changes.
With the Ukrainian army gone, NATO would have no countermove if Russia should decide to invade the Baltic States. But the situation is much worse than that. Take a look at the map. There are two countries barring Russia’s path into Europe: Poland and Ukraine. Poland has a small but fierce army and would undoubtedly defend itself if attacked by Russia. But take away Ukraine, and there are no serious armed forces blocking the Russian army moving southward of Poland, to Budapest, Vienna, and Belgrade, and taking Moldova, Romania and Bulgaria as well.
Would the Trump administration be willing to send half a million American soldiers to Europe to stop such an advance? Certainly not.
It boils down to this. NATO needs an army. Ukraine has one. With it, Europe can be defended at minimal cost. Without it, Europe would be completely open to invasion or domination by Russia, and the overall policy of deterrence that has prevented another world war for the past 80 years would be fatally shattered.
The isolationist gang surrounding Trump claims, in chorus with the Kremlin line, that America can do just fine in a “multipolar world,” (Aleksandr Dugin, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump) holding a sphere of influence for itself in the Western hemisphere while allowing Russia and China to create their own empires dominating the rest.
But this is total nonsense. The Free World alliance joining America with Europe and other democracies does indeed have vastly superior economic strength to the China-Russia Axis. But if it deserts its allies, America alone could and would be crushed economically in a new world order dictated by its enemies.
Trump says that the accusation that he is colluding with Russia is a “hoax.” Some “hoax.” Trump clearly is colluding with Putin, not covertly, but overtly, with the fact of such collusion proven not by disputable secret documents, videos, or other cloak-and-dagger intelligence, but by Trump’s open and aggressive support for the Kremlin’s war plans. By engaging in such collusion, Trump is not just betraying Ukraine. He is betraying America, and indeed, the entire Free World.
Dr. Robert Zubrin @robert_zubrin is an American aerospace engineer and author of 12 books, including most recently “The New World on Mars: What We Can Create on the Red Planet”
The views expressed are the author’s and not necessarily of Kyiv Post.