I can surely hear the trumpeting “this never would have happened under Donald Trump,” this invasion of the Ukraine. I couldn’t agree more. However, America should ask itself, “Why not?” before it starts waving “down-home conservative” banners for four more criminal years in 2024. Why didn’t Putin send troops, tanks and missiles into Ukraine during Trump’s administration? Maybe it was that Putin was enthralled with a U.S. president who did everything he wanted him to do, and the Russian leader didn’t want to risk such a lovely arrangement?
Putin aimed to undermine the NATO alliance and Trump was happy to comply, threatening both NATO’s existence and support for America’s European allies. Putin wanted to cripple the European Union and Trump was gung-ho to do so with more threats and child-like isolationist diplomacy. Putin was all for weakening internal U.S. politics, and Trump was especially enamored of splitting the country in pieces. Putin wanted to do as much political damage as possible in Ukraine, and so Trump obliged with an illegal extortion plan to force the Ukrainian president into harming Biden’s chances for election, which also negatively affected Ukraine.
Bringing Afghanistan into the equation, Russia was certainly badly defeated and longed to see a similar face-losing catastrophe for the U.S. It wasn’t a long wait after Trump’s election — the “deal” with the Taliban seems to have been no more than “America tucks tail, leaves and you can have everything.” A deal that Putin could only dream of came true. Perhaps unexplainedly, Biden thought he must “honor” such a dishonorable pact. The troops came home, but what a dangerous vacuum was left behind.
Lots of mistakes from past administrations have occurred, but face it, Putin and Trump are pals, if not soulmates. A quote from an admittedly Democratic-leaning — but no less valid — source sums it up, “Putin didn’t invade Ukraine during Trump’s first term because Trump was busy unlocking all the doors from the inside. And if he’d succeeded, every NATO and non-NATO country in Putin’s imaginary sphere of influence would have been in jeopardy — not just in the short term, but in perpetuity.”
— Ken Green
Cooper Landing
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