Apparently, Donald Trump is unaware that Russian president Vladimir Putin has frequently threatened both Europe and the United States with nuclear annihilation over the last four years. You would expect threats such as these, coming from a country that possesses 5,400 nuclear warheads, to be taken seriously by the president of the U.S. But in Trump’s just-released “National Security Strategy of the United States of America” report, Russia is not once identified as a threat to the U.S. or even as an American adversary!
This latest report encompasses 33 pages. In the entire document, Russia is only mentioned ten times, mostly in terms of it being a potential trading partner and as a future ally. Needless to say, this is the most favorable treatment of Russia in reports of the last 32 years, going back to the Glasnost years. Reading this latest report, one would never guess that Russia was currently waging war against Europe’s biggest country, and daily threatening other European countries and the U.S. Russia’s four-year war on Ukraine is the worst western hemisphere war in 80 years and has, to date, killed around two million people from the two countries.
Trump’s strategic security plans for the next few years are more derelict and dangerous than just ignoring the western hemisphere’s biggest current threat. They also call for the U.S. to withdraw from its NATO leadership role and turn its back on NATO. It also criticizes Europe for having “unrealistic expectations for the war” against Ukraine. Meaning what, that after opposing Russian war mongering in Europe for the past 75 years the U.S. is now OK with it? That is definitely the read from the Kremlin, as Russian spokesman Dmitri Peskov says the document is “largely consistent with Russia’s vision.” Is it asking too much for the strategic vision of the U.S. president to align more with the vision of the U.S. rather than with Russia? And who asked the Kremlin to critique America’s strategic vision in the first place? Maybe they had a hand in composing it?
Considered together with the recently-formulated 28-point “peace plan” for Ukraine touted by Trump and his golfing-buddy-turned-international-diplomat Steve Witcoff, this report seems even more sinister. That 28-point plan was, in reality, a Ukrainian surrender agreement which was written by Russia, translated electronically, handed to Witcoff in Moscow, and then handed to Trump. Who knows if he even read it? It’s widely known that he doesn’t like to read.
The 28 point plan calls for Ukraine to promise never to join NATO, give Russia all the Ukrainian land it has managed to steal since 2014, give Russia additional land that it doesn’t even occupy, limit the size of its military. forget about the thousands of Ukrainian children that have been kidnapped and sent to Russia, forget about Russia paying hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild destroyed cities across the country, forget about 173,000 pending war crime cases against Russia, and 21 other ludicrous things. Russia, the aggressor, is required to make no concessions at all.
One of the most insulting items in the surrender plan calls for the U.S. to administer “investments” in Ukraine funded by a fraction of Russia’s frozen assets together with $100 billion from Europe. The U.S. will then collect “50% of the profits” from said investments. Profits? Profits from rebuilding bombed out hospitals and kindergartens? Profits from sending out military widows’ benefit checks?
Another recurring theme of Trump’s security startegy report is for the U.S. to abandon its century-long mission of standing up for human rights and democracy around the world. Under the bizarre heading of “Flexible Realism” (new label for “alternative facts”?) the report says that the U.S. will “seek good relations … with the nations of the world without imposing on them democratic or other social change…” In other words, if you want to use child labor in sweat shops, assassinate your political opponents, treat women as slaves or engage in genocides, the U.S. no longer objects as long as we can engage in profitable trade with you.
Other sections of the report accuse European countries of stifling free speech and as being undemocratic. Nowhere are Russia, China or North Korea, textbook examples of undemocratic and cruel dictatorships, referred to as undemocratic. These new initiatives of Donald Trump to embrace authoritarians around the world while turning his back on reliable allies and struggling democracies are in stark contrast to the United States that we, our parents, our grandparents and their parents grew up in. You do not speak for me, Mr. Trump.
Russell Perkins of Concord works with Dobro New England, a Ukraine-dedicated non-profit.