There Are No Coincidences in Geopolitics

On April 25^th , 2005, in his annual state of the nation address to parliament and the country’s top political leaders, Putin said the collapse of the Soviet Union was a tragedy for Russians.  “First and foremost, it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” Putin said. “As for the Russian people, it became a genuine tragedy. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory.” – the operative phrase in that statement is “beyond the fringes of Russian territory,” which should give us an insight into Vladimir Putin’s motivations, i.e., that Putin has been intent on re-establishing the contours of the former Soviet Union almost since the day he took office.

~ Putin’s Mission ~

In one of his first acts towards the accomplishment of his goal he invaded the Republic of Georgia in August 2008, just weeks prior to the 2008 democrat and republican conventions.  George Bush was a lame duck and Barack Obama who was leading in the polls, was a neophyte on the international stage and completely untested in foreign affairs.  Now perhaps the worst thing a sitting president can bequeath to a successor is a war, and its highly doubtful George Bush wanted to hand Obama a conflict in Eastern Europe in addition to the quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan; Putin understood this and took full advantage of the situation.  Score one for Putin.

But Putin still needed to test Obama, and in February 2014, he invaded Crimea.  There were the usual outcries from precincts around the world, but Obama did nothing to stop it, and Putin won again.  Fast forward to April of 2017 when Putin backed Bashir Assad of Syria launched a sarin gas attack from the Shayrat Airbase, killing several hundred women and children, which just happened to be two days prior President Xi Jinping’s visit to Mar-a-Lago.  As the title of the blog implies, there are no coincidences in geopolitics, and Putin was now testing Trump in front of the Chinese President and the world.

~ The Trump Response ~

Trump responded by launching 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles from two destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean rendering the air base inoperable and killing hundreds of troops including the Russian advisors, which was a  not-so-subtle geopolitical message to Putin – “Don’t try to embarrass us and we won’t embarrass you” and Putin’s foreign adventurism stopped, until Biden took office.

~ An invitation to Putin ~

Then in May of ’21 the Biden administration blindsided our NATO allies in what was perhaps the most humiliating and embarrassing military retreat/withdrawal in American history – the ignominious exit from Afghanistan.  Again, Putin watched and took full measure of the new ‘leader of the free world.’  And less than two years after our tail-between-our-legs withdrawal, in February of ’22, Putin invaded Ukraine and again, a democrat administration, this time under Biden, did nothing to stop them – score another victory for Putin.

Meanwhile, Trump boasted during the campaign that the war would never have started if he had been in office, while a speculative statement, it wasn’t an unreasonable one vis-à-vis what had transpired between he and Putin in the past.  But now he had to put up or shut up and began orchestrating a cease fire behind the scenes.  But ending war isn’t easy – how many years did we negotiate at Panmunjom to end the Korean War, or in Paris to bring an end to the Vietnam War?

Trump’s initial goal was simply to get Putin to the bargaining table, which actually began with a meeting between U.S. and Russian representatives in Saudi Arabia as precursor to further negotiations with Zelenskyy.  Then the administration did some outside the box thinking and introduced a ‘minerals deal’, that would link the US and Ukraine economically.   I don’t pretend to know the details of the deal, but it appeared to be a creative way to begin ending the conflict.

Zelenskyy was presented with this “minerals for security agreement” by the Trump administration prior to the ruckus at the press event in the Oval Office, but the deal included no security guarantees to protect Ukraine from another Russian invasion.  At the same time, Zelenskyy had warned repeatedly ahead of his trip to Washington, D.C., that, in order to reach a mineral agreement, Kyiv needed security assurances.  Thus, THE sticking point that ignited the brouhaha in the first place.

No one can blame Zelenskyy for wanting a security agreement.  And I cannot imagine the pain and the angst he and the Ukrainian people must feel in this conflict – I would want a security agreement too.  But it takes two to tango and Zelenskyy’s nemeses, Vladimir Putin, belongs in rogue’s gallery alongside of Mao Zedong, Adolph Hitler, Joe Stalin, Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein and cannot be trusted.  Meanwhile, Donald Trump just wants a peace deal, but as noted, peace processes are notoriously slow, and he knew the first step in the process was getting Putin to the negotiating table, security agreements would have to come later, if at all, but the critical aspect of the entire matter was that they needed a cease-fire before the negotiating could even begin. But Zelenskyy’s actions yesterday in insisting on a security agreement before the cease fire derailed that process, at least temporarily.

So, how does this end, who knows, there’s never a dull moment in Trump-world.  But the criticisms being leveled at Donald Trump by the democrats regarding this situation are patently unfair – we should find it interesting that while the democrats have never offered a solution to the Ukrainian quagmire, not a single one, they know positively that whatever Trump is doing is wrong.