America Shrugged?
Much has been made about the acrimonious meeting between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. A meeting that was hopeful to end in a US Ukraine mineral deal signing descended into a shouting match between the two men, with Zelensky forced to leave the White House.
Additionally, not only was a deal not signed, but Mr Trump said that it was difficult to see a deal being signed anytime soon. Such developments do not help the United States or Ukraine.
But in the reaction to the heated exchange between Trump and Zelensky, both sides of this dispute have overlooked important things. First and foremost we should look at what the liberal establishment in the United States and Europe have overlooked.
They seem to either pretend to, or genuinely, not understand the realities of the war. Russia is an overrated military power. But Russia has much more manpower. Ukraine cannot win a war of attrition.
If Ukraine was to fully win this war, the time for that would have been years ago, when Ukraine was preparing their counter offensive. At that point, or months before, the Biden administration should have agreed to give Ukraine the weapons they needed for air superiority.
NATO would never conduct a mission in which they did not have air superiority. There was no way that Ukraine could successfully execute their counter offensive without air superiority.
But because Biden and the Europeans didn’t want to provoke the Russians into using tactical nukes, they refused to give Ukraine the weapons they needed. As a result, the Russians have been able to fortify the lands in eastern Ukraine that they stole.
Many in the American and European liberal establishment say that we cannot allow Russia to walk away from this war with Ukrainian land, lest it embolden other autocrats, or Russia again, to try similar military incursions into smaller nations.
While this is a noble principle, it is nothing more than that a platitude if not backed up by specific action that can make the principle have a chance to succeed in reality. When one says that we have to completely defeat Russia, but does not give Ukraine the weapons they need to do that, you’re either not thinking what you’re saying through, or committing to a never ending war.
It is difficult to believe how so many officials and governments, well versed in the realities and intricacies of geopolitics do not understand this. Of course, they skirt around this reality by giving vague generalities and platitude-drenched slogans about supporting Ukraine, and insinuate that opposition to this betrays an affinity for Russia.
Furthermore, European leaders are good at parroting this, and thrive at bizarrely trying to shame America into perpetually carrying the continent in aiding Ukraine. EU diplomat Kaja Kallas claimed that the free world needed a new leader after the Trump-Zelensky exchange.
Additionally, after the Trump-Zelensky exchange, many European leaders rushed to show their support for Ukraine. As opposed to the US’ lack of support? It’s very easy to say you support Ukraine, and implicitly chide the US, when your countries and Ukraine are saved by US military aid. Make no mistake; for as much talk about supporting Ukraine as they do, Europe could not, and still can’t, keep Ukraine from capitulating without US support.
In effect, the Europeans are insinuating that, in any event where Ukraine should fall, it is the US who is to blame. And they dangle out the idea that if the US ever stops aid, that the US will cease to be the world’s Superpower.
Russia is in terminal decline, and China is not far behind. So the US will remain the world’s most powerful nation regardless. Maybe the Europeans mean by this that if the US doesn’t give Ukraine perpetual aid, we will have less sway over, and less loyalty from, Europe and other possible allies.
While this assertion may have some truth to it, a few things should be noted. First, while European allies may be more willing to make deals with hostile foreign powers, they don’t have many options.
After their vociferous rhetoric against Russia, which as a country will also be quite weakened, it is hard to see Russia as a viable option. The only other nation that is not the US, that could be an adversary, and is more powerful than groups of European countries, is China.
But if Europe started making deals with autocratic China to…spite the US (?) how would they be any better than what they are, without credibility, accusing the US of doing?
Second, the US and Europe still are fellow liberal democracies. There is still much less daylight between the US and Europe than between Europe and China, Russia, or any Middle Eastern nation. Even if the Europeans declare that America’s insufficient support of Ukraine means there must be a break, they will end up on the same side as the US more than any other major power.
Third, while there may be a break in relations between the US and Europe at some level, relations right now are not as affable as they’d have us believe. Even with decades of free riding off US military might, and America saving Europe by providing military support to Ukraine, which prevented Ukraine’s capitulation, many European countries go against US policy wishes anyway.
This is to make no mention of much of the European public, which is particularly ungrateful to the US, despite benefitting so much from it. The European leaders, because they live closer to reality, and see how important US military support is, are much more pro-American, than the average European citizen, who lives in the peaceful world order that America created and maintains.
In a world in which the US and Europe had a break, the amount of times European nations broke with the US on geopolitical matters would increase. But is that margin, from an increasingly less powerful region of the world, really a bad trade for the US saying that they are done letting much of the world free ride and benefit off of the US, and criticizing our country while doing it?
One might think of the exchange in Atlas Shrugged. Francisco de Ancina asks: “If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders – What would you tell him?”
Hank Reardon replies “I…don’t know. What…could he do? What would you tell him?” Francisco de Ancina: “To shrug.” Atlas there and America here are not the same, but there are parallels.
Europe claims that they can support Ukraine without American help? Let them try now. They could not. And furthermore, even if at some point in the future they can (where the US was providing the support in the interim), it would only be because of American military aid that Europe ever had the opportunity to defend themselves and their continent.
It would be one thing if, in exchange for the United States saving, rebuilding, and protecting Europe during World War 2 and in the 80 years since, including US involvement in Yugoslavia, preventing Soviet domination of Western Europe, and in Ukraine, the Europeans had genuine loyalty to and affection for the US.
But this is not the case. There is some loyalty and some affection from Europe, but quite a lot of criticism and derision from a group of countries that can only live in the prosperity they do off the back of American power, blood and treasure.
Other countries are free to disagree with and criticize us. But if they’re doing so while benefitting from what we do, maybe they need a reality check?
The American political left, while at some level interested in the preservation of American hard and soft power, generally miss, or choose to ignore this point. Baked in the recesses of the ideology of the American left is a certain oikophobia, and a feeling that we must apologize for being so powerful (complimented with they typical guilt about oppressive systems of the country).
This worldview naturally leads to the idea that somehow the US should be perpetually propping up our allies’ security, be criticized as a country by those allies anyway, and that if at any moment we stop, we are the ones to blame, and should apologize profusely.
Yes that’s right; if America, an ocean away, the reason why Ukraine did not capitulate in 2022, and the country that has given more military aid than Europe (which actually borders Ukraine) combined, ever let up, it is the US, not Europe, who is to blame for Ukraine’s fall.
This is of course, ridiculous. Whatever happens from this moment forward, Ukraine and Europe owe the US a debt of perpetual gratitude. But instead, the US and European liberal establishment keep giving vague lines about “supporting Ukraine,” and “not giving concessions to Russia” in lieu of concrete plans for a peace deal that Russia will sign, or concrete plans for a Ukrainian victory.
If and when the US and European liberal establishments give us specifics on how we can negotiate a better deal for Ukraine that Russia will agree to, or how we can expel Russia from eastern Ukraine, it is difficult to see them as acting in good faith.
Maybe if they did, and Europeans, their leaders and especially their citizens acknowledged how much they owe to America, but that we need to keep our eye on the ball to get the best outcome to guarantee long term Ukrainian sovereignty, more on the American political right would be able to engage with them in an effective way.
This brings us to where those in the Trump orbit need to be more realistic. Yes, Ukraine, Europe, and the world, should be made aware that without the US, Ukraine loses the war at some point in 2022, and thus there should be more gratitude for the US, rather than a list of demands.
In fact, I cast much less blame on Zelensky for what he is doing than I do on the US and European liberal establishments for their entitlement to perpetual US aid, with the threat of withering criticism if it ever stopped. Zelensky is legitimately fighting for his country’s existence. US and European liberals are benefitting from the US while acting like we are to blame for even questioning the amount of aid we give.
But while the framing of how this conflict is going, and how the US should be viewed in this (as a generous benefactor that should be revered, not an endless piggy bank that should be ridiculed), needs to be refocused, Trump and his supporters need not go overboard.
Remind the world, especially the Europeans, that they have as peaceful and prosperous lives as they have because of the US. Remind them that America has given the most, and should be the last to be criticized if things go wrong. Make sure that Europeans in the future are pulling more of their weight, and are more loyal to the US geopolitically than they are.
But beyond that, we need to know when to stop. While Zelensky sometimes asks for too much, he is definitely a great figure. Were it not for his bravery and commitment to lead Ukraine rather than flee, Ukraine would have collapsed shortly after Russia’s invasion.
Such a situation would have been disastrous for Europe and the US. More disastrous for Europe, but it would have been terrible for us as well. As the world should be forever grateful to the US no matter what happens, we should be forever grateful to Zelensky for his courage.
While Zelensky needed a reality check about what was possible, and should have signed the mineral deal rather than engage in another debate to extract more from Trump, he did not need to be humiliated in the way he was.
Furthermore, openly talking about Ukraine being in a weak position, while true, and important to be brought up behind closed doors to get him to agree to the deal, doing so on record, only helps Russia.
Making the world realize that its view of this war is mistaken, that the US should be revered for what we have done, does not mean casting Zelensky as a greedy con man. He isn’t the perfect world leader, and he can be told no. But he has done something great not just for Ukraine, but for the US and Europe.
With that being said, the criticism of the Trump and general American political right is more about being more tactful about the message. The criticism of the American and European liberal establishments is more severe, because they need to completely change their mindset about how they view and criticize the US in this conflict.
We as Americans should still try to do the right thing and help Ukraine, even in the ridiculously entitles environment that the US and European establishments have created. But they should remember, that if you keep biting the hand the feeds you, at some point, the food will cease. America, like Atlas, might shrug.
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