In what looks like a flashback to the 1938 Munich Conference where the Western European Great Powers (Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy,) broke up Czechoslovakia at the low point of appeasement toward Hitler, Donald Trump is sending his envoys, headed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Saudi Arabia to meet with Vladimir Putin’s Russian envoys to start negotiations to end the Russia/Ukraine War.
Like the event in Munich 87 years ago, major players were not invited to this event.
In 1938, it was Czechoslovakia, whose allies Britain and France, abandoned their treaty commitments to them on the altar of Nazi appeasement.
In 2025, Ukraine has not been invited to this event. Neither have any of the European powers who would have to be on the frontlines of enforcement should any worthy United States-Russian deal be made.
Commenting earlier this month to the Associated Press about not being allowed in the negotiations, Ukrainian Leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy said:
“They may have their own relations, but talking about Ukraine without us — it is dangerous for everyone.”
European leader Emanuel Macron of France is hosting a meeting of regional prime ministers, which inexcusably did not include the nations bordering Russia, on what to do about the situation given what looks like, based on recent Anti-European and Anti-Ukrainian membership in N.A.T.O. comments by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance last week, a willingness for the Musk/Trump/Vance team to abandon them.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said he is willing to give Ukraine security guarantees, including troops on the ground.
Meanwhile, Trump in his usual bullying mode, is trying to extort Ukraine to give up 50 percent ($500 billion) of its rare mineral rights in exchange for American security guarantees.
While Zelenskyy did offer mineral concessions to Trump as an inducement for continued United States support last year reporting by The Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard indicated that the Musk/Trump/Vance proposal would “Amount to the US economic colonization of Ukraine, in legal perpetuity…”Terms that “Are worse than the financial penalties imposed on Germany and Japan after their defeat in 1945…If this draft was accepted, Trump’s demands would amount to a higher share of Ukrainian GDP than reparations imposed on Germany at the Versailles Treaty, later whittled down at the London Conference in 1921, and by the Dawes Plan in 1924. At the same time, he seems willing to let Russia off the hook entirely.”
In other reporting cited by Evans-Pritchard, Trump has also made veil threats if the Ukranians do not agree to American demands, saying “They may make a deal. They may not make a deal. They may be Russian someday, or they may not be Russian someday. But I want this money back.”
This is rich coming from the person with 34 convictions for business fraud, a list of vendors he has stiffed, and six bankruptcies including one with a casino.
What is the old saying “With friends like these…”
Could we be witnessing the end of N.A.T.O. after 75 years?
Trump has repeatedly voiced his hostility to the organization over the last nine years, focusing, again this is rich considering the source, the other nation’s ability to fork over more funding into the collective security arrangement.
Could this be the end of the alliance system that has provided the most economic prosperity and general international security in human history?
People need to remember that the American First Movements, first with the Ku Klux Klan and later with World War Two Isolationists, were historical dead ends.
Do not let Musk/Trump/Vance resurrect it and destroy all the progress made since 1945.
Contact your Representatives and Senators and tell them to oppose these reactionary policies.
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