It does not take hyper-sensory abilities to smell a rat, in the form of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as President Trump gets ready to meet him in Alaska to start talking about an end to the invasion of Ukraine.
The president’s admiration of Putin, and perhaps even his envy of the Russian dictator’s control of his country, has been well documented since Trump’s first term. Only in the last few weeks has this changed, with Trump finally realizing, and saying publicly, that Putin keeps telling him one thing but doing another.
As in, yes, Russia wants to stop the war. But then it fires missiles into Ukrainian residential areas to keep the pressure on Putin’s smaller adversary after more than three years of combat.
His patience having run out, Trump recently announced deadlines for economic sanctions on Russia. A separate bill in the U.S. Senate would apply extreme financial pressure by forcing countries that buy Russian oil and gas to pay a huge tariff on products those buyers want to sell in the United States.
But those economic punishments are not yet being used, so it’s hard to shake the feeling that this meeting in Alaska is occurring too soon. First, Trump should have applied his sanctions or asked Congress to pass the tariff bill against Russia’s customers. Seeing the results of either or both tactics would give the president much more leverage in Alaska.
In terms Trump would understand, having mocked Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about it a few months ago in the Oval Office, Putin wouldn’t have any cards under such sanctions. Only Trump knows why he has decided to negotiate without having the greatest possible advantage.
Nevertheless, the meeting appears to be on schedule. But there is no guarantee of success.
Zelenskyy has said Ukraine will not give up any of its territory that Russian troops now control. Trump said that will be discussed in Alaska — even though letting Russia have part of Ukraine wrongly rewards aggression and stirs echoes of the 1938 “appeasement” of Nazi Germany that failed to prevent World War II. (Extra points to any reader who knows the name of the territory Great Britain agreed to let Adolf Hitler have in exchange for “peace in our time.”)
Also, don’t forget that Putin started out as a KGB agent. He thinks like a spy. That’s what he is. What he wants above all else is to put the Soviet Union back together and to capture through negotiations what his troops have not been able to take by force.
Putin is a master of manipulation, and it’s taken Trump a while to pay attention to what Putin does, not what he says. The president will have to resist these dark arts of subterfuge when Putin insists he wants the war to end.
Trump should defend Ukraine’s rights to keep its territory. He should get NATO governments behind him. He should set a short deadline for attacks to stop and for troops to withdraw, and back it up by smacking the Russian economy and ramping up the supply of weapons to Ukraine if Putin merely stalls for time. Because that’s what Putin is certain to do.
Extra points answer: British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain agreed to give Adolf Hitler the Sudetenland territory of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Chamberlain thought it would appease Hitler and satisfy Nazi plans to take over Europe. But we know how that turned out.
Hopefully Trump remembers that history lesson. It is a mistake to reward military aggression. Dictators don’t play by the rules. It was true 87 years ago, and it is true today.
— Jack Ryan, Enterprise-Journal
