Giving up on Ukraine signals that the West is weak

 


Dec 27, 2023. Posted by  Balkan Periscope - Hellas

It's dragging on too long. It's too much of a drain on our resources. It's not our fight. These are some of the arguments - although to call them that gives them too much credit - being pushed in Western capitals at the moment.

By STEPHEN POLLARD

 

When historians look back at our century from the vantage point of 2123, it’s possible they will regard this month as being as disastrous for future peace and prosperity – and freedom – as we now look back at the Munich Agreement of September 1938, or Hitler’s invasion of the Rhineland in March 1936.

Our failure to act against him then set the path which led to the Second World War. Disastrously, at the very time when Ukraine needs our support – in money and weapons – there are ever-louder calls for an accommodation to be reached with Vladimir Putin: which means in reality rewarding him for invading Ukraine.

It’s dragging on too long. It’s too much of a drain on our resources. It’s not our fight. These are some of the arguments – although to call them that gives them too much credit – being pushed in Western capitals at the moment.

 

Should they hold sway, they will mark a devastating defeat for the forces of freedom. They will show that the West is as weak as our enemies believe.


In February 2022 the West was near-unanimous in seeing Russia’s invasion as a black-and-white issue. We stood solidly by Ukraine’s side, supplying weapons and money, with eloquent speeches made pledging that the West would do whatever it took to help repel the invaders.

This was not altruism. It was – is – in all our interests that Russia is defeated. Had we simply stood back and shrugged our shoulders, offering nothing except solidarity, we would have been signing, if not our own, then the death warrant of any notion of international order, let alone international law.

We would have been signalling to Vladimir Putin and any other would-be aggressor that while we might talk a good game of defence and security, when push came to shove we would fold.

We would be sending a clear message that violence and force pay – a terrible, disastrous and ruinous message to send.

We know this is true because history has shown it time and time again. In 1936, for example, Hitler saw that he could break the terms of the Versailles Treaty by invading the Rhineland and the rest of Europe would simply stand and watch.

 

Similarly, when the German army entered Czechoslovakia in September 1939, we threw a hissy fit but then walked away from confrontation when Hitler signed the Munich Agreement – a meaningless piece of paper in which he said with a straight face that he had no more territorial ambitions. No wonder he then invaded Poland.

More recently, having spent a fortune in money and lives in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban, in 2021 we simply cut and ran, with US soldiers fleeing Kabul in much the same way as they left Saigon when it fell to the Viet Cong in 1975.

Vladimir Putin will have drawn the same conclusion as everyone else: that the West is spineless. He saw the same thing in 2014 when he invaded Crimea. We passed lots of resolutions and issued full-throated condemnations but what we actually did was: nothing. Which is why, eight years later, he invaded the rest of Ukraine.

Yes, we leapt to its aid and gave it weapons and money. But there is a Taliban phrase which is just as relevant for Ukraine: You have the watches, we have the time. In other words, at some point you will run out of patience – and we will be waiting when that happens. Which brings us to December 2023.

 

A fortnight ago Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Washington to beg for help. Last year he was serenaded with a joint session of Congress and a $50billion aid package. But that aid runs out at the end of this month.

And, as things stand, that’s it. There is no more money.

President Biden understands why it is essential we do whatever it takes to defeat Russia, but his Republican opponents have taken leave of their senses and are refusing to consider more aid until Biden changes policy on illegal immigration.

I say they have taken leave of their senses, but they are in reality pre-empting a return to the White House by Donald Trump. The former president would stop all aid to Ukraine, handing Putin a terrible victory.

 

It is difficult to overstate how awful this is. Allowing Putin to walk away with land gained from aggression would mark the end of international law and destroy the next century.

The likes of China, Iran and North Korea would see that the West remains as weak and unreliable an ally as they have always believed. This is a disaster, and it is one of the West’s shameful making

Express (british)

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