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Frederic B. Hill, a foreign correspondent for The Baltimore Sun and senior aide to a Republican senator, Charles Mathias of Maryland, conducted wargaming exercises on national security issues for the Department of State. He is author of “Dereliction of Duty: The Failed Presidency of Donald John Trump.” He is a graduate of Bowdoin College.
The new remarks by Donald Trump and Marco Rubio that securing peace in Ukraine is too hard and it may be time to “move on” is, to me, more damning proof of the incompetence and Russia-friendly policies of this reckless administration.
During the 2024 campaign and since, Trump repeatedly declared that he would bring peace between Russia and Ukraine “in 24 hours,” “in a day.” Like the economy he would improve, another failure of this administration.
Well, what happened? What I believed happened is that he does not have the negotiating ability he boasts of; he also handed the negotiations to loyalists who have no experience in diplomacy. Not to overlook his well-documented obeisance to Vladimir Putin and disdain for Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The Trump ambush of Zelenskyy in the White House in late February provided telltale evidence of Trump’s lingering anger that Zelenskyy would not lie for him about former President Joe Biden during that infamous 2019 phone call that led to Trump’s first impeachment.
So what is the next step? Just allow Putin to continue his attack on Ukraine — the most gruesome aggression against an independent nation in Europe since World War II?
Ever since the Trump team started its pursuit of a peaceful settlement in Ukraine, the Russian leader has continued to manipulate the Trump administration, promising steps towards a ceasefire but never curtailing its brutal attacks. Russian missile strikes on the small city of Sumy, Ukraine, on Palm Sunday killed at least 34 women, men and children in the deadliest attack on civilians in months.
If the Trump administration now gives up on trying to negotiate a peaceful settlement, we will see if the Republican senators who have been willing to stand up to Russia — such as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) — will continue to kow-tow to a president who can’t deliver. There are a few GOP senators who could form a small coalition that could undermine Trump’s current hammer-lock on the Senate: Susan Collins, along with Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. They need just a few more with courage and conviction.
There are several similarly positioned Republican members of the House of Representatives who already have stood up to Trump. For example, Rep. Donald Bacon, a former general who represents a district in the red state of Nebraska, has blasted Trump for his weak policy towards Russia and its aggression.
In an opinion column in the The New York Times last month, Bacon upbraided Trump and many “fellow Republicans” for treating Russia “with velvet gloves, shying away from calling out Mr. Putin’s flatly illegal war and even blaming Ukraine for starting it.”
“Supporting Ukraine in its struggle against Russian aggression is not only morally right. It is also in our national interest,” Bacon wrote.
“A Russian victory in this war would quickly and predictably extend far beyond Ukraine’s borders. Mr. Putin’s statements and actions make it abundantly clear that he seeks to restore the old Soviet borders and regain the former glory of Imperial Russia,” he added.
Understanding history, Bacon recalled that Moscow’s aggression towards Ukraine dates back a century when under the dictator Josef Stalin’s repressive rule, more than 3 million Ukrainians died during the infamous “Holodomor” death famine of the 1930s.
And with history in mind, what would a possible “we give up” surrender by Trump and Rubio mean for the fate of Ukraine today and the continuing threat posed by Russia in Europe? It means that Donald Trump is looking more and more like the “man of appeasement,” Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister and author of the Munich Agreement that led to World War II.
On Sept. 30, 1938, Chamberlain — along with French and Italian leaders — gave Adolf Hitler the Sudetenland, major parts of Czechoslovakia in hopes of deterring the German dictator. “Peace in our time,” Chamberlain declared, describing “quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing!”
That appeasement only whetted Hitler’s appetite and within a year, Hitler invaded Poland and World War II began.
Donald Trump seems now prepared to declare the people of Ukraine unfortunate victims of a war he can casually set aside and walk away from standing up to another ruthless ruler.
