Stay firm in face of Donald Trump’s divide and rule
US President’s treatment of Zelensky leaves the western alliance in its gravest crisis since 1945 — but we must pull through
Max Hastings has written several books on WWII see MaxHastings.com
Full article if you have a Times subscription
(All emphases are mine)We have been here before?
Hastings reminds us Britain went to war after Hitler invaded
Poland in 1939. At the end of the war Poland was occupied by the USSR,
Churchill hated the thought we had lost Poland and had a plan drawn up called
Operation Unthinkable in which British and American troops would drive the Russians
out of Poland. One top Field Marshall wrote in his dairy “The whole idea is
of course fantastic and the chances of success quite impossible”.
When the Unthinkable proposal was submitted to Washington,
the new Truman administration unhesitatingly dismissed it. Poland was served
on toast to the Kremlin.
Ukraine’s plight is different, but there seem four relevant
points:
- the Russians have achieved military ascendancy there;
- justice plays scant part in international relations;
- Putin is playing Stalin’s old Polish game;
- yet we cannot launch an Operation Unthinkable.
The likeliest consequence of the Trump administration’s withdrawal, if persisted with, is that President Zelensky’s country will become, sooner or later, a Russian vassal state like Belarus, and probably also Georgia, just as did Poland in 1945.
With the Americans offering shameless support to Vladimir
Putin, and shameless animosity to Volodymyr Zelensky, the Europeans lack the
military power, and .. probably also the will, themselves to protect Ukraine.
Hastings says, the only viable strategy (for Ukraine) is to
keep the Americans in the game by urging a peace plan on Washington.
We should ship all such arms as we can muster for as long as
the Ukrainians continue to fight, …..But we cannot rearm ourselves remotely
fast enough to undo the consequences of Trump’s treachery — and his actions,
if persisted with, indeed represent treachery to America’s historic allies.
Hastings speaks of "an ugly new world in which might is to be deemed right."
We must think beyond the immediate threat to an epochal
future requirement to protect ourselves without much America.
Trump respects only strength. Compassion is not in his
lexicon.
He seeks to divide and rule America’s allies; to break
the economic power of the EU by promoting the political power of the extreme
right and fracturing European unity.
Britain is a liberal democracy. He is in the business of
destroying such polities (political systems). - a lot of Americans do not like us, and such
Americans are now in charge. A mere state visit will not change that.
It is
problematic whether we can continue full intelligence-sharing with Washington,
Despite yesterday’s emotional protestations of the
Europeans’ goodwill, their real strength of purpose seems doubtful about
rearming on a scale to compensate for American retreat.
We are being called upon to hold our nerve, to sustain a
sense of order, calm and commitment to reason, when none of these things is on
offer from Washington.
Hal Brands, of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced
International Studies, writes in the latest issue of US Foreign Affairs: “The
democratic recession of recent years could become a rout if Washington quits
the fight for the world’s ideological future — or, worse still, joins the other
side … Trump’s world could become a very dark place”.
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