“We are buying… not lending. We are buying our own security while we prepare. By our delay during the past six years, while Germany was preparing, we find ourselves unprepared and unarmed, facing a thoroughly prepared and armed potential enemy.”
During the debate over a proposed “Lend-Lease” program in 1940, United States Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to send needed armaments and other resource to European nations suffering mounting casualties and loss of territory to the Nazi onslaught. Stimson emphasized that this was not a mere giveaway, but rather essential to United States security.
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The Lend-Lease program ultimately spared England from succumbing to Nazi invasion and kept it in the war long enough for the United States to mobilize its industries and military. Quite possibly, this program spared an entire continent and other areas of the planet from authoritarian domination and loss of territorial sovereignty.
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The unprovoked and unwarranted invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation under its dictator, Vladimir Putin, along with its takeover and annexation of Crimea in 2014, has been the first large-scale European invasion into a sovereign nation since the end of World War II and the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
According to the Collective Defense Article 5 of the NATO treaty, when one signatory country comes under attack, all others enter for mutual defense. Since Ukraine is not currently a member of NATO, and other countries have not been willing or able to join the Ukrainian onsite military forces directly, these countries, including the United States, have initiated a version of the Lend-Lease program by supplying the Ukrainian military with materials and training in conducting the war.
Though not covered by the NATO treaty, some countries are fulfilling their commitments and obligations to the Ukrainian government under the terms of the Budapest Memorandum of 1994.
The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances is composed of three mostly identical political agreements signed at the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) conference in Budapest, Hungary, on December 5th, 1994.
This memorandum assures security relating to the accession of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine in relation to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The three memoranda were initially signed by three nuclear powers: Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. China and France gave some individual assurances in separate documents.
Following the fall of the Soviet Union, some of its formerly occupied territories like Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine had large stockpiles of nuclear weapons and materials that could be used for constructing bombs. According to the terms of the Budapest Memorandum, these three former Soviet-controlled regions were to relinquish all their nuclear materials with the assurance that Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom would not threaten or invade these countries by military force or economic coercion.
Russia violated the memorandum by invading Ukraine in 2014 and again on February 24th, 2022. More than 40 countries are providing military and humanitarian support.
Virtually none of the countries offering aid have presented the Ukrainian government with a bill of repayment or some sort of quid pro quo.
Several countries, including the United States, have taken thousands of Ukrainian refugees into their homes and communities to shelter them from the trauma of war.
Like former Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson understood, countries are “buying [their] own security” since they know that if Ukraine falls, Putin will feel even more emboldened to continue his quest to return the Russian empire to its former boundaries by gobbling up as much territory as he can.
While Trump has continuously promised a “big, beautiful wall” on the U.S./Mexico border, he has chiseled a potentially fatal crack in Ukraine and the NATO states’ defensive wall blocking Russian expansionism.
As the forever apologist of Vladimir Putin and as someone who admires strongman authoritarians, Trump is not bothered by Putin’s imperial plans. In his role of Grifter-In-Chief, Trump is calling on the Ukrainian government to return U.S. investment at the 11th hour in the absence of an initial signed agreement to this effect.
Trump is attempting to steal 50% of Ukraine’s valuable rare earth minerals – worth approximately $500 billion – in exchange for entering into an agreement with the United States and Russia to end the current war, with no promise yet about Ukraine’s territorial integrity or guarantees for its security.
U.S. aid to Ukraine must be understood as a downpayment on the U.S. not having to send our troops to risk their lives. In addition, most of the money (approximately 70%) earmarked for Ukraine was paid to U.S. producers of war materials, contributing to, in President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s terms, “the military-industrial complex,” which makes enormous profits through international tensions that sometimes lead to war. This money went back into stimulating the U.S. economy.
Trump’s first attempted quid pro quo with the Ukrainian leader involved threatening to withhold armaments unless Zelenskyy investigated the son of Trump’s Democratic rival for the U.S. presidency, Joe Biden. This resulted in the House of Representatives impeaching Trump on charges of “abuse of power” and “obstruction of justice,” while the Senate gave him a pass without ever calling a witness.
Trump is grinding his boot into the very existence of the nation of Ukraine, a nation that Putin’s war has seriously weakened and one that is currently dependent on the kindness and empathy of other nations for survival.
Trump smells blood in the water and is going in for the financial kill instead of helping Ukraine as the United States aided European countries devastated by World War II with the Marshall Plan.
The Marshall Plan, also known as the European Recovery Act, was a U.S. program to aid European economic recovery after World War II. Named after Secretary of State George Marshall, President Harry Truman signed the plan into law on April 3rd, 1948.
The purpose was to help rebuild Western European economic systems, to shore up more stable conditions for democratic governments, and to promote world peace. It also provided humanitarian assistance and eventually helped create markets for U.S. products and brought in dependable trading partners.
If Trump’s appropriation of Ukraine’s resources ever happened, maybe, then, our NATO partners should consider collecting reimbursement from the U.S. for aiding us after the attack on our homeland on September 11th, 2021.
Not being a student of history, Trump most likely never learned that the only occasion in which the Collective Defense Article 5 of the NATO treaty has been applied was following the 9/11 terrorist attack.
NATO countries joined the U.S. in going after Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Officials in NATO countries did not question who would pay their fair share of the costs and who would not. They had an essential job to perform for their mutual benefit.
While all nations have an obligation to assist in their financial commitment to NATO and to their own militaries, our alliances involve and concern much more than money. When Trump verbally attacks our long-standing and vital alliances while simultaneously imposing rigid tariffs on their products, he jeopardizes the national security interests of the U.S. and emboldens his friend and mentor, Vladimir Putin, to corrupt and eventually topple the liberal world order.
As Trump continues to verbally abuse the nation of Canada and its Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, someone must inform him that Canada was one of the top five countries sending troops to fight with the United States in its war with Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks.
Trump’s grifting pattern
Trump’s obsession with gaining power falls flatly on a foundation of accumulating unlimited wealth, like his buddy Putin.
Trump’s legacy has long been one of grifting and embezzlement. Here is just a selective summary:
· Trump and his company have failed on numerous occasions to pay its contractors for completed work. According to USA Today: “An investigation found hundreds of people – carpenters, dishwashers, painters, even his own lawyers – who say he didn’t pay them for their work.”
· Trump has been charged with obtaining hundreds of millions of dollars in loans by falsifying financial statements.
· Trump was also charged with four criminal indictments and convicted of 34 felony counts in his so-called “hush money” case. Two indictments were on state charges (one in New York and one in Georgia), and two indictments (as well as one superseding indictment) were on federal charges (one in Florida and one in the District of Columbia).
· In Trump’s quest to maintain wealth within his family, his buddies in Saudi Arabia transferred $2 billion into son-in-law Jared Kushner’s building construction company. Records indicate a $110 billion arms deal between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia that was increased by Kusher’s. Soon following Kushner leaving the White House, the Saudi crown prince transferred $2 billion to Kushner’s companies.
· The Chinese government fast-tracked a total of 41 trademarks to companies linked to Ivanka Trump by April of 2019, as documented in a new book by Forbes’ senior editor Dan Alexander titled White House Inc.: How Donald Trump Turned the White House into a Business.
· Trump pulled in money from foreign governments by charging exorbitant prices at his Washington, DC, Trump hotel. On many occasions governments infused money into Trump’s company on the pretext of reserving rooms at his hotel even when they did not occupy the rooms. Officials from Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and the People’s Republic of China collectively spent over $750,000 at the Trump International Hotel during his first term, according to House Oversight and Reform committee chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. In addition, when Trump travels to his golf and resort properties, he charges his own security detail excessive prices to stay at his hotels and resorts, paid for at taxpayer expense.
· Now the Grifter-In-Chief has proposed “owning” the Gaza Strip. Reading from his prepared notes in front of a throng of reporters and with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu standing stage right, Trump announced in the spirit of a Property-Developer-in-Chief: “The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip. We’ll own it… We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal… the Riviera of the Middle East.” Trump plans to deport approximately 2 million Palestinian residents as a form of ethnic cleansing so he can develop the Strip for international travelers and wealthy property owners.
· And in his role as supposed President of the United States, he has consistently promoted his brand through his online so-called “MAGA Collection.” By the way, every human model on his website appears to be white.
With Ukraine, the grifting continues to line the endless subterranean depths of his pockets.
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