Recently an old and very well respected American friend of mine, whom I’ve known for many years, and who along with his team put enormous amounts of their time, competences, skills and resources to support Lithuania’s difficult road to NATO ascension, who helped in growing the excellence of our special forces and aided us in strengthening our ability to protect ourselves from Russia, put forward five statements highlighting why, according to him, Trump’s administration is finally doing the right thing.
As he puts it: welcome to a new foreign policy that takes reality into account, here the US is a respected ally, not a sugar daddy.
Now before I answer each of the five statements, I want to respectfully stress several things.
I am doing this publicly (with my friend’s permission, of course) because of the great respect I feel for my American friend and all Americans in general. I also do this because of my sincere belief that there might be some dangerous miscommunication and misinterpretation whether deliberate or unintentional by the media, politicians, decision makers, influencers and intelligence agents all across the free, or so to say, civilized world. Finally, I do this, because the geopolitical security breach the safe and secure world is experiencing is evolving with such great speed that we are no longer afforded the luxury of lazily discussing such topics over tea.
I want to also stress that I will express my thoughts without resentment, anger or overt emotionality to the best of my ability. I share my views and thoughts as a citizen of a country, which for hundreds of years was living with the enemy - Russia - already at the gates. The same Russia that always wanted to erase my country, my nation, my grand grand grand parents, my father, my mother and me, wanted to do that long before the founding fathers united the thirteen colonies and frankly, long before the first organized European colonists landed on the shores of America.
With that preamble out of the way, let us begin.
You, my dear friend, say that: “Trump is correct that Ukraine can't win a war of attrition against Russia. The numbers aren't there. You can send all the equipment you want, sooner or later Ukraine will require troops. Who is going to send them? Because it will not be us nor should it be.”
This is indeed a cold hard fact, a harsh reality of which I openly spoke on the morning the full scale Russian (and Belorussian) invasion started. It is true that the the main and most important resource is… Troops. It took the Russian generals almost a full year to realize that.
It was the war criminal general Surovikin, who was the first to turn the initial invasion tactics of indiscriminate destruction and bombing, the leveling of towns and civilian infrastructure to purposeful hunting of Ukrainian soldiers. He prioritized killing Ukrainian troops and civilians above the destruction of equipment and infrastructure knowing full well that while the West was willing to support Ukraine with every piece of the metal and / or money, it was not willing to support it with personnel.
But then, why are you suddenly saying that neither Americans, nor Europeans should send any soldiers to protect those whose fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters protect us from an imminent threat? Why then the proud and just Americans shed their blood in all other places around the world, and we, Europeans, stood beside them? Why then when called upon, we stood shoulder to shoulder, in Iraq or Afghanistan? I know you, my friend, and many Americans, and collectively you not once or twice have already answered this question. Not with mere words, but with actions, by actually standing together, protecting the weak, securing human rights, supporting the right to self-defense, protecting Life itself. We have done it, because you and I both believe in liberty, freedom and every nation’s right to exist independently as a sovereign state if they so wish.
In your second statement You say: “Germany, the UK, and France all have GDPs larger than Russia. So they shouldn't need US support. Europe should be able to handle this on its own. If they can't, that says a lot more about how they have managed European priorities. You don’t get to simultaneously complain about US hegemony and then demand that we use our blood and treasure to solve a problem you could have easily dealt with by adjusting your priorities.”
Once again, you are right. It is our laziness, our smart-assiness and desire to live conveniently, start every morning with coffee and croissants, have barbecue on the weekends preferably with a nice ocean view, that made us weak and dependent on you. But let me be very clear – your country was instrumental in making France, Germany, and many other Western European countries behave like they did all these years post WW2. You provided everything Europe needed. By Europe I mean the lucky ones who found themselves on the west side of the Iron Curtain. You provided the materials needed for reconstruction, technology, joint science endeavors and military satellites, nuclear might, and popcorn. And coke. And even jeans. In other words, you granted us security, shelter and food, you gave us mass entertainment, and all of this for more than 70 years, so what could you expect?
And, by the way, all these things the US provided to Europe were and are not free. You granted all of that in exchange for power, money and soft influence, hegemony, as you say. But others, like my country and the rest of the Baltic states, “incorporated” by force into the Soviet Union, we weren’t so lucky. My nation suffered genocide, brutal occupation, killings, tortures and we all very well know the high and lethal price of being in such a helpless – dependent state, while many other European countries found themselves “thriving” decade after decade after decade.
That is also “the fault” of the US, which actually designed, dictated and maintained this course of action. While the Baltic states may be too small to defend themselves against Russia in the long run, we are large enough to stand with Ukraine and serve as a living reminder to the world’s superpowers who often point their fingers at others while forgetting to first look themselves in the mirror.
Your third point really, deeply saddens me, my friend. You say, this war could have been stopped before it started. You say, NATO did not need to expand to Russia's borders. You also say, NATO was originally established to combat communist aggression <...>.
Let me remind you, that it is the US who are next to Russia’s borders via Alaska, my friend. Norway, an old NATO ally, has borders with Russia too. Sweden and Finland, all three Baltic states, Poland. We all have one thing in common, we all have borders with Russia. Why is Ukraine different then? I will not delve deep into this, just highlight one additional thing – you always have been a keen advocate of Lithuania being a NATO member, you were always saying that Lithuania, Poland, Finland can choose their own alliances, and rejected the notion that Russia has a right to decide for them. The argument that the victim of the abuse is guilty because her dress is too short only works in a world where only one law exists: The law of might makes right.
Your fourth statement is more of a military one and resonates with your first: “Without air superiority Ukraine is playing a game it can't ultimately win.”
You are right. And that means that the civilized world should have covered the sky over Ukraine already three years ago. We can still do this, it’s not too late. But if we won’t, then we the US and European countries together will invite evil. We will invite the Russia-China-Iran-North Korean axis to act. And please be sure, they will. Evil always does, if good men allow it.
Your last statement seems complex but in fact it is the simplest one. You say that Trump is not just dealing with Ukraine here, that the Biden administration has pushed our two greatest adversaries, Russia and China, closer together, and as Russia is the lesser partner in that alliance, Trump wants Russia not to be dependent upon China. In short, Trump’s action, you wager, allows both to save Ukraine and to create a wedge between Russia, China, and perhaps even Iran.
This is simply not true. No one can break Russia away from China if China doesn’t allow it. China is playing the long game to become a world power in terms of economy. And by doing this, later, much later, they are planning to remain the only power in the whole world. If you have all the money, you can buy the entire world. This is exactly how CCP operates and envisions the future. Russia, in their plans, will be and, actually, de facto already is a protectorate of China.
The president of the US, I think, looks at the world pretty much through the same glasses as Beijing does. Money means buying power and buying power means owning the world. Nothing else matters. But there is one thing: by slashing the US military budget by one third, by firing generals, by isolating the US from its allies in Europe, by restricting speech and handcuffing liberty in his own country – one of the core values of the US; by spitting on moral values, POTUS demonstrates that his actions are driven by only one rationally explainable human trait: the desire to be worshiped at all costs . That, my friend, is very gruesome news, and puts the US at the same level with Kim Yong Un’s private prison-country. This is a very, very dangerous path, dangerous first and foremost to the US itself.
Europe will come out of this. Then with European support, Ukraine will come out of this too. But in the history books, new chapters are written every day. One of them states that president Trump seems to be siding with Russia. And therefore, China. I don’t yet know how this sentence will actually end, but I know that you and I both don’t want it to end with a full-stop.
Photo source: https://thedefensepost.com/
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