How many times do we hear politicians say the opposite of what they mean? Sometimes one wonders if they mean what they say or are simply deceiving themselves. We look to the world’s greatest democracy and we expect a higher quality of politician. Potential world statesmen standing for President of the United States. Then we see Donald Trump.
According to some, he is God’s “chosen one” – a man who enjoys such divine pleasure that his actions and his views should not be judged by men but only by God. According to Trump, the USA is no longer a great world power, but must be made great again.
Nowhere is his hypocrisy so marked as in his policy of abandoning Ukraine to Russian aggression.
On 5th December 1994 an international treaty was signed by the governments of the USA, Russia, Ukraine and the UK. By this treaty, Ukraine became party to the Treaty of Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and gave up her stockpile of nuclear weapons, which was then almost as great as Putin’s Russia has now. In return, Ukraine received a guarantee of her territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence.
Trump is not the only man who wants to make his country great again. Mr. Putin has seen vast swathes of the former soviet empire reasserting their independence against what had previously been a tyrannical superstate. Most of these had little cultural affinity with Russia except a history of conquest by the Russian Tsars. Ukraine is different. There is a shared cultural connection, and one would have thought that, if Mr. Putin had wanted to bring back Ukraine into the Russian orbit, the way to do it might have been by diplomacy over a long term. Instead, Mr. Putin wants to make Russian great again in his lifetime and has been seen to be willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of his own troops to achieve this – up to date almost half a million. To somebody like Mr. Putin, the voluntary destruction of Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal is seen as folly and weakness, and not as a way of making the world a safer place.
In invading Ukraine, Mr. Putin gambled that the other guarantors of the treaty, including the UK and the USA, would not intervene to honour their treaty obligations. When they started supplying arms he made bellicose threats of third world wars and raised the prospect of mutual nuclear annihilation. The West has been accused of escalation for every cautious step they have made to support Ukraine’s resistance, while Putin’s war machine has relentlessly poured tens of thousands more men into “the meat-grinder” and put his country’s entire industry on a war footing. He seems to take his inspiration from “Mein Kampf” and freely and publicly acknowledges his view that Hitler’s invasion of Poland was “provoked” by the actions of the pre-war Polish government.
It is not clear from the treaty how the parties to it are expected to guarantee Ukraine’s sovereignty. We agonise over the fate of the two million Palestinians who live in the Gaza strip, while a far greater humanitarian crisis threatens forty five million people in Ukraine if Putin wins his war. Ukraine seems to be weakening under a relentless assault on its civilian energy infrastructure, and a diminishing supply of ammunition, while Putin boasts that Western support will divide and falter. He is confident that the other signatories of the treaty will not enforce it.
If Russia succeeds in conquering Ukraine, the consequences are unimaginable, and could lead to another huge flood of refugees. Perhaps President Macron could be right in not ruling out the possibility of French military intervention – even though France was not a signatory to the treaty.
While all this is going on, God’s chosen one is out to undermine western support for Ukraine.
The USA has spent billions in providing weapons and ammunition to Ukraine’s beleaguered forces, but then the Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives, many of Trump's supporters prevented the House from approving urgently required funding for Ukraine..
This issue seems to have been resolved now after many months of prevarication and outright opposition from politicians loyal to Trump. So, here we have a great nation with huge international responsibilities proving to the world that it cannot be relied upon to uphold its own treaty obligations.
This is no sign of strength. It undermines the country’s reputation and shows huge weakness. Far from making America Great Again, Trump seems determined to achieve the opposite.
ENDS
