Peace in Ukraine: ‘Trump is the only person who could have done it’

It is gratifying at last to see some appreciation from the principal Western European political leaders of the restoration of purposeful government in Washington and the sensible and legitimate assertion of American economic and military strength. All of the presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to George H.W. Bush contributed, some more astutely and importantly than others, to the satisfactory outcome of the Cold War, which was the greatest and most bloodless strategic victory in the history of the nation-state, but the subsequent presidents prior Donald Trump effectively squandered the brilliant window of America’s unique pre-eminence as the world’s only superpower. Bill Clinton was competent in most respects but took the political free lunch of legislating and regulating commercially unsustainable residential mortgages as a gesture to economically disadvantaged ethnic groups, which, since his blunderbuss successor George W. Bush didn’t notice, eventually almost brought down the entire economy of the Western world.

The younger Bush ignored incoming intelligence about terrorist attacks prior to the assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and although he responded competently to the terrorist threat after 9/11/01, his apolitical and strategic prescriptions were insane and a complete failure: Elections in Lebanon and what is generally called Palestine, elevating the militant terrorists of Hezbollah and Hamas, and he led part of the Western Alliance into Iraq, which ultimately handed control of 60 per cent of Iraq to Iran, the least desirable imaginable result.

Barack Obama’s lassitude allowed the new terrorist enterprise of ISIS almost to take over Iraq and he distracted and almost paralyzed America by his promotion of racial guilt. It was well-established that slavery was evil, but although he is the chief beneficiary of it, Obama gave no recognition to the fact that the United States has made a greater and more successful effort than any other country in the history of the world in raising up a minority formerly forcibly in servitude not only to emancipation, but to fully equality with their former owners. He hobbled and confused American political discourse by festooning practically every word in common usage in the United States with racist overtones. The election of Joe Biden was greeted with ululations of joy throughout Europe but he was the most incompetent and one of the most dishonest presidents in the history of the country. The United States almost achieved the status which Richard Nixon admonished it to avoid: “A pitiful, helpless giant.”

Donald Trump was sandbagged by the American media and Europeans who are generally gleeful being able to denigrate American presidents, except when they absolutely are dependent upon them (Franklin D. Roosevelt) or are thoroughly charmed by them (John F. Kennedy and to some extent Bill Clinton), hurled themselves with jubilant credulity into the view that Trump was a boob and a crook. Some of this purblind snobbery was audible even in the last week, as when Boris Johnson described the meeting in Alaska with the Russian president as “the most  vomit-inducing moment in modern history.“ It ill behoves Boris, (a friend and former employee), to apply such strictures to one of the most successful politicians in American history, given the unprecedentedly swift and comprehensive self-immolation of his own political career.

Trump has his limitations and stylistic infelicities, but in six months he has reduced the invasion of destitute and often criminal foreigners entering the country illegally from over three million a year to zero. He has eliminated at least half of the trade deficit and a very significant part of the budget deficit, reduced inflation, lowered taxes, eliminated the trillion-dollar Iranian drive to become a nuclear military power that Obama and the contemporary European leaders had implicitly endorsed. Trump has also overthrown the ghastly woke tyranny that he inherited, punished hypocrisy in the universities, shaped up the NATO alliance from the fatuous “alliance of the willing” which would graciously accept an American military guarantee but not contribute much to its own defence. He is also using the National Guard to reduce the crime rate in Washington as a pilot project for many other great American cities that have practically been reduced to shooting galleries and infestations of drugged-out human wreckage.

No one of any plausible standing had uttered a serious word about peace in Ukraine until he returned to office. He will secure that peace because he recognises that the West’s two objectives are to prevent the Russian takeover or continuing threat to the legitimate independence of Ukraine, and to do so in such a manner that facilitates the withdrawal of Russia from the potentially deadly embrace of China and the return of that eminent nationality to engagement with the West. Russia is not an oriental country and must not become one. Trump can bring  Russia to its knees by advancing sophisticated military hardware via the Europeans, through their suddenly reinflated defence budgets and without it offending the isolationists in Trump’s entourage, so that the Russian population may discover the vagaries of unrestricted air war that the Kremlin has inflicted on Ukraine; and he can demonstrate that virtually every country in the world would prefer to trade with the United States than with Russia. Putin is a paper tiger in superpower terms, with a GDP smaller than Canada’s, a shrinking population, a vulnerable economy, and an army that has been a shower taking a million casualties and 50,000 desertions attacking a much smaller neighbour.

Trump knows to allow Putin to withdraw from this stupid and brutal war with enough dignity to carry on, and he can clearly recruit the Europeans to assist him in persuading the Ukrainian president that 80 per cent of the loaf with absolute security guarantees and a huge reconstruction aid package is a victory for Ukraine that should be seized when Trump has cajoled and bullied Putin into offering it. This is likely to happen in the next few weeks, and Trump is the only person who could have done it. He is also the only occupant of that great office to use its full potential for positively influencing the world since Ronald Reagan. The vacuum in Washington has caused huge problems these 40 years, but it is over.