Ukraine: Weak Countries for Sale

The way in which the invasion of Ukraine is resolved and peace is achieved will determine how similar aggressions will be resolved in the near future.

Ukraine was attacked by Vladimir Putin, who justified the assault by developing a dark legend: The pro-Russian sectors living in the Donbas area, in eastern Ukraine, were being attacked and decimated by agents of the Nazi government. Therefore, the Kremlin’s responsibility was to defend these cornered and unprotected compatriots. At this stage, Putin never spoke of his real intentions: to expand Russia’s zones of influence and borders, returning to those of the Soviet era; to turn Ukraine into a satellite nation, like some of the former USSR republics; and to disregard the sovereign will of most Ukrainians, especially the young, the vast majority of whom had decided in popular elections to move closer to Europe, where they envisioned a more promising future than that offered by Russia.

The Kremlin autocrat — who has crushed all forms of opposition and public expression of protest or internal denunciation of the incursion into Ukraine — copied the formula used by Adolf Hitler when Hitler justified the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the antecedent to World War II: the alleged suffering of the German minority inhabiting the Sudetenland region.

After the invasion, Putin met stiff resistance from Ukraine and from Europe and the United States under the presidency of Joe Biden. The trans-Atlantic alliance, represented by NATO, worked to prevent the dictator from imposing his rule.

Now that unity has been fractured; Donald Trump’s new administration has become Putin’s ally. The document presented at the U.N. General Assembly on the third anniversary of the Russian aggression, which demanded that Russia leave Ukrainian territory and spoke of invasion, was not signed by the American president. Trump aligned himself with other non-signatories: Russia, China, Nicaragua and North Korea. I imagine that Trump thinks that the 250,000 Russian troops initially deployed on Ukrainian soil did so as a courtesy visit to the neighboring country.

The precedent created by Putin and Trump could be the model for justifying and approving future attacks on other countries. I am thinking of Panama and Canada; obsession with those nations does not appear to have weakened. But, given his unpredictability, it cannot be ruled out that in the near future he may decide to “recover” the Canal Zone for security reasons or annex Canada to extend a little more territory along the northern border. The Panamanian and Canadian military capabilities are insignificant in the face of the enormous power of the United States. However farfetched these projects may seem, any extravagant plan is possible with Trump.

The table is set for any outrage that the American tycoon imagines. His alliance with Putin could allow him to act with impunity. The pragmatic neutrality of China and Europe, inhibited by obvious weakness and internal fragmentation, would suffice for the actualization of Trump’s plans.

To the nonaggression pact between Trump and Putin must be added the conditions that the U.S. president is imposing on Ukraine. Under Biden, U.S. aid to that country was based on the principles governing NATO, because, although Ukraine is not a member of that organization, its proximity to Europe foreshadowed an extension of the onslaught to the eastern countries closest to Russia, such as Poland or Romania. For this reason, it was advisable to act jointly and forcefully. The aim was to defend values linked to respect for territorial integrity, the sovereignty of peoples and, more generally, the democratic values of the West.

Now, it turns out that, for Trump, American support for Ukraine was a loan with loan-shark interest. His proposal to favor a peace agreement in which the United States participates, as much as we know, consists of the destroyed Ukraine paying him back — with 50% of the proceeds from the exploitation of the black lands* — every penny of what was spent in that unjustified and infamous war unleashed by Putin, Trump’s new best friend. There is no talk of asking Russia to compensate Ukraine and contribute to its reconstruction. In the end, the vision of the businessman has prevailed. The same one who wants to turn the Gaza Strip into the Riviera of the Middle East, ignoring the suffering of the Palestinian people.

In the reordering of world geopolitics taking place with the rise of Trump and the eternal permanence of Putin, it seems that weak countries are being left at the mercy of great powers led by autocrats and megalomaniacs. They are not interested in peaceful coexistence or democratic tolerance, but rather in the use of threat, to intimidate — and force, to subdue. Let’s see what Europe, still a bastion of the West, will do.

*Translator’s Note: Ukraine’s black lands, the chernozem soils, are among the most fertile soils in the world. Chernozem covers more than half of Ukraine’s landmass.