Speaking to Time magazine, which has again named him Person of the Year, Donald Trump said he “vehemently” disagreed with Biden’s decision to let the Ukraine strike Russian targets with US-made long-range missiles.
I just as vehemently disagree with Biden’s procrastination in that department. That permission should have been given a long time ago, ideally immediately after Russia’s invasion began almost three years ago.
Still, better late than never, and one has to commend Biden’s action, if not the motives behind it. He clearly loosened the reins on the Ukraine for the sole purpose of queering the pitch for Trump, making it harder for him to act on his braggadocio about ending the war instantly.
But sometimes right things are done for wrong reasons, and Biden’s belated acquiescence is one such right thing. Trump’s comment, on the other hand, confirms my belief that, on this issue at least, neither his heart nor his head is in the right place.
“I disagree very vehemently with sending missiles hundreds of miles into Russia,” he said. “Why are we doing that? We’re just escalating this war and making it worse. That should not have been allowed to be done.”
Since this statement is consistent with many others Trump and his retinue have made over the years, it demands a comment. For those chaps clearly define escalation as the Ukraine’s stubborn resistance to fascist aggression.
When Russia pounced on the Ukraine on 24 February, 2022, with the publicly stated intention to stamp out the country’s independence and return her to her erstwhile colonial status in the Russo-Soviet empire, that wasn’t escalation. Escalation only started when the Ukrainians began to fight back.
When the Russians use sites outside the range of Ukrainian artillery and missiles to launch murderous strikes on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, that’s not escalation. Escalation, according to Trump, is when the Ukrainians hit those sites with longer-range missiles.
And what exactly are such strikes “making worse”, and for whom? Whatever negotiations have to occur sooner or later, surely the Ukraine is improving her position, while making Russia’s worse. Since this has to be clear to anyone with half a brain, Trump’s “worse” means he looks at the war from Putin’s perspective.
He then tugged on the readers’ heart strings by bewailing the heavy death toll in the war. But again, the way he did so clearly shows that Trump isn’t playing favourites or, if he does, his favourites aren’t the Ukrainians:
“The level, the number of people dying is number one, not sustainable, and I’m talking on both sides. It’s really an advantage to both sides to get this thing done. You know, this is a war that’s been – this is a tragedy. This is death that’s far greater than anyone knows. When the real numbers come out, you’re going to see numbers that you’re not going to believe.”
I’ll believe the numbers. Also I, along with all decent people, mourn those killed – but not on “both sides”. One side, Putin’s Russia, is the blood-thirsty aggressor. The other, the Ukraine, is fighting for its national survival, to protect its people — and the rest of Europe — against the kind of treatment Russian invaders have been meting out from day one: genocidal mass murder of civilians, rape, torture, looting.
Contrary to what Trump imples, there is no moral equivalence here. Russia, turned into a transparently fascist, or rather Nazi, country by Putin, is the (absolute) evil attempting to extinguish a (relative) good. Most Russian soldiers have taken a king’s ransom (some £2,000 each, a fortune in Russia) to go to a foreign land and murder people who have done them no wrong.
Thus Trump is only half-right: every Ukrainian killed is indeed a tragedy. Every Russian killed, on the other hand, is a blow struck against evil. It’s only from this understanding that any decent Westerner can begin to consider a possible way “to get this thing done”.
It ought to be clear to anyone other than a pro-Trump fanatic (and there are way too many of those for my liking) that, yes, the war must end. But not all ends are created equal.
Trump himself has been as effusive about his intention to “get this thing done” as he has been reticent about the end he sees as desirable. Since he regards as escalation the Ukraine’s attempts to protect her cities by hitting the sites from which death is rained on them, my guess is that Trump will force the Ukraine to accept peace only on Putin’s terms.
He could do so easily enough, by withdrawing Biden’s license to strike deeper into Russia and cutting off all supplies to the Ukraine. Many members of his in-coming administration, including the envoy Trump appointed specifically for negotiating peace terms, are on record with statements to that effect.
Trump himself hasn’t been so forthright, but the broad hints he keeps dropping suggest that his own position isn’t significantly different. True enough, something one can confidently predict about Trump is that he is unpredictable. No one knows, possibly including himself, what he may do on any given day.
Yet so far I haven’t heard him make a single statement rallying the West’s support for resisting the evil aggression that, if allowed to succeed, will put the whole world, certainly its western part, in danger. I have heard quite a few statements to the opposite effect, and I can only hope Trump doesn’t mean what he says.
The ability to use English precisely isn’t among the many indisputable talents the president-elect possesses. That leaves room for conjecture, and I do hope mine is off the mark.
I just do not understand people who side with Russia (close friends among them). I have listened to and read many posts on the subject and all of them calling for withdrawal of U.S. help smack of Chamberlain’s, “A quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing” and most focus on the financial cost (as do discussions of Israel). I have yet to come across a dissenting voice that even mentions Russian aggression or her possible future plans. The idea that a foreign country can dictate terms for a victim’s surrender is also a chilling throwback to the Munich Conference. How few learn from history – or even seem to know it!
Here’s a valuable lesson: less than two years after Chamberlain’s statement, Nazi bombs were falling on London. Let’s not repeat that.
And let’s not forget that many or most of those NAZI bombs were “Made in Russia”!
Are you really suggesting that all those 18 year-old-Russian conscripts are genocidal scum-bags? What would you have them do? Go to some brutal prison? Die fighting the press-gangers? Commit suicide?
Most Russian soldiers aren’t conscripts but volunteers who got paid to join up. I don’t think many of them are genocidal maniacs, just people without much moral sense or brains. Which is to say savages. Also, some 800,000 young Russians have left the country since the war started. That’s another possibility, besides imprisonment and suicide.