Five Ukrainian Fables
Trump pressured NATO, armed Ukraine, and imposed tough policies on Russia, while Europe postures without action — leaving real deterrence to the U.S.
NOTE: It remains my position that (1) it is a gross violation of international law to try to conquer all or part of your neighbor, (2) so Russia is in the wrong, even though (3) the Biden Administration (with EU and Chinese leaders joining in) used their understanding of Russia’s “red lines” to push them into this needless war. All of that (4) does not make Ukraine any less corrupt, or Zelensky a saint. And above all (5) I support our various allies, but I do not support allowing them to take advantage of American generosity. At least be grateful while you ask for the next blank check, jerks.
Just as Russia was afraid to continue its Obama-era invasion of Ukraine during Donald Trump’s first term — waiting for Obama’s puppet Biden to be installed — the President is the only hope for a lasting peace now. But it would help if we first achieve some clarity, rather than parroting dishonest Democrat taking points. — RDM
Five Ukrainian Fables
by Victor Davis Hanson
March 7, 2025
Fable One: Donald Trump Is Appeasing Russia?
Who wiped out the Wagner group in Syria? Who sold offensive weapons to Ukraine first? Who warned Germany not to become dependent on the Russian Nord Stream II deal?
Who withdrew from an unfair missile deal with the Russians? Who cajoled and berated NATO members to meet their military investment promises made following the 2014 invasion of Ukraine?
In contrast, who originally conceived a Russian “reset” in 2009? Who publicly virtue-signaled pushing the red “reset” button in Geneva with the current Russian Minister Sergey Lavrov?
Which ex-European leader got a million euros a year working for Russian energy companies?
Of the last four presidents, under whose watch did Putin not invade another country?
Which American president, in hot-mic style, offered to (and did) dismantle US-Eastern Europe missile defense plans in exchange for temporary Putin quietude (“space”) to aid his 2012 reelection?
Less than two years later, Russia invaded Ukraine.
Fable Two: A Trade War?
Donald Trump is not wildly slapping tariffs on Europeans.
He is simply saying that 1945 is now 80 years past and that the asymmetrical tariffs that Europe imposes on U.S. imports should be corrected. The massive trade surpluses Europe accumulates each year should give way to fairer, more balanced trade.
If Europe does not want tariffs, then simply calibrate its own tariffs on what America places on European imported goods, and work down jointly to zero tariffs on both sides.
This is the same strategy as Ronald Reagan’s successful “Zero Option”, which ultimately banned all intermediate-range nuclear forces from Europe.
Fable Three: America Is Bullying Europe?
The U.S. does not actively interfere in European elections and politics.
In 2024, Europeans, especially the British Laborites, bragged about sending over campaign “volunteers” to work against Trump and, earlier, his conservative predecessors.
British subject Christopher Steele sought to sabotage an entire American 2016 election with a falsified “dossier.”
The Ukrainian ambassador in 2016 wrote an op-ed all but endorsing Hillary Clinton and trashing her opponent.
In September 2024, Mr. Zelenskyy was flown in on a Biden-provided US military jet to Scranton, Pennsylvania—at a pivotal time in the most pivotal swing state—to surround himself with Democrat politicos.
His media-frenzied presence signaled a partisan campaign theme that a Harris win and the continuance of massive Democrat aid to Ukraine would ensure manufacturing jobs, such as the artillery shell factory he selected to visit.
As to NATO, Trump’s pressure from 2017 to 2021 finally pushed more NATO nations to rearm. But even eleven years after promising to invest a mere 2 percent of GDP in defense, nine of the 32 members still have not complied.
Even for those who have complied, the disparity is stark.
Fable Four: Negotiating With Putin Is Selling Out?
In the long history of Western diplomacy with mass-murdering tyrants, Putin doesn’t even rank among the worst. Just ask his former reset partners Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
FDR fueled mass-murdering “Uncle Joe” Stalin’s Red Army to defeat Nazi Germany.
Richard Nixon flattered and cajoled the greatest mass murderer in history, Mao Zedong, to triangulate China against the Soviet Union.
Ronald Reagan offered to share missile defense expertise with Soviet Russia, to shift the world from the danger of nuclear war toward security behind a joint defensive shield.
Europeans have hosted almost every Palestinian murderous terrorist leader, as a way either of deflecting terrorism from their own shores or emphasizing their general loathing of Israel.
Yet peace talks now are a “sell-out”?
Fable Five: Europe Is Going To Save Ukraine?
Europe rushed to congratulate and celebrate with Zelensky after his preplanned White House blow-up. They are loudly announcing that a supposedly isolationist and appeasing U.S. — which has sent more aid to Ukraine than all nearby European nations combined — will now be supplanted by a “new” muscular and rearmed Europe.
We sincerely hope so.
But on every recent international moral question — ganging up on a lone Israel to appease terrorist forces in the Middle East, standing up to China’s mercantilism, neo-imperialism, and domestic oppression of minorities, or Russia’s prior 2008 and 2014 invasions — European outrage has been muted, real consequences nonexistent.
We are now witnessing European heads of state sending the same old, same old virtue signaling support for the brave Zelenskyy, who supposedly spoke truth to power to the mean U.S. Orange Man.
But where does such performance art lead after the cult hero Zelenskyy had gnawed the hand that gorged him?
To multitudes of European tanks, skies full of European jets, and division after division of crack European infantry now heading east to “back up” Ukraine — led on horseback by its new Joan of Arc, Ursula von der Leyen?
Aside from all the present posturing and mock-heroics, the only way to save Ukraine is for the U.S. president, Donald Trump, to reflect joint Ukrainian, American, and European interests in stopping the war, forcing Putin as far back eastward as possible where he started in 2022, and creating a credible deterrent along with a DMZ/industrial corridor tripwire to stop another 2008, 2014, and 2022 invasion.
Anything else is empty carnival barking.
— This essay originally appeared at American Greatness.
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Great points in this article. I agree that the recent EU announcement of spending 845billion on weapons and defense in Europe over the next few years is severely unlikely.
To an earlier point, While I do agree in principle that invading a sovereign nation’s territory is a violation of international law, circumstance means everything. Historically, Crimea and Dunbass have never been Ukrainian ethnically, nor have those regions ever spoken Ukrainian as a dominant language. Those regions only became Ukraine in the 1950’s because Stalin wanted more distributed authority amongst his locally subjugated counterparts. Then, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Europe decided to cede even more land to Ukraine than they had previously. I Only bring this up to emphasize a different point, that a people who are governed by a culture not their own are not, in the fullest sense, a free people. Given enough time, nations will form through the succession of regions that do not, or likely have never related to the culture of the dominant regions. We can only hope that these disunions will occur politically, and peacefully. This is the case with attempts to break away from the UK in Scotland, or the attempts made by the ethnically Basque areas of Northern Spain and Southwestern France to form a common political party (Or again with the Catalan region of Northeastern Spain though this hasn’t been entirely peaceful). But we can only hope for peaceful disunion because history does not give us many examples of this happening. In fact, the fall of the Soviet Union probably stands as the most peaceful disunion we have in human history. But if that’s wrong I welcome a correction. At any rate, it’s my observation that throughout history a people will break from tyranny in whatever way possible. This has been accomplished almost entirely through war. The tyranny of being ruled by people who are not your culture is seemingly benign, but a tyranny nonetheless.
VDH always gets it right! All of this is true! I’m embarrassed for Europe that they are not smart enough to get on board and end this war, as well as the war in Israel. This is their backyard. Why wouldn’t they prefer peace? They are simply fools.