President Donald Trump’s meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine was, by every stretch of the imagination, uncouth, unprofessional, and absolutely in bad taste. First, the meeting should have included both countries’ ministers of foreign affairs and other diplomatic officials for a proper balance of views. It should have taken the form of a board discussion—a mini-conference of sorts.
Trump’s eagerness to achieve armistice in Ukraine by all means is clearly obstructing his sense of history and analytics. He erroneously believes that ceding more than 30% of Ukraine to Russia would satisfy Vladimir Putin’s territorial ambitions. Unfortunately, he is wrong. By pressuring Zelenskyy to accept his toxic proposal of partial capitulation, Trump risks repeating the same mistake Neville Chamberlain made in 1938.
At the Munich Agreement of September 1938, then British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain allowed Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany to annex Sudetenland as a form of appeasement. Chamberlain’s desperation to achieve peace at all costs led him to permit Hitler’s expansion, in the false hope that it would curb his territorial hunger. Unfortunately for the world, this act of appeasement signaled weakness to the rest of Europe and set a dangerous precedent of submission to Hitler’s demands. Exactly one year later, the world was plunged into World War II due to Hitler’s insatiable desire for land and resources.
By mistakenly assuming that Putin will stop once he secures a portion of Ukraine, Trump is inadvertently placing the United States in a strategic trap from which it may never recover. If Putin gets away with this brazen act of aggression and annexation, other nations—such as China, India, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Armenia—may feel emboldened to pursue their own territorial ambitions. China, for instance, could escalate its claims over Taiwan and Tibet through military force. If this happens, the U.S. will struggle to rally its allies against such invasions, having already set a precedent with Russia.
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The Russia-Ukraine war is now three years old, and Trump seems to believe that American military aid alone has kept Ukraine standing. While it is true that U.S. war machines have played a significant role in turning the tides of war, we must not overlook the resilience and brilliance of Ukraine’s fighting men and women. Their courage and endurance must not be underestimated. If Trump insists that only American support has prolonged the war, he should also question why the same military might failed to prevent the Taliban from reclaiming Afghanistan or why it could not secure victory in the Vietnam War.
No matter how events unfold from here, one lesson remains clear: “An injury to one could eventually become an injury to all.”
SCRIPT CREDIT: Facebook.com / Uzogara Tobechukwu
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