On Friday, Feb. 28, Vice President JD Vance disrupted the Trump-Zelensky Oval Office broadcast by denouncing Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky for his temerity in insisting on defending his country. According to Vance, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was caused by belligerent behavior by the Biden administration. And Zelensky’s “disrespectful” refusal to go along with a Trump-negotiated surrender now threatens world peace.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
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The war in Ukraine was initiated by Kremlin dictator Vladimir Putin to fulfill his commitment to restoring the Russian and Soviet empires as the keystone totalitarian Eurasianist state dominating an antiliberal world order.
That said, Putin would not have dared to risk the invasion without an almost unprecedented degree of encouragement via appeasement from the West.
I say almost, because there is one example of similar failure by Western leadership to stop aggression. This, of course, is the appeasement policy followed by the McDonald-Baldwin-Chamberlain governments of Britain during the run up to the Second World War.
At the beginning of the 1930s, Germany was no threat to anyone. It was led by a pacifist party, had no significant armed forces, and was exposed, should it misbehave, to instant invasion through its demilitarized Saar and Rhineland provinces. But the McDonald-Baldwin appeasers stood idle while a madman openly committed to a war of conquest and depopulation took power.
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They allowed him to rearm Germany and eliminate the Rhine-Saar vulnerability that might otherwise have constrained his actions.
Then, facing a greatly strengthened German threat, the Chamberlain government continued to worsen it by supporting (thorough an arms embargo against the Loyalists) the fascist conquest of Spain, remaining idle while Hitler annexed Austria, and forcing Czechoslovakia to make itself helpless to Nazi conquest. This last action, accomplished through the infamous Munich Pact, was particularly decisive because in giving up Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain delisted 35 Czech divisions from the Allied order of battle while expanding Germany’s war-making power through the addition of the excellent Czech arms industry.
Then, when the Nazis invaded Poland, Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Daladier both declared war, but did nothing, allowing a further 50 Polish divisions to be eliminated.
Between these two last acts, the appeasers threw away some 85 allied divisions, a force almost equal to the entire army (94 divisions) defending France in 1940.
Furthermore, by failing to retaliate when the Nazis bombed Warsaw, and then Rotterdam, the appeasers encouraged the Nazis to adopt ever more atrocious tactics, starting with the bombing and strafing of terrified caravans of Belgian and French civilians fleeing the Blitzkrieg, and building on from there to far greater horrors.
A similar catastrophic policy of appeasement has been followed by the West in dealing with Putin.
Since 1999, Putin has been testing the West’s resolve by indulging in one aggression after another.
First, he devastated Chechnya. Then in 2008 he invaded Georgia. This was followed by the massacre of over 500,000 people in Syria in 2012, and the intentional stampeding of millions of refugees into Europe to grow the fortunes of Putin-allied nativist parties.
Then, in 2014, he invaded Ukraine, a European country that was seeking EU membership. The success of that invasion was delivered by the West, which led by the Obama administration, denied any arms for Ukraine’s self-defense.
Not only that, but, in August 2014, as Ukraine’s forces pushed into Donetsk, Russia massed armored forces on either side of the city. This obvious preparation for an encirclement operation could not have escaped observation by US reconnaissance satellites.
Yet, scandalously, the Obama administration declined to provide warning, with the surrounding and defeat of Ukraine’s forces following as a direct result.
With his gains from that attack being de-facto accepted by the West, Putin then expanded his goals to aim for a territorial conquest that would provide him with a broad front for potentially attacking NATO members Poland, Slovakia, and Romania.
This threat was then greeted with further appeasement, with the Biden administration, advised by Democratic Party Russian policy defeatists-in-residence, to let Ukraine lose, limiting its prewar arms shipments to 600 tons. This was nothing.
For comparison, in 1940, within one month of the Dunkirk evacuation, FDR sent Britain 1 million rifles, 7,000 field artillery pieces, and 100 million rounds of ammunition. In 1973, when Israel – a much smaller country than Ukraine – was in danger, the US sent 23,000 tons of arms.
As if denying Ukraine arms were not enough, Biden invited the invasion outright by publicly and repeatedly assuring Putin – right up to the day before the invasion – that the US would not intervene with its armed forces “under any scenario.”
These assurances were welcomed with glee by the Kremlin war party, with the editor of the Russian journal National Defense quoting Jen Psaki’s latest such guarantee on Feb. 23, 2022, with the triumphant cry (echoing Yuri Gagarin’s famous words on liftoff) “poyekhali!” (Russian for “let’s go!”)
This same policy of appeasement that caused the invasion has continued since it started, as shown by the West’s policy of limiting aid to Ukraine to levels that will not “provoke” Putin.
But just as was the case with Hitler, Putin is not acting based on provocation. He is acting based on opportunity.
Putin has stated he wants to restore the Russian and Soviet empires, and the only limiting principle to his actions towards that end is what he thinks he can get away with. Thus, he cannot be appeased.
Each successful aggression leads to yet a more offensive one. If he succeeds in conquering Ukraine, he will go for more because his position will be stronger and the West – with Ukraine’s forces delisted from its order of battle -will be much weaker.
NATO needs an army. Ukraine has one.
So long as Ukraine remains in the fight, the West can always answer a Russian move into the Baltics by giving Ukraine all the arms it needs to win.
But with Ukraine’s million-man army eliminated, NATO will have no countermove if Putin seizes the Baltic states. So, he will, thereby, completely discredit the Western alliance.
Under those circumstances, small and mid-sized powers everywhere would have no choice but to cut the best deal they can with the world’s new masters: the China-Russia Axis.
Such an outcome would be a strategic catastrophe for the United States. Yet it is the one that the Trump administration appears to be aiming for.
Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, has stated that the “Istanbul Accords,” which Ukraine rejected in April 2022 should serve as the “guideposts” for the Trump peace plan. In fact, the Istanbul Accords were not accords at all but Kremlin surrender demands, which included the reduction of the Ukrainian army to 85,000 men with no heavy weapons.
These terms, which are harsher than those the victorious allies imposed on defeated Germany after World War I (disarmed postwar Germany was allowed an army of 100,000 men), would have rendered Ukraine completely helpless.
Not wishing to be conquered, enslaved, and slaughtered, the Ukrainians unhesitatingly rejected these outrageous demands.
Yet these are the “peace” terms that the Trump team is attempting to foist on Ukraine. Having suffered from Kremlin-organized genocide within living memory, and witnessed murder of Ukrainian POWs and massacres, mass rapes, child kidnappings and other atrocities everywhere Russian troops have occupied during the current war, there is no possibility that Ukrainians will submit to such surrender.
I have been to Ukraine many times, and I know the people there. They will defend their country and their freedom whatever the cost may be.
There was a time when America would stand by such brave people. If we do so now, they can win.
Contrary to Kremlin propaganda, Russian victory is not inevitable. The United States could put a decisive check on the expansionist ambitions of the Russian-China Axis by sending Ukraine all the arms it needs to repel the Russian invasion.
Putting American technological virtuosity together with Ukrainian courage and grit can readily achieve victory.
It is only the incredible fecklessness of the Biden administration in stalling weapon system approvals, spooning out arms deliveries at the slowest possible rate, and then denying permission to use them most effectively that has allowed to war to go on this long.
Here is what needs to be done.
- We need to give Ukraine the tools it needs to make itself secure from Russian air and missile bombardment. This is essential to allow Ukraine to build up its defense industrial base. Achieving this requires not only delivery of adequate amounts of air defense systems, like Patriots, but offensive systems including ATACM long-range missiles and F-16 fighter aircraft armed with both air-to-air and long-range air-to-ground missiles, such as our JASSMs, which can deliver 1000 lb. warheads over a range of 230 miles.
To achieve security, the Ukrainians need not just block Russia’s arrows, it must kill her archers. The United States has thousands of F-16s, which we do not use for anything but target practice for more advanced fighters. We can easily afford to send Ukraine 200 of them. Over 4600 F-16s have been produced since they first went into service in 1974, and they are used by 25 countries. As a result, there are tens of thousands of F-16 veteran pilots worldwide. Hundreds of international volunteer pilots and ground crewmen could immediately become available were Trump to lift Biden’s order blocking Ukraine from recruiting them.
We also have some 340 A-10 ground attack aircraft that the US Air Force has been trying to divest itself of for years. Armed with powerful Gatling guns designed to destroy Russian tanks, these could be initially deployed in rear areas to intercept and eliminate the slow-moving Shahed drones that Russia has been bombarding Ukraine with. But after the F-16s have neutralized Russia’s air defenses, the A-10s could be employed with great effect against Russia’s armed forces on the ground.
- We need to help Ukraine win the drone war. Ukraine has revolutionized warfare by introducing the small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) as a decisive military arm. While large miliary aircraft can take years or decades to develop, new types of UAVs can be introduced into combat within months or even weeks of their conception.
This has placed a premium on innovation, and it is here that the ingenious and individualist Ukrainians have been able to outperform the much more numerous but less creative Russians.
But with our help they can do much better still. Much of the technology that the Ukrainians have been working hard to invent under conditions of bombardment is stuff that we already have.
The US government needs to lift its ITAR rules currently throttling the transfer of drone warfare technologies from American companies to the Ukrainians. This will enable Ukraine to produce advanced drones that cannot be stopped by Russian jamming or other countermeasures.
It costs about $2000 to produce a good small UAV in Ukraine, so with the right technology transfer and a couple of billion dollars in aid, Ukraine could produce a million such advanced UAVs.
Alternatively, the Pentagon could cut a check to American companies, and we could produce them here ourselves. This would cost about five times as much, but we would benefit from building up our defense industrial base in this now critical area.
Or better yet, we could and should do both.
- We can and should enforce the sanctions. The US and allied NATO navies are in a position to intercept and impound all the shadow tankers exporting oil from both the Baltic and Aegean seas. Their cargos could then be confiscated as contraband and sold off to help fund the Ukrainian war effort.
With its cities protected and millions of advanced UAVs in hand, Ukraine could strike trucks, trains, and supply depots in the Russian rear, making it impossible for the Russians to supply their frontline forces.
Meanwhile, deprived of most of its oil export income, the ramshackle Russian economy, already suffering from twenty percent inflation and interest rates, would head towards a crash. Under those conditions, the Russians would have no choice but to withdraw.
That then is the choice before us.
We can play the part of cowardly appeasers, and by so foully betraying everything we once stood for, put a stain on our flag, lose our allies, and grow the strength of our enemies to the point where their will cannot be denied.
By disgracing ourselves in this way we will gain neither safety nor prosperity, for we shall surely enjoy neither cornered in a North American reservation within a Russia-China Axis dominated world.
Or we can reject the counsels of despair and achieve victory by acting in our time as those whose courage gave us everything, we have acted in theirs.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Dr. Robert Zubrin @robert_zubrin is an aerospace engineer and author of 12 books, including most recently The New World on Mars: What We Can Create on the Red Planet.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
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