A “Deal” or Core Values?

Given my personal history with the Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine, starting in 1969 as a graduate student and then ministry in Kyiv in 1991 and running real estate offices in both capital cities in the exciting days of 1991-2013, I am often asked what we should now do to end this terrible war.

Since the Russian invasion in February, 2022, I’ve written three posts about the war. I just re-read all of them, and I would not change a word. The most relevant one right now is my November, 2022 post on “Russia and Ukraine”. I invite you to take a look before continuing, because it refutes the fallacy that Ukraine somehow started the war, or “deserved” to be invaded.

Russians and Ukrainians are, in general, wonderful people—virtually cousins–and very much like Americans. They live in big countries with lots of resources, good educational systems and a Judeo-Christian foundation to their values. They like to think big and to work hard.

Vladimir Putin is a thug and a killer. He cannot be trusted.

As I wrote earlier, one tiny bright spot in this terrible tragedy is the possible realization by my progressive/woke friends that conflict is not only caused by differences in skin color, economic status, nationality, tribe or religion, as they typically want us to believe. NONE of those factors entered into Putin’s decision to invade his almost-Russian neighbor. Putin’s old school motivation is much simpler: “I want what you have, and I’m going to take it from you.” His motivations were Greed, Pride, Territory, and Power. All driven by Evil.

What does an individual or a nation do when attacked by irrational Evil? To the greatest extent possible, with the resources you have, you push back. You fight. If that’s not possible, you contain.

While I don’t agree with everything President Trump is doing (see Trump Tariff Whisperer), I also don’t think he’s even close to being a fascist. But I know Vladimir Putin is. And I worry that in Trump’s haste to prove his macho ability to make a deal, he may cave to Evil, which never turns out well. Ask Neville Chamberlain.

The consequences in the near future of showing weakness and allowing Putin to benefit from his aggression will be terrible. Similar to the consequences which Trump rightly criticizes of believing Iran on their nuclear program, or of pulling out of Afghanistan in a tragic couple of days of chaos. Evil cannot be believed or trusted.  Evil intends to win by any means possible, including the lie of a temporary tack to diplomacy and agreement, as evidenced by the Iranian leaders and the Taliban.

I wish the sentence I’m about to write were not true, but I’m afraid that it is. If the Ukrainians are willing to stay engaged against Putin with their blood, sweat and tears, then we must stay engaged with our weapons, funds and increasing sanctions.

And, as we are doing, we must push the Europeans to join us with more support.

Unlike radical Islamic jihadists or violent cartels and gangs—two other Evils we are now fighting—Putin is just one man. A dangerous man who is soinvested in the huge mistake of this war that he cannot give up power because it will mean his personal destruction (Maybe President Trump should offer him amnesty and a villa-for-life if he will leave office). At some point, with enough pressure and enough time, something will change to make peace either immediately possible, or much easier to negotiate.

Now is not the time to give Putin anything of value, because he will have won it by large scale aggression, death, destruction and intimidation—not behaviors the West should reward, because it will invite more of the same.

It won’t be easy to stay engaged. More Ukrainians and Russians (and North Koreans) will probably die. More resources will be used for war, not peace. It’s terrible. But the alternative is even more death and destruction just over the horizon, perhaps including Europeans and Americans, and probably Chinese and Taiwanese.

Terrible, yes. But what if Great Britain and France had stood up to Hitler in September, 1938, and not forced Czechoslovakia to carve off the Sudetenland as a gift to him for his aggression? Would Hitler have then taken the rest of Czechoslovakia the following March, or invaded Poland on September 1^st, triggering World War II?

There are differences in the nations of the Western Alliance, and there are trends I don’t like toward ever more government and elitism. But the foundations of our Western civilization remain the Judeo-Christian values of individual freedom, respect for all people, the sanctity of human life, and the preeminence of truth, not lies. Putin and other autocratic world leaders reject all of those values, and they’re watching to see if making a bad deal is more important to America’s leaders than standing up for those core values, even if it requires more time and greater cost.

We’ll see.