bearister said:
I hate this guy so much that I usually stop after two sentences….BUT I forced myself to read the whole column and I found it very interesting.
WHAT SAY YOU, BOTH SIDES OF THE BI POLITICAL SPECTRUM?
How Trump Can End the War in Ukraine for Good | American Enterprise Institute - AEI
https://www.aei.org/op-eds/how-trump-can-end-the-war-in-ukraine-for-good/
Here is a non-paywall version of the same article:
https://www.dailyunion.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-how-trump-can-end-the-war-in-ukraine-for-good/article_31447490-b1bf-11ef-ab76-bf5605584bb6.htmlThe guy is a neocon, AEI has been neocon central from day one, with people like Perle, Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney and his wife, Bolton, Ledeen - that was their main think tank hangout.
Two decades after the Dubya/Cheney neocon forever war kicked off, the neocons have now managed to get the neolib centrists fully on board in their excellent if not dangerous and deadly (mostly to Ukrainians) adventure in eastern Europe.
Excerpts from the editorial:
Quote:
What lessons can we learn from the failure of the Budapest accord?
First, Putin does not want peace; he wants Ukraine. He will violate any international agreement Russia signs to achieve his objective. The only way to stop him is to make his objective impossible to achieve. As we have seen, Putin believes he can wait out a strong U.S. president until another weak one replaces him. If allowed to do so, he simply will use a cessation of hostilities to pause, reconstitute his forces and resume his invasion when the time is right. If Trump wants a peace that outlasts his presidency, that agreement must create conditions that make a resumption of war impossible.
This is projection. Putin/Russia wants peace on its own terms, whle the neocons want to bleed Russia with the ultimate goal being regime change and the dismemberment of Russia.
Originally the Russian demand was Ukraine neutrality/disarmement (no NATO) and access to their naval base in Crimea. Today it is Ukrainian neutrality plus the current 4 oblasts they hold as the minimum condition. This leaves Ukraine with 80% of its former territory, with the most Russian parts ceded to Russia.
Quote:
Second, Western security guarantees are worthless unless they are backed up with Western military might. A lasting peace will require that whatever agreement Trump negotiates creates defensible borders, with a demilitarized zone enforced by an international peacekeeping force (made up of European, not U.S., troops). Putin must understand that this agreement is final, and that if he ever tries to resume his invasion, he will not be fighting just Ukraine.
The West did not abide by the Minsk Agreements, and all three of the main parties involved, Merkel, Hollande and Poroshenko admitted that they had no intention to do so, they just wanted to win time to build up the Ukrainian military, which they did.
That's why it is not likely that the Russians will accept a Minsk Plus-type of agreement this time around, they will demand Ukraine to be demilitarized and out of NATO.
Quote:
Third, Ukraine must be militarily strong enough to deter Russia. Giving up its nuclear deterrent, and depending on others to protect it, was a mistake. Ukraine will need to create a conventional deterrent so powerful that Russia will never take it on. This means that, even if Trump succeeds in forging peace, the imperative to arm Ukraine will continue. We must find mechanisms to increase the flow of U.S. weapons headed to Kyiv that do not require U.S. taxpayers to bear the cost.
This is the absurd and insidious element here. Ukraine can never build a "conventional deterrent so powerful that Russia will never take it on", it is precisely the fact that the nationalist anti-Russian Ukrainians that have been put in power through the NATO-sponsored coup in 2014 have been building up a very strong military that prompted this war in the first place. Russia is going to keep fighting until they destroy that military force, or until there is regime change in Kiev, whichever comes first.
Russia has escalatory dominance in this conflict, for two reasons:
1- They have a lot more at stake in this conflict than the US or the main NATO nations of western Europe, it is happening not even in their backyard, but on their front porch.
2- Russia cannot be beat at home, this is a road game for NATO. They have a more productive MIC and better/more stand-of weaponry. Something guys like the AEI dude above cannot conceive out of pure hubris and jingoism - Russia is Nigeria with snow/a gas station with nukes etc.
Quote:
If Trump wants to avoid presiding over a historic failure like Budapest, he needs to avoid the trap of trying to appease Putin with promises of Ukrainian neutrality and disarmament. He does not want to join Neville Chamberlain in the pantheon of leaders who promised peace in our time but delivered the opposite. Trump says he wants to prevent World War III. If that is the case, he should do what he did in his first term and secure peace through strength.
The war in Ukraine has been transcribed as a Hollywood storyboard with supervillain Darth Putin fighting upstart rebel Luke Zelensky, and the year is always 1939.
