The United States failed to live up to its best history, values, and long-term interests when it voted against a U.N. resolution on Monday to condemn Russia lightly on the third anniversary of its invasion of Ukraine.
President Donald Trump rightly wants to secure a lasting peace that ends this war. It has taken hundreds of thousands of lives and destabilized Europe. But the president must understand that a just peace won’t be delivered by hat-tips to Russian President Vladimir Putin at the United Nations. Aside from Israel (which voted in solidarity with the U.S.), every major American ally voted for the General Assembly vote. America’s embarrassing allies in the voting “no” camp were Russia and a who’s who of tyrannies and autocracies — North Korea, Belarus, and Russian mercenary-dominated Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. Even China and Iran voted to abstain. It speaks poorly of Trump’s understanding of Putin that he was unwilling even to abstain on this vote.
Better is Trump’s demand that Europe do more for Ukraine. The president’s outlined minerals deal with Ukraine is also a welcome achievement.
That agreement will see the U.S. and Ukraine invest cooperatively in Ukraine’s energy and mineral resources. This should also consolidate a longer term relationship, which is itself a factor in Ukraine’s security. Although this deal should serve U.S. economic interests, it should not be a protocol to strip the benighted nation of its wealth in return for undetermined provisions of future aid. That would amount to extortionist diplomacy natural to Russia and China, not the U.S.
But America’s vote at the U.N. is concerning. It sought simply to condemn the perpetrator of the largest and bloodiest land war in Europe since 1945. Ukraine’s only provocation for Russia’s invasion was its refusal to give away its sovereignty. Putin’s prewar demand was that President Volodymyr Zelensky make Ukraine a Russian rump state in which any decision over foreign or economic policy had to go through the Kremlin. Of all peoples, Americans should understand why this was unacceptable. Ukrainians want to live free.
It is true that the General Assembly is often used, at Russia’s behest, to embarrass or otherwise make the U.S. uncomfortable. But moral authority and political credibility must go hand in hand if Trump’s peace effort is to succeed.
He has revealed to American allies, partners, and aspirational partners that the U.S. can no longer be relied on to call out outrageous state aggression. This undermines Trump’s ability to secure the international support necessary for any peace deal. This is especially important as the United Kingdom and France consider whether to take risk deploying peacekeeping forces to enforce any deal Trump secures. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will meet Trump at the White House on Thursday to discuss this concern. But he and French President Emmanuel Macron understandably will not protect any future deal with their troops unless Trump makes clear that America will have their back.
Did Trump order the U.S. vote?
He clearly believed it would earn the Russian president’s respect and favor. Putin may be grateful, but he won’t reciprocate Trump. He was taught in a very different school of diplomacy. Trump is a businessman who values personal relationships and the exchange of symbolic favors to grease great deals. But Putin is a former KGB officer, a former lieutenant colonel for the feared Soviet intelligence service, trained to understand that great deals are forged by hard-headed unilateral interest and manipulation. He cares as much for symbolic favors as he cares for his political opponents.
More problematic is Trump’s apparent belief that Ukraine invited Russia’s attack.
Allegations that Russia legitimately went to war because it feared Ukraine’s accession to NATO are absurd. Russia’s military posture along NATO borders is not designed to defend Russia’s own territory. Nor was there any agreement within NATO for Ukraine to join the alliance even in the medium-long term.
TRUMP MUST STARE DOWN PUTIN OVER UKRAINE PEACEKEEPERS
Similarly facile are the claims that Zelensky and former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson prevented an early end to the war by sabotaging 2022 peace talks with Russia. Russia’s demand in those talks was unchanged — the sacrifice of Ukrainian democratic choices to the authority of the Kremlin kleptocracy. Americans would never accept a deal that would make Americans subjects of a foreign power. Ukrainians had the same right.
Peace can come if American action persuades Ukraine to make painful territorial concessions in return for surety it will not be invaded again. It will also come only if American action persuades Russia to make its own territorial concessions and accept structures that prevent a future Russian invasion. These fundamentals of peace are what Zelensky and Putin care about in their own way. They are what Trump must leverage to the maximum.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
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