In Part One, I chronicled abbreviated historical evidence of what I perceive is a fundamental flaw in the European psyche, regarding a propensity for prolonged war.
Here in Part Two, I’ll postulate how those flaws resulted in what occurred on live TV during the Oval Office meeting between President Donald Trump, and Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy, on Februrary 28.
But first, a brief history of US involvement in European wars.
From our earliest time as an independent nation, the Europeans have been trying to drag us into their wars. That’s why President George Washington established a precedent of staying out of Europe’s wars.
In Washington’s first term, England and France were embroiled in the first “Napoleonic War”. Both countries wanted the United States to come in the war on their respective side.
Washington said no to both, and successive Presidents followed Washington’s precedent – at least for little while. We managed to avoid a European conflict… until the Brits invaded us after we invaded British Canada in 1812 (it was a confusing war).
But after that war, we managed to avoid fighting Europeans until 1917, when banker J.P. Morgan and President Woodrow Wilson got us into WWI. As I explained that in an earlier column:
Morgan had made massive loans to England and France — and helped them get loans from other private U.S. banks — to pay for the war.
When it looked like Germany was going to win, which would have resulted in England and France defaulting on those loans (with catastrophic consequences for Morgan), getting the U.S. into that war on their side was the only solution.
The sordid story of how that was accomplished by Morgan’s influence in the administration of President Woodrow Wilson, resulting in the deliberate sacrifice of the lives of American women and children aborad the ocean liner Lusitania, came fully to light only the 1990s.
Makes you wonder what financial machinations may have lurked behind President Joe Biden’s January, 2022, statement that there wouldn’t be any real retaliation if Russia only made a “minor incursion” into Ukraine. Certainly our weapons, and munitions, manufacturers have profited handsomely from Russia’s “incursion”. (More about that below.)
The U.S. once again saved Europeans from themselves in WWII. We were the only major belligerent that did not enter that war until we were first attacked. Germany, in alliance with Russia, started the war by attacking Poland – whereupon England and France declared war on Germany.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor we declared war Japan (Germany’s ally) — whereupon Germany declared war on us. So we then declared war on Germany in return — and were victorious on both fronts.
This time, after winning, instead of just going home like we did after WWI, the U.S. stuck around to prevent the Russians from rolling their tanks over the rest of western Europe. Eighty years later we still have over 20,000 US troops stationed there — some of whom were required to help stop the war and ‘ethnic cleansing’ after the breakup of Yugoslavia.
Now there’s the war in Ukraine. Make no mistake, it was started by Russia’s invasion — so it’s easy to fix the blame for this latest chapter of European blood sport. But, like all the previous chapters, Russia believed they had legitimate reasons. Without excusing (or justifying) the invasion, let’s briefly review the history of that region.
If you are interested in the long version, here it is in two parts:
https://www.historyhit.com/ukraine-and-russia-history-medieval/
https://www.historyhit.com/ukraine-and-russia-history-ussr/
You’ll see that their current conflict has a 1,000 year history behind it, which is not as simple as “Putin invaded Ukraine”. That history doesn’t justify the invasion, but does show it was not as simply a spur of the moment land-grab by Putin.
Then there’s some more recent history, which involved the United States. A perfect example of George Washington’s admonition (in his farewell address) to avoid “the insidious wiles of foreign influence”.
In 2014, under the direction of the Obama administration, the U.S. supported a coup that overthrew a democratically elected Ukrainian government. That effectively re-ignited the Cold War which had ostensibly ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union — and triggered a chain reaction that culminated in the current Russian invasion.
Then as I referred to above, in 2022, President Biden essentially gave Russia a green light for a “minor incursion” into Ukraine. It’s almost as if Biden invited the invasion — for domestic political purposes perhaps?
“In George Orwell’s 1984, war is a central theme that serves as a tool for control and manipulation by the ruling Party.”
Once Russia invaded, the Biden administration was quick to rally public support for funding Ukraine’s defense. The administration originally told us we needed to spend billions (with a ‘B’) of our tax dollars furnishing Ukraine with the means to repel the Russian invaders.
It turned out Biden authorized the Ukrainians to use U.S. supplied weapons offensively to attack inside Russia territory. That’s called escalation… the sort that lead to my being sent to another war we should not have gotten involved in.
Lyndon Johnson told the nation, have no fear of escalation…
That’s unlikely to happen now that Trump is back in office.
But as if ‘how the weapons were used’ ain’t bad enough, $100 billion (with a ‘B’) of that money apparently can’t be accounted for.
One thing is certain, though — U.S. munitions manufacturers are doing very well from our funding the war in Ukraine.
During a recent Oval Office meeting, Vice-President Vance referred to Zelinskyy’s appearance at a munitions plant in Pennsylvania during the recent election campaign. You can see Zelenskyy shrug.
Zelenskyy went to that plant at the behest of the Biden-Harris administration.
From AP News:
At one point in the war, Ukraine was firing between 6,000 and 8,000 of the 155 mm shells per day. That rate started to deplete U.S. stockpiles and drew concern that the level on hand was not enough to sustain U.S. military needs if another major conventional war broke out, such as in a potential conflict over Taiwan.
In response the U.S. has invested in restarting production lines and is now manufacturing more than 40,000 155 mm rounds a month, with plans to hit 100,000 rounds a month.
Two of the Pentagon leaders who have pushed that increased production through — Doug Bush, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology and Bill LaPlante, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer — were to join Zelenskyy at the plant. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, also joined the Ukrainian president.
After Vance mentioned the munitions plant appearance in the Oval Office meeting, Zelensky began to argue with the Trump — because Zelenskyy apparently would rather continue getting our tax dollars to fight on, than agree to an immediate cease-fire as part of the peace deal.
There is speculation by some (with whom I agree) that Zelenskyy seemingly (mistakenly) believed he could bring public pressure on Trump by arguing with him in front of television cameras.
A disastrous approach by Zelensky, who utterly failed to read the room, understand his role, and know his place. By no stretch of the imagination can Ukraine win that war. And without U.S. money, they can’t even resist the Russians for much longer. Once again, I’m not siding with the Russians. I’m merely stating the cold, hard facts.
As did President Trump after Zelenskyy left the White House, when he said either Zelenskyy agrees to a peace settlement, or we (the US) are out of it, and they can fight it out as long as they want without our money.
I understand what seems to be the ‘popular’ opinion (particularly among those who dislike Trump) is that this will end if Putin simply withdraws from Ukraine. But that’s like hoping to see a unicorn. There is nothing in the history of European warfare, nor of the relationship between the Ukrainians and Russians in particular, to even suggest Putin will simply quit the war and withdraw.
Ukraine can’t drive the Russians out, even with our money behind them, because the Russian way of war has always been to keep throwing forces into the battle regardless of casualties. That’s how they beat the Germans in WWII — and apparently economic sanctions have done little to deter them.
So we either continue to feed the dogs of war with our tax dollars (or worse, get our own troops involved and risk WW III), or we tell Zelinskyy to accept reality and make peace. As President Trump says, Ukraine can settle for the best deal available — or we walk away and leave them to their fate.
From day one, I’ve said we should walk away. It’s not in our interest to fund the European fascination with war.
ERRATA: Since Part One was written, there are news reports that following Zelenskyy’s fiasco in the Oval Office, European leaders are coming up with a peace plan for Ukraine to present to Trump. From Reuters:
At a summit in London just two days after Volodymyr Zelenskyy clashed with U.S. President Donald Trump and cut short a visit to Washington, European leaders offered a strong show of support to the Ukrainian president and promised to do more to help his nation.
European leaders agreed they must spend more on defence to show Trump the continent can protect itself, and the European Commission chief suggested the bloc could ease rules that limit debt levels.
Starmer, who welcomed a visibly shaken Zelenskiy on Saturday with a warm hug, said Britain, Ukraine, France and some other nations would form a “coalition of the willing” and draw up a peace plan to take to Trump.
The Europeans are concerned the United States may pull its troops out of that continent.
So by not taking any crap from Zelenskyy, Trump’s long-declared desire for Europe to be responsible for its own defense may be coming to fruition.
It’s about time…