A Day of American Infamy
By: Bret Stephens (The New York Times)
Using the United States as a threat is not a substitute for defense planning and preparation. If the idea is to provoke a direct confrontation between the United States and Russia then let's spin them up and get on with it. Europe wants a war between the United States and Russia so let's give it to them.
The lessons should have learned from the meeting between Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill is that we have to fight our own wars. The United States does not need Ukraine, Europe, or NATO to directly confront Russia. The United States will have to fight that war with Russia on its own. European thoughts, prayers, and benevolent good will won't win a war between the United States and Russia. If that's the war everyone wants then let's get on with it. Why should the United States bankrupt itself trying to prevent a war that has been the core of European defense planning and preparation?
Unlike World War II, the United States cannot depend upon the safety that two oceans provide. The world has become much smaller than it was 85 years ago. A war between the United States and Russia won't be fought by Marines storming beaches. The invasion force would be dead before they could see the enemy shore. World War III will be nothing like World War II. Will the antiquated, outdated liberal attitudes and patriotic zeal of World War II be sufficient to win a 24 hour war? There won't be time for second thoughts.
Yeah, Trump is no Franklin Roosevelt. But Zelensky is even less a Winston Churchill. Ukraine has more in common with the divided France of World War II than with Great Britain. And the French were willing participants in the Holocaust for their own political purposes. Is Volodymyr Zelensky supposed to be Charles de Gaulle or Philippe Pétain? Ukrainians have been fighting Ukrainians for the last 11 years. Ukrainians in the eastern Donbas have not risen up in revolutionary ardor for democracy to repel Russian invaders. Those eastern Ukrainians are fighting alongside Russian allies. The Ukrainian war started as a civil war and it is still a civil war. Just like divided France during World War II.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
In August 1941, about four months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt met with Winston Churchill aboard warships in Newfoundland's Placentia Bay and agreed to the Atlantic Charter, a joint declaration by the world's leading democratic powers on "common principles" for a postwar world.
Among its key points: "no aggrandizement, territorial or other"; "sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them"; "freedom from fear and want"; freedom of the seas; "access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity."
The charter, and the alliance that came of it, is a high point of American statesmanship. On Friday in the Oval Office, the world witnessed the opposite. Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine's embattled democratic leader, came to Washington prepared to sign away anything he could offer President Trump except his nation's freedom, security and common sense. For that, he was rewarded with a lecture on manners from the most mendacious vulgarian and ungracious host ever to inhabit the White House.
If Roosevelt had told Churchill to sue for peace on any terms with Adolf Hitler and to fork over Britain's coal reserves to the United States in exchange for no American security guarantees, it might have approximated what Trump did to Zelensky. Whatever one might say about how Zelensky played his cards poorly — either by failing to behave with the degree of all-fours sycophancy that Trump demands or to maintain his composure in the face of JD Vance's disingenuous provocations — this was a day of American infamy.
Where do we go from here?
If there's one silver lining to this fiasco, it's that Zelensky did not sign the agreement on Ukrainian minerals that was forced on him this month by Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary who's the Tom Hagen character in this protection-racket administration. The United States is entitled to some kind of reward for helping Ukraine defend itself — and Ukraine's destruction of much of Russia's military might should top the list, followed by the innovation Ukraine demonstrated in pioneering revolutionary forms of low-cost drone warfare, which the Pentagon will be keen to emulate.
But if it's a financial payback that the Trump administration seeks, the best place to get it is to seize, in collaboration with our European partners, Russia's frozen assets and put them into an account by which Ukraine could pay for American-made arms. If the United States won't do this, the Europeans should: Let the Ukrainians rely for their arms on Dassault, Saab, Rheinmetall, BAE Systems and other European defense contractors and see how that goes over with the "America First"-ers. Hopefully that could serve as another spur to Europeans to invest, as quickly and heavily as they can, in their depleted militaries, not simply to strengthen NATO but also to hedge against its end.
There is a second opportunity: While Trump’s abuse of Zelensky might delight the MAGA crowd, it isn’t likely to play well with most voters, including the almost 30 percent of Republicans who, even now, believe it’s in our interest to stand with Ukraine. And while most Americans may want to see the war in Ukraine end, they almost surely don’t want to see it end on Vladimir Putin’s terms.
Nor should the Trump administration. A Russian victory in Ukraine, including a cease-fire that allows Moscow to consolidate its gains and recoup its strength before the next assault, will have precisely the same effect as the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan: emboldening American enemies to behave more aggressively. Notice that, as Trump has ratcheted up pressure on Ukraine in recent weeks, Taiwan reported a surge in Chinese military drills around the island, while Chinese warships held live-fire exercises off the coast of Vietnam and came within 150 nautical miles of Sydney.
Those are points honorable conservatives should press: Can Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska — two Republicans who haven’t sold their souls on Ukraine — lead a delegation of like-minded conservatives to Kyiv?
More so, this should be an opportunity for Democrats. Joe Biden was right when he called this a “decisive decade” for the future of the free world; he just happened to be too feeble and cautious a messenger.
But there are tough-minded Democrats with military and security backgrounds — Representative Jason Crow of Colorado, Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts and Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan come to mind — who can restore the spirit of Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy to the Democratic Party. It’s a message of toughness and freedom they might also be able to sell to at least some Trump voters, who cast their ballots in November for the sake of a better America, not a greater Russia.
Still, there’s no getting around the fact that Friday was a dreadful day — dreadful for Ukraine, for the free world, for the legacy of an America that once stood for the principles of the Atlantic Charter.
Roosevelt and Reagan must be spinning in their graves, as are Churchill and Thatcher. It’s up to the rest of us to reclaim America’s honor from the gangsters who besmirched it in the White House.
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Are we ready to fight the war Europe wants? Apparently New York is ready to sacrifice itself for liberal principles supported by historical ignorance.
Spin 'em up. Let's go. Let's fight the war Ukraine, Europe, and NATO wants. Zelensky is a hero and Trump is a dick. Ain't that worth dying for?
I am on record, stating quite clearly, that Donald Trump; is a clown, a buffoon who can't string three words together into a coherent thought.
But Joe Biden invited Volodomyr Zelensky to come into the Oval Office and lead Biden around by the nose. Biden was fighting Russia on Zelensky's terms. Zelensky told Biden that more support would turn the tide. And Biden depleted our own defensive stockpiles to give Zelensky what he wanted.
You are correct. Volodomyr Zelensky is leader of the free world. Joe Biden delegated the responsibility to lead the free world to Zelensky. Volodomyr Zelensky was on the cover of Time magazine; Joe Biden was not. And Zelensky has been committing the United States and the free world to a prolonged war that Ukraine cannot win because Ukrainians are fighting Ukrainians. That's how the war started in 2014 and that fight is still going on today.
Honestly, I want more effort from Europe. More military aid, for sure, but also more economic sanctions. I believe this war is dragging on because both we and Europe weren’t tougher on Russia from the beginning. But there is still time to change that. Simply bugging out is not the answer.
Bugging out is the only answer.
Ukraine offers us nothing we can't supply ourselves if we wanted to.
Russia isn't a threat to Europe, much the less the world.
If Trump pulls us out of NATO so we can concentrate on China- the real damn threat that Democrats and leftists refuse to acknowledge- having him as president will be worth it.
At the very least cutting off Ukraine would be a good start. We are gaining nothing by continued support. Just depleting ourselves financially; and making sure we are less prepared for when China does decide to move.
That nagging pain in your soul is called cognitive dissonance. I hear MAGA saying these beneficent things about Russia and Putin more and more these days. It is shocking, sad, and insane, all at once. But you have to say it because the leader of your cult wants to be an all-powerful dictator just like his hero, Vladimir Putin, and there is no way to support Trump in this without excusing everything Russia is doing.
Not long ago, conservatives still understood the threat from Russia, but today, they have - en masse - rejected what they know to be true, and all for politics.
Even Marco Rubio understood Putin and Russia, just nine years ago when this shit started.
Russian gas has been flowing through Ukraine into Europe until the beginning of this year. Ukraine hasn't been tough on Russia.
How do we know Ukraine hasn't been playing both sides? European and US military stockpiles are being depleted. Europe is more vulnerable today than it was four years ago. China has become Ukraine's largest trading partner for both imports and exports. China has established diplomatic relations with Kiev and inserted itself into the war as a peacemaker in 2023 with peace plans.
Ukraine and Europe has not been looking to the United States for a peace process. The United States was excluded from the Minsk negotiations in 2014. Ukraine has been demanding stronger sanctions, more military support, and a more confrontational role from the United States. Ukraine has been actively attempting to provoke a direct confrontation between the United States and Russia. Ukraine, Europe, and China have been exploiting the war to weaken both the United States and Russia.
By the time Europe invests enough in it's military companies to get them on a war production footing to supply Ukraine- Russia will already own it.
Even if Europe wanted to, they can't just flip a switch and instantly modernize and enhance their own military to ensure their own security; much the less produce the weapons and munitions to supply Ukraine. The US military industrial complex is far more vast than Europe's (we are the #1 arms producer in the world- there is no one even close); and it cannot cope with the demand of supply Ukraine and US forces.
As for China. They were pulling this shit all throughout the Biden administration. Acting like this is anything knew is the very height of TDS.
Get in the game.
Leader of a country about to be taken over by Russia.
Why haven't leftists gone and joined the Ukrainian military- they will literally take anyone.
I am sure they will enjoy the memes.
What a beautiful picture of the faux John Wayne in tailor made khakis.
Maybe some leftist will make a movie documenting his less than stellar life and rise to power with that special Hollywood twist to reality.
And in response to this, they respond with....
Idiotic memes
So that justifies European defense planning based upon a direct confrontation between the United States and Russia? Europe's security strategy has relied upon the United States spending money on defense so Europe doesn't have to.
If the idea is for the United States to fight a war with Russia then let's get on with it. That's what Zelensky was advocating in the Oval Office. Zelensky has been using the threat of confrontation with the United States as a weapon. Are we supposed to allow Zelensky to make those sorts of commitments without our input?
Where did I state it justifies it?
I am all for pulling up stakes and leaving Ukraine and NATO to their own damn devices. They can pay for their own defense for a change.
I merely stated the truth. Europe can't supply Ukraine with anything- other than more commitments from the US. The author acts like Europe is the answer to the US withdrawing from Ukraine. US leaves Ukraine and NATO the Europeans will be shitting bricks trying to make up for decades of military neglect.
A thoughtful piece by Bret Stephens. The left has nothing but idiotic memes to respond with.
Yesterday we saw what Biden created: the petulant, spoiled front man in a proxy war who thought he was going to give a history lesson to the President of the United States. Later he did an interview with Bret Baier. In one of his answers he began with "I know how badly President Trump wants a deal...." I said to myself, there it is. He thought Trump would do anything to get the deal done. I think Zelensky is a lot wiser today, because he now has to go back to the people of Ukraine with nothing.
A deaf dumb and blind poodle knows more about history than Trump does.
We all know that Russia violated treaties. If he doesn't trust Russia maybe he should just fight on, but don't talk to the President of the United States like that.
And above all else, don't come running back when the Russians are right outside of Kiev.
The left encourages this because "but Truuuuuuuuuuump.
If it were Obama, then they would be calling Zelensky a white supremacist and nazi........oh, wait....they already have done that.
Idiotic Huh?
We knew they would all support Zelensky.
"The left has nothing but idiotic memes to respond with."
But it's really the same Cold War tripe we've heard since the Cuban crisis. The geopolitical landscape has changed dramatically over those intervening years. The United States is no longer the protector of the free world. The new, improved, interconnected (neoliberal) free world is using the United States as a weapon and is making commitments for us without our input. The United States is fighting other country's wars for their purposes and rarely gets even a pat on the back.
If the free world wants the United States to fight a war with Russia then let's get on with it. We don't need Ukraine, Europe, or NATO to provoke that confrontation on our behalf. And the United States shouldn't be fighting a war with Russia on Europe's terms. That's not the lesson provided by Roosevelt, Churchill, the Atlantic Charter, or World War II.
As MacArthur once described it as the burden. It is no longer sustainable.
And the United States shouldn't be fighting a war with Russia on Europe's terms. That's not the lesson provided by Roosevelt, Churchill, the Atlantic Charter, or World War II.
They had 3 years. Trump is right, "don't tell me what I can or can't do."
Joe Biden boasted about threatening to withhold aid in 2016 unless prosecutor Viktor Shokin was fired. The Obama administration set up biolabs in Ukraine. The United States had started rotating reserve units through the NATO PfP training center in western Ukraine during the G.W. Bush administration.
It's been a lot longer than 3 years. The liberal interconnected global caliphate wants us to have amnesia for anything that happened before 2022. Apparently the free world did not exist prior to the Russian invasion in 2022.
What a woefully inaccurate reading of events.
Yesterday, we saw a wartime leader behaving like a man and the Trump-Vance tag team behaving like spoiled bullies orchestrating a schoolyard takedown. In this made for television spectacle, Trump signaled that he was 1) under the thrall of Putin and that 2) he was going to make Zelensky"understand" his position in all of this as if he did not already know it. The whole purpose of this fiasco must have been to signal to the world that the U.S.A. was open for racketeering and that everyone must kiss Trump's ass in the most obsequious manner possible if they wished to do business with him.
This is not a display of leadership by the US, this is a display of base thuggery and the doctrine of "Might Makes Right".
Well, if the United States is going to fight a war with Russia then get on with it. Zelensky wants a war so let's give it to him. Put the Marines in Ukraine and fight. Or give Zelensky nukes.
No to both.
We shouldn't be wasting our soldiers lives for a bunch of fascist Ukrainians. As for giving them nuclear weapons- only if you want the world to end. Putin will know where they came from; and who to destroy for it.
"TASS was not on the approved list of media for today's pool," a White House official said. "As soon as it came to the attention of press office staff that he was in the Oval, he was escorted out by the Press Secretary."
Got it yet?
Three years this war has been going on. How much has the US and Europe contributed? Nothing has worked.
History will record that President Trump tried to end it with a deal and Zelensky threw a tantrum.
That will be far in the future. More closer to the here and now, leftist history revisionists will claim "Orange man bad" during every news cycle.
They don't remember that it was Trump that initially gave Ukraine actual weapons, where it was Obama who gave blankets.
But Truuuuuuuuuuump.
Their latest hoax is that it was all a set up.
One of the lefties already has the conspiracy theory via the Atlantic posted.
I believe it was posted by one of our left wing "reactionaries"
I have no problem with it. Why direct this to me?
"All history is revisionist" whether it comes from the right, the left or the center.
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History will record facts and fictions as it has done since Herodotus.
it's interesting to look back at Obama's reaction to the 2014 invasion. His outlook about America's strategic interest in Ukraine is very similar, if even more dovish, than Trump's ever was. Obama refused ANY military aid when Ukraine was invaded and progressives were by and large fine with that. Trump ramped up sanctions and sent arms but somehow that made him a Russian asset or something as the left pivoted to hating Putin in 2016. He was their friend who betrayed them by spending thousands of dollars on ads that generally benefitted Trump in 2016.
That's really what this is. To many progressives, Putin is first and foremost an enemy of the democratic party . American interests have little to do with it. Thus the "who cares about Ukraine" attitude of 2014 became the most existential fight of good vs evil in generations.