President Trump is to be commended for trying to broker a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia. President Putin is to blame for the failure of Trump’s initiative. Trump should now ramp up the transfer of weapons systems to Ukraine and work with our Western European allies to help Ukraine defeat Russia. Otherwise, the security of Western Europe will be seriously endangered.
Within days of Trump’s meetings, first with Putin and then with Zelenskyy and Western Europe’s most important political leaders, Putin signaled his determination to continue the war. First, he continued to shell, bomb, and otherwise attack Ukraine even as peace talks were being held. Moreover, he demanded, as the price for a peace settlement, the acquisition of the Ukrainian territory for which he had been fighting as well as land he has not yet been able to seize. Moreover, he said that any “security guarantees” could not include the stationing of Western European troops in Ukraine, and that whatever guarantees that were otherwise developed had to be subject to his veto (rather like putting Hamas in charge of Israeli national security).
Putin has offered several reasons for waging war against Ukraine. For example, he’s said he attacked Ukraine in 2022 to suppress neo-Nazi persecution of Russian-speaking Ukrainians. (Fun fact: President Zelenskyy is a Jew and some of his relatives were murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust).
Putin has also framed the war as a Russian effort to preserve and defend traditional Christian values against the advance of decadent, secular ideas. (Fun fact #2: The Russian Orthodox Church has endorsed Putin’s war effort.) This rationale, coupled with Putin’s rejection and ridicule of Western woke ideology, may explain the sympathy for Putin among some conservative Republicans.
But Putin’s real reasons are twofold:
First, Putin sincerely believes that Ukraine is not a real country deserving of an existence independent of Russia. Rather, it’s a rogue Russian province which he seeks to bring back into the fold.
Moreover, Putin, a former KGB officer, has said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century,” and he wants to reconstitute some version of it (without communism) to rival the United States as a global superpower. As it is, Russia has only half the population of the old Soviet Union (140,000,000 to our 340,000,000), and a gross domestic product of $2.2 trillion, compared to America’s GDP of $30.3 trillion and Texas’s GDP of $2.4 trillion.
And herein lies the most important reason why most of Europe is united against Russia and why America should help Europe as effectively as possible: Should Putin succeed either in the conquest of Ukraine or in making it at least a satellite state, he may well try to expand Russian influence at least to the other parts of Europe that were once part of the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union (eg. Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, etc) or satellite states (Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania), and threaten Western Europe as well. Little wonder that most of these countries chose to join NATO at the earliest opportunity, to be followed by Finland and Sweden once Putin began the current war against Ukraine, and that our NATO allies have finally agreed to Trump’s well-justified demand that they pay more for their own defense.
So what should Trump do now? Whatever further efforts he makes should be backed with the threat of American military and economic might to deter future Russian aggression.
First, Trump should give more military aid to Ukraine. President Biden was right to begin aiding Ukraine, but Trump has rightly criticized Biden for giving too little aid with too many strings attached. Trump should give Ukraine more weapons systems with more long-range capabilities, and with more freedom for their usage. He can finance their production with at least some of the $300 billion in Russian assets seized by the United States. (Whatever assets remain left over should be used to help finance Ukrainian reconstruction).
Second, Trump should follow through on his threat/promise to levy secondary sanctions on Russia’s trading partners, and take whatever other steps are necessary to destroy those parts of the Russian economy used to support Putin’s war efforts.
Third, while Trump is properly cautious about putting American “boots on the ground” as part of a security guarantee to protect Ukraine from future Russian aggression, he should nonetheless actively engage with our NATO allies to provide whatever other assistance is necessary if and when a lasting peace is achieved. His meeting with western European leaders last week was a helpful sign that cooperation can be achieved.
All civilized people want what President Trump wants: An end to the killing in Ukraine. But any temporary ceasefire or other agreement consistent with Putin’s demands would only allow a respite until Putin resumes his murderous quest to conquer Ukraine and restore Russia to Soviet-era glory. Trump’s dream of a true and permanent end to the war and the killing can be achieved best with a defeat of Russia so decisive that Putin and his successors will be deterred from future acts of aggression.
Malcolm L. Cross has lived in Stephenville since 1987 and taught politics and government at Tarleton for 36 years, retiring in 2023. His political and civic activities include service on the Stephenville City Council (2000-2014) and on the Erath County Republican Executive Committee (1990-2024). He was Mayor pro-tem of Stephenville from 2008 to 2014. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Stephenville
Economic Development Authority since 2018 and as chair of the Erath County Appraisal District’s Appraisal Review Board since 2015. He is also a member of the Stephenville Rotary Club, the Board of Vestry of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, and the Executive Committee of the Boy Scouts’ Pecan Valley District. Views expressed in this column are his and do not reflect those of The Flash as a whole.
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