No. of Recommendations: 3
It is important that America agrees to work with Europe to provide security guarantees for Ukraine,” he said, “But there are no details how it will work, and what America’s role will be, Europe’s role will be and what the EU can do, and this is our main task, we need security to work in practice like Article 5 of NATO, and we consider EU accession to be part of the security guarantees,” he [Zelenskyy] said.
Let’s recall the deal that Chamberlains signed off on with Herr Ribbentrop that carved off a piece of Czechoslovakia, sending Chamberlain home to declare “peace in our time”.
The piece of Czechoslovakia ceded to Germany, the Sudetenland, which Germany claimed because of its “German” population, most significantly included natural, mountainous obstacles to invasion, as well as the militarized defense line that had been fortified by Czechoslovakia to defend against a German invasion.
That piece ceded, Germany had only to take a stroll into the remainder of Czechoslovakia.
The “deal” that Trump (Putin) is proposing, cedes Luhansk and Donetsk, only partially occupied by Russia, and most significantly, the fortified strongpoints, trenches and natural barriers that Ukraine has used so successfully to defend itself and wear down the Russian war machine.
Interestingly, Russia is using the same rationale that was used by Hitler to justify Russian annexation of the Sudetenland- the large number of ethnic Russians who live there.
Chamberlain signed the deal because Hitler promised he wouldn’t go further. Within half a year, Hitler occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia.
Peace in their time! Great Britain and France pledged themselves as guarantors of the deal.
Methinks tomorrow’s meeting between Trump and Zelensky, along with principal NATO/EU leaders supporting Zelensky should be quite interesting.
If I was Zelensky, I wouldn’t sign the deal at all, but if circumstances forced me to sign it, it would only be with the provisions that each major NATO power put a division of troops on or near the newly established border between Ukraine and Russia, and that the deal would take place only after those troops were in place.
The parallels with Munich are striking. The tragedy is that Trump is incapable of seeing those parallels and appears poised to repeat them.
I’d also make sure that defensive line was destroyed before abandoning it.
We’ll see.
