Zelensky: Gnawing the Hand that Gorged Him

Source: President Trump hosts President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy – February 28, 2025 – The White House | Flickr

Europe Leaves Real Deterrence to the US

There are numerous rationales for the initial and subsequent tranches of American dollars (billions) in military and economic support for Ukraine.  At American Greatness, Victor Davis Hanson presents and dismantles five myths surrounding Trump and Ukraine. Putting aside the “posturing and mock heroics,” VDH reflects on joint interests in Ukraine, America, and Europe:

• stopping the war
• forcing Putin as far back eastward as possible (where he started in 2022)
• creating a credible deterrent along with a DMZ industrial corridor tripwire to stop another 2008, 2014 and 2022 invasion.

Anything else, VDH writes is “carnival barking.”

Fable #1: Donald Trump Is Appeasing Russia?

Think back. Who wiped out the Wagner group, sold offensive weapons to Ukraine first, and warned Germany not to become dependent on the Russian Nord Stream II deal?

VDH asks of readers:

• Who withdrew from an unfair missile deal with the Russians?
• Who cajoled and berated NATO members to meet their military investment promises made following the 2014 invasion of Ukraine?

In contrast, who originally conceived a Russian “reset” in 2009? Who publicly virtue-signaled pushing the red “reset” button

Fable #2: A Trade War?

VDH assures readers that Donald Trump is not “slapping” tariffs on Europeans.

After 80 years, it’s time for the asymmetrical tariffs that Europe imposes on US imports to be corrected.

The massive trade surpluses Europe accumulates each year should give way to fairer, more balanced trade.

If Europe does not want tariffs, then it needs to calibrate its own tariffs on what America places on European imported goods and work down jointly to zero tariffs on both sides.

Fable #3: America is Bullying Europe?

Although the US does not actively interfere with European politics, Europeans, especially the British Laborites, bragged about sending over campaign “volunteers” in 2024 to work against Trump and, earlier, his conservative predecessors.

• British subject Christopher Steele sought to sabotage an entire American 2016 election with a falsified “dossier.”
• The Ukrainian ambassador in 2016 wrote an op-ed all but endorsing Hillary Clintonand trashing her opponent.
• In September 2024, Mr. Zelenskyy was flown in on a Biden-provided US military jet to Scranton, Pennsylvania —at a pivotal time in the most pivotal swing state—to surround himself with Democrat politicos.

Zelensky’s media-frenzied presence signaled a partisan campaign theme that a Harris win and the continuance of massive Democrat aid to Ukraine would ensure manufacturing jobs, such as the artillery shell factory he selected to visit.

As to NATO, Trump’s pressure from 2017 to 2021 finally pushed more NATO nations to rearm. But even eleven years after promising to invest a mere 2 percent of GDP in defense, nine of the 32 members still have not complied.

Fable #4: Negotiations with Putin Is Selling Out?

Nonsense. VDH explains. In Western diplomacy’s long history, Putin doesn’t rank worse among mass-murdering tyrants.

Just ask his former reset partners, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

• FDR fueled mass-murdering “Uncle Joe” Stalin’sRed Army to defeat Nazi Germany.
• Richard Nixon flattered and cajoled the greatest mass murderer in history,Mao Zedong, to triangulate China against the Soviet Union.
• Ronald Reagan offered to share missile defense expertise with Soviet Russia.
• Europeans have hosted almost every Palestinian murderous terrorist leader,as a way either of deflecting terrorism from their own shores or emphasizing their general loathing of Israel.

Fable #5: Europe Is Going to Save Ukraine?

In contrast, who originally conceived a Russian “reset” in 2009? Who publicly virtue-signaled pushing the red “reset” button

After what VDH calls a “preplanned blowup,” Europe rushed to congratulate and celebrate Zelensky.

(Europeans) are loudly announcing that a supposedly isolationist and appeasing U.S.—which has sent more aid to Ukraine than all nearby European nations combined—will now be supplanted by a “new” muscular and rearmed Europe.

Performance Art

Mr. Hanson sincerely hopes Europe participates.

But on every recent international moral question—ganging up on a lone Israel to appease terrorist forces in the Middle East, standing up to China’s mercantilism, neo-imperialism, and domestic oppression of minorities, or Russia’s prior 2008 and 2014 invasions—European outrage has been muted, real consequences nonexistent.

European heads of state send the same old, same old virtue signaling support for the brave cult hero. Zelensky, who supposedly spoke truth to power to the mean U.S. Orange Man.

Aside from all the present “posturing and mock-heroics” the only way to save Ukraine, caps VDH, is for “the U.S. president (Donald Trump) to reflect joint Ukrainian, American, and European interests in

• Stopping the war
• Forcing Putin as far back eastward as possible where he started in 2022
• Creating a credible deterrent along with a DMZ/industrial corridor tripwire to stop another 2008, 2014, and 2022 invasion.