Trump risks repeating Biden’s Afghanistan disaster by appeasing Putin

If Donald Trump acts on the sentiments he expressed this week, he is poised to usher in a dark new world order and blow up his own legacy.

The president’s position on the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine has long been difficult to pin down.

In one breath, he’ll articulate a Reaganesque vision for achieving peace through strength.

In the next, he’ll sound like a blue-haired Code Pink protester.

Of late, he’s landed on the latter tone.

After speaking with Vladimir Putin last week, Trump proclaimed that Russia would keep some of the Ukrainian territory it has taken by force because it “took a lot of land, and they fought for that land, and they lost a lot of soldiers.”

If that’s to be the United States’ guiding principle going forward, what murderous psychopath with designs on its neighbors wouldn’t start a war in the years to come?

Trump had still more inadvisable, morally backward pronouncements to make on Tuesday.

Speaking with reporters at Mar-a-Lago, Trump entertained forcing Ukraine to hold elections — a Russian demand and practical impossibility, given the fact that parts of the country are currently occupied and Ukraine’s Constitution explicitly prohibits wartime elections — before bringing the parties to the negotiating table.

“Well, we have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine, where we have martial law — essentially martial law in Ukraine — where the leader in Ukraine, I mean I hate to say it, but he’s down at 4% approval rating, and where a country has been blown to smithereens. You got-, most of the cities are laying on their sides,” said Trump.

“Wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have to say, like, ‘You know, it’s been a long time since we’ve had an election.’ That’s not a Russia thing, that’s something coming from me.”

“You’ve [Ukraine] been there for three years, you should have ended it three years-, You should have never started it, you could have made a deal,” he insisted.

The logical fallacies and outright lies are hard to enumerate in full.

Volodymyr Zelensky’s approval rating stands at 57%.

The passive voice betrays Trump’s unwillingness to acknowledge that Russia is responsible for every bit of the destruction he laments.

And his whining about how Ukraine “should never have started” the war is based upon a false premise so glaring as to insult the intelligence of all that had to hear it.

Putin launched an unprovoked, eliminationist war in 2022; and his regime has committed countless atrocities in the years since — to include the systematic kidnapping of children and torture of enemy combatants.

He alone bears the blame for the chaos and suffering his actions have yielded.

Yet on Tuesday, Trump let Putin off the hook while shaming his victims.

His words alone will mar his legacy, but following through on them would utterly destroy it.

After all, the “Art of the Deal” author should know that he’s committed a strategic sin as well as a moral one.

If peace is his heart’s truest desire, the president should be trying to put pressure on Putin to agree to one favorable to American interests.

Instead, he’s furnished the despot with considerable leverage to demand concessions from the Ukrainians that would not only weaken their position, but the United States’ moving forward.

With America’s help, Zelensky and his people have fought bravely, humiliated Putin, and deterred other global tyrants from wreaking havoc.

Why would Trump seek to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory at such a moment?

His flirtation with disaster is particularly galling in light of the lessons he should have learned from his predecessor, whom he regards as “the worst president in the history of America.”

Joe Biden’s presidency collapsed in on itself after he surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban, and in so doing invited evil actors in Moscow, Tehran, and Gaza to march.

Should Trump abandon the Ukrainians now, he will inspire a similar response from America’s enemies and be remembered for the same fecklessness for which Biden is reviled.

China is deliberating whether and when to make a move on Taiwan.

Islamist terrorists are considering their prospects for success in the coming years.

Putin is doubtlessly already plotting his next move.

And if Trump continues on his current course, they’ll all know just how easy it is to make a fool of him.