Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times; Trump’s Neville Chamberlain Prize
[Kip Currier: Thomas Friedman speaks out persuasively for Ukraine and its brave people, at a time when so many in positions of leadership and political influence are disgracefully silent.
Ukraine is the U.S.'s ally. Ukraine's people are fighting to uphold its democracy and freedoms.
And yet Trump again and again sides with Russia and its tyrannical autocrat Vladimir Putin against Ukraine and its stalwart leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Who in the U.S. Congress will stand up for and beside Ukraine when courage and moral clarity are needed most?]
[Excerpt]
"Finally, finally, President Trump just might get a peace prize that would secure his place in history. Unfortunately, though, it is not that Nobel peace prize he so covets. It is the “Neville Chamberlain Peace Prize” — awarded by history to the leader of the country that most flagrantly sells out its allies and its values to an aggressive dictator.
This prize richly deserves to be shared by Trump’s many “secretaries of state” — Steve Witkoff, Marco Rubio and Dan Driscoll — who together negotiated the surrender of Ukraine to Vladimir Putin’s demands without consulting Ukraine or our European allies in advance — and then told Ukraine it had to accept the plan by Thanksgiving.
That is this coming Thursday.
If Ukraine is, indeed, forced to surrender to the specific terms of this “deal” by then, Thanksgiving will no longer be an American holiday. It will become a Russian holiday. It will become a day of thanks that victory in Putin’s savage and misbegotten war against Ukraine’s people, which has been an utter failure — morally, militarily, diplomatically and economically — was delivered to Russia not by the superiority of its arms or the virtue of its claims, but by an American administration.
How do you say “Thanksgiving” in Russian?
To all the gentlemen who delivered this turkey to Moscow, I can offer only one piece of advice: Be under no illusions. Neither Fox News nor the White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt will be writing the history of this deal. If you force it upon Ukraine as it is, every one of your names will live in infamy alongside that of Chamberlain, who is remembered today for only one thing:
He was the British prime minister who advocated the policy of appeasement, which aimed to avoid war with Adolf Hitler’s Germany by giving in to his demands. This was concretized in the 1938 Munich Agreement, in which Chamberlain, along with others in Europe, allowed Germany to annex parts of Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain boasted it would secure “peace for our time.” A year later, Poland was invaded, starting World War II and leading to Chamberlain’s resignation — and his everlasting shame...
Trump, facing blowback from allies, Congress and Ukraine, said Saturday that this was not his “final offer” but added, if Zelensky refuses to accept the terms, “then he can continue to fight his little heart out.” As always with Trump, he is all over the place — and as always, ready to stick it to Zelensky, the guy fighting for his country’s freedom, and never to Putin, the guy trying to take Ukraine’s freedom away.
What would an acceptable dirty deal look like?
It would freeze the forces in place, but never formally cede any seized Ukrainian territory. It would insist that European security forces, backed by U.S. logistics, be stationed along the cease-fire line as a symbolic tripwire against any Russian re-invasion. It would require Russia to pay a significant amount of money to cover all the carnage it has inflicted on Ukraine — and keep Moscow isolated and under sanctions until it does — and include a commitment by the European Union to admit Ukraine as a member as soon as it is ready, without Russian interference.
This last point is vital. It is so the Russian people would have to forever look at their Ukrainian Slavic brothers and sisters in the thriving European Union, while they are stuck in Putin’s kleptocracy. That contrast is Putin’s best punishment for this war and the thing that would cause him the most trouble after it is over.
This would be a dirty deal that history would praise Trump for — getting the best out of a less than perfect hand, by using U.S. leverage on both sides, as he did in Gaza.
But just using U.S. leverage on Ukraine is a filthy deal — folding our imperfect hand to a Russian leader who is playing a terrible one.
There is a term for that in poker: sucker."
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