When tracing the causes of the war in Ukraine, one cannot ignore Donald Trump's role in the debacle. Jonathan Stevenson writes:
Republicans have criticized President Joe Biden for not doing more to arm the Ukrainians, yet fail to recognize that crucial US support was withheld years ago: they voted not to convict Trump in his first impeachment trial in the Senate, proceedings that the House of Representatives had precipitated over Trump’s making US assistance to Ukraine conditional on political favors. That observation barely scratches the surface of Republican hypocrisy on this front, but recounting the Trump administration’s corrosive relationship with Ukraine is not the vindictive resurrection of old talking points. Rather, it is essential to reckoning with his domestically and strategically calamitous presidency. Trump must be held accountable for weakening the US-led international, rules-based order, undermining US deterrence of a hostile and predatory Russia, and setting up Ukraine for Putin’s brutal and geopolitically ominous invasion.
Trump’s instrumental use of Ukraine for personal political advantage began with the government that preceded Volodymyr Zelensky’s, that of Petro Poroshenko, who was president from 2014 to 2019. Like Zelensky, Poroshenko saw US support as essential to shoring up Ukraine’s national security in light of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and fomenting of a separatist rebellion in the Donbas region. Trump himself evinced no special affection for Ukraine and placed no particular value on its independence, refusing when he was the Republican nominee in 2016 to condemn Moscow over its annexation of Crimea.
Trump and his acolytes were always on Vladimir Putin's side:
His campaign manager, Paul Manafort, had advised the monumentally corrupt Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who advocated that his country distance itself from the West and align more closely Russia. In late 2016, Trump’s incoming national security adviser, Michael Flynn, signaled to Russia’s ambassador that the Trump administration would take a conciliatory approach to economic sanctions imposed by Obama—then a leading objective for President Putin.
Precisely because of the pro-Russian tilt of crucial members of Trump’s inner circle, Poroshenko felt compelled to be of great service to Trump. In 2017, to address energy shortages, Ukraine bought coal from US producers, nourishing the fossil fuel–based economy that Trump championed, and cultivated deeper business ties with the United States, making deals with American firms to buy locomotives and fuel for Ukrainian nuclear plants. Meanwhile, the former federal prosecutor and pro-Trump Republican politician Rudy Giuliani became a private consultant on crime for the city of Kyiv and on emergency services for the city of Kharkiv.
It was the Trump-Putin alliance that helped ignite today's Ukrainian War.
Image: The Guardian
19 comments:
Are you seriously blaming Trump for this? Do you seriously think a better armed Ukraine would have been a deterant to Putin invading? Better diplomancy could have avoided this.
This isn't all Trump's fault, Gyor. There's plenty of blame to go around. But Trump's initial dealings with Zelensky made things harder to solve.
Had Clinton 'won' the 2016 election, this invasion would have likely happened years ago ...
The front lines would be stretched from Kviv to Damascus or we'd be in a full-on nuclear war. (which may now come at any moment.)
Given the relationship between Russia and Ukraine -- and the fact that Putin has been around for 22 years -- this war could, indeed, have happened long ago, PoV. But what would Hilary Clinton have had to do with it?
@ Northern PoV
Yes, Clinton was seriously talking about a no-fly-zone in Syria. I thought Trump was a horror show in many ways but he actually had one or two sensible ideas such as get out of Syria and Afghanistan even if he was unable to pull them off.
Old link on how "soft" Trump 25 Times Trump Has Been Dangerously Hawkish On Russia
Trump is consistently ignorant, jrk. But, if you are looking for consistent policy, well, that's something else.
Owen,
"Trump must be held accountable for weakening the US-led international, rules-based order,"
How many countries does the USA have to invade, how many insurrections does it have to foment, before you stop quoting propagandistic hacks babbling about a non-existent "international, rules-based order"???
"...undermining US deterrence of a hostile and predatory Russia"
Neither the USA, nor any of its NATO lackeys (such as Canada) has any business holding ourselves up as the deterrers of other "hostile and predatory" countries. Because that is the vilest of hypocrisies and no utterances of the magic word "Whataboutism" can change that.
The question you have to ask yourself is "Do I want to die in a nuclear holocaust?" Because even if you are not embarrassed by the hypocrisy of it all; even if putting the Ukraine in NATO and squeezing Russia until it collapses into total chaos is a sacred undertaking to you, there is a strong likelihood that we could end up in a nuclear war because of all of this nonsense. And is that a risk you wish to take? If that's a price you're prepared to pay.
I agree that we are on the cusp of nuclear war, thwap. And there are more American hands than Trump's involved here. All I mean to suggest is that, as Mark Antony said, "The evil that men do lives after them."
Owen,
Yes. Biden and Blinken's finger-prints are all over this crisis.
thwap:
If you believe this then I believe you are seriously mistaken. Trump did this and nobody else. Trump led Putin to believe that he could do anything he wanted. Trump is a Russian stooge and obviously I disagree with your premise and call Bollocks!
Not fingers!
USA hands are all over the origins of the situation.
This does not mean Putin is not committing war crimes; he is.
The expansion of unfettered capitalism and the fascist states it supports is all over this..
TB
Wackos central. Bye.
Ben Burd,
Then you are a brainwashed shill. Putin has invaded less countries, killed less people, created fewer refugees, than the US presidents who were in power while he has been in power.
But yet, like Owen, you continue to be fixated on his crimes and you call for the monsters in the USA to lead the charge against him.
You assert the evidence-free accusation that Trump was Putin's stooge even though your precious Mueller investigation failed to establish collusion. Even though Trump became just as bellicose towards Russia as was Obama, and surpassed him in some respects. (Read the link provided by jrkrideau above "25 times ... etc.,").
Your compassion for the people of the Ukraine is being manipulated. You are caught up in a manufactured war hysteria. Once you're able to mature to be able to understand that the USA is just as evil as Putin, then you'll be able to put things into context.
Big money can turn a profit from war, TB.
Putin cannot be left off the hook, Dana.
If you're looking for evil equivalents to Putin, thwap, I suggest you take a good, long look at Joseph Stalin.
Comment to Owen and riposte to Thwap:
Never realised that your modest blog, as compared to international newsletters, had a direct feed into Russian observers.
Thwap I guess since the gas ran out of your truck you have no convoy to join and spill your opinions, keep them coming I love to see the alternate view held by people with 'inconvenient views'
Owen,
Now you're being absurd. Putin has been in power for 23 years. He probably hasn't killed his first 100,000 humans at this point. I know for sure he hasn't topped 200,000.
Meanwhile, here's a couple of links for the Champions of Justice you are putting so much of your faith in. Brown University: Costs of War Project and this journalist's summary.
ONE MILLION deaths directly attributed to the fighting in the "War on Terror." Perhaps SIX MILLION excess deaths due to destruction of clean drinking water sources, cold, hunger, the breakdown of medical infrastructure. THIRTY-EIGHT MILLION refugees.
Ben Burd,
I am not from the demographic that supported the Freedumb Convoy. Donald Trump disgusts me. You need to mature a little and open your mind to what people are saying. It would help you to abandon the feeling that you already know everything already.
I deal in facts, not propaganda. It's simply a fact that the Mueller investigation did not find any collusion between Putin and the Trump campaign. Unlike you, I thought it would have been a better idea to go after Trump for things he DID as opposed to things he DIDN'T do. I think that would have been far more effective.
I invite you again to READ the article about the various ways that "Trump Has Been Dangerously Hawkish Towards Russia." It completely eviscerates the whole "Putin Puppet" narrative.
You can rest easy now Owen. I'm done commenting here for a while.
That's best, thwap. This discussion has reached a dead end.
Post a Comment