Blog #201 Will Putin Save Trump from Disaster?
JohnEHarrison
Will Putin Save Trump from Disaster?
By: john Harrison
So far Putin has rejected out of hand the peace proposal of President Trump for ending the Russia-Ukrane War. Many have said Putin is an idiot for doing so. Others say that Putin expects that if he continues his grinding war of attrition that he will have all of Ukraine rather than the roughly one third of Ukraine offered by President Trump. Putin has a point, and since casualties mean little to him, he may also have the means.
The Trump Ukraine Peace Plan offers remarkable parallels to the “Peace in our Time” plan agreed to in Munich by Adolf Hitler, Neville Chamberlin, Benito Mussolini and others. The Czechs had prepared a strong defensive position along their long border with Germany. This border region in Czechoslovakia was mountainous, which provided numerous defensive advantages for the Czechs. Over the years prior to the Munich Crisis the Czechs had spent millions preparing defenses in the area to deter German aggression. Their entire army and other defensive preparations were also directed at winning a defensive battle on that border. It was all of these defenses that Munich turned over to Hitler without having to fire a single shot. Hitler annexed the rest of Czechoslovakia just six months after the Munich Agreement, invading on March 15, 1939. The rest of Europe did nothing.
Similarly in Ukraine, the Ukrainians have developed strong defensive positions in the Donbas. While Ukraine’s main defensive lines aren’t typically given a single catchy name like Russia’s “Surovikin Line“, they have built extensive fortifications, often resembling the Russian defensive model, with strong trenches, minefields, and anti-tank barriers, especially around key eastern cities like in the “Fortress Belt” in Donetsk Oblast. All the while also developing their own “elastic defense” with layered fortifications along the whole line staged to absorb Russian attacks. Trump’s plan gives this entire defensive system to Putin for free, leaving Ukraine, like Munich left Czechoslovakia, with a completely indefensible border.
Unlike Putin, Hitler recognized that he was being given his ultimate goal on a silver platter if he only waited long enough so that that allies would not “feel” like they had abandoned a brave ally. Of course, that was exactly what they had done. Since then, “Munich”, “Chamberlain” and “appeasement” have been reviled only a little less than the “Day that will live in Infamy”. In fact, many believe that this betrayal led inevitably to December 7th, 1941 and all the American dead in Pearl Harbor.
While President Trump deserves a great deal of credit for his work in ending the Iran-Israel-Gaza War, few have noticed that his tactics in Ukraine have been almost the exact opposite of what has so far been so successful in Gaza, et. al. Rather than punishing the aggressor, Russia, President Trump has become almost Russia’s unofficial ally in the proposed dismemberment of Ukraine. In Gaza President Trump assisted Israel with weapons, and even with massive air strikes against the real aggressor, Iran. Even if the peace there does not hold, and it may not, at the very least the killing in Gaza has stopped for a while, and the remaining living hostages kidnapped by Hamas have been returned to their families. This all by itself is no small victory while the war in Ukraine grinds on.
So Putin’s intransigence, may yet save Trump from the kind of world wide opprobrium visited on the authors of the Munich Betrayal. Winston Churchill famously called the 1938 Munich Agreement a “total and unmitigated defeat” for Britain and France, warning that it was only the beginning of reckoning with Nazi Germany, not the end of aggression, famously stating, “You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will get war“. He argued that the appeasement of Hitler by Neville Chamberlain sacrificed Czechoslovakia and failed to secure peace, predicting that Britain and the rest of the world would soon face war. Churchill was right.
I wonder if President Trump will thank Putin for the help?
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