No piece of paper can fully commit a country to war on behalf of another. Rather than lecturing President Trump, President Zelensky should have read his George Washington, accepting that strong commercial relations are the foundation for mutual defense, not words on a page.
Whether you love President Donald Trump or hate him, the simple, undeniable truth is that all Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky needed to do last week to stave off a complete diplomatic meltdown in the Oval Office was deliver the usual diplomatic pablum so commonplace that even ChatGPT could write it. Something along the lines of, “Thank you Mr. President and the entire United States of America. It is an honor to be here today to sign this historic agreement, representing a new economic and security partnership between our two countries. During your last administration, President Trump strengthened our ability to defend ourselves by providing much needed weaponry and other resources. Today, we are even further strengthening our longstanding ties and strategic partnership, binding our countries even closer together than ever before. This agreement is proof that America stands with Ukraine, Ukraine stands with America, and Russian aggression will not stand. While I have no illusions that Russian President Vladimir Putin can be trusted, I am confident that this new, historic agreement will serve as a bulwark against any future threats and that the American people will continue their commitment to our security as always.” Crucially, he could have said this even if he was still concerned about certain parts of the deal and would’ve preferred slightly different language. Alternatively, he could have chosen not to come in the first place and continued to negotiate a deal more to his liking, as some reports have indicated was his preference, or even seek alternative funding sources should he want to continue prosecuting the war, as the European Union is claiming to do as we speak. Instead, he chose to do the unthinkable, in what amounts to one the biggest unforced foreign policy errors by a foreign leader in recent memory, if not all memory. Whatever the case, President Zelensky attempted to simultaneously renegotiate the terms of the deal that was supposedly agreed to in advance and question America’s commitment should his Russian counterpart renege on some part of a deal that hadn’t even been negotiated yet, and he did so in real time, in full view of the public. Even more bizarrely, he did so while suggesting that the first Trump Administration had failed to contain Russian aggression, despite doing far more than the Obama Administration had, and when pressed on the issue, had the temerity to question and interrupt Vice President JD Vance before outright threatening the United States if we didn’t conform to his wishes.
“What kind of diplomacy, JD, you are speaking about?” President Zelenskyy said, referring to him casually by first name rather than the proper title that diplomatic situations like this demand. “What do you mean?” He asked, again. “I’m talking about the kind of diplomacy that’s going to end the destruction of your country,” Vice President Vance replied as if the context of the answer wasn’t overwhelmingly obvious. “Mr. President, with respect,” he continued though he’d received none. “I think it’s disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media. Right now, you guys are going around and forcing conscripts to the front lines because you have manpower problems. You should be thanking the president for bringing it, to bring it into this country.” Rather than reading the room as they say and letting the matter lie, picking this battle for another day, preferably behind closed doors, President Zelensky chose to escalate the issue even further. He went onto outright mock Vice President Vance for having never been to Ukraine before informing President Donald Trump himself that America would “feel” the impact of Russian aggression on our own shores if we did not provide the requested security guarantees, whatever they may be, given the phrase remained completely undefined, more on that in a moment. “Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel,” President Trump erupted, visibly angry and rightly so. “We’re trying to solve a problem. Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel. You are in no position to dictate that, remember that.” Even after this obvious warning that patience was wearing thin in the room, President Zelensky wasn’t cowed, choosing to continue interrupting President Trump and questioning him in his own office until finally the US President had enough, informing his Ukrainian counterpart that his country was in “big trouble” and he should start acting like it rather than making demands. “Wait a minute,” he said. “No, no, you’ve done a lot of talking. Your country is in big trouble.” The meeting was concluded shortly thereafter. The lunch and press conference were canceled, and no deal was signed when reports suggested that President Trump asked President Zelensky to leave the White House in no uncertain terms. Afterward, he posted on Truth Social, “I have determined that President Zelenskyy is not ready for peace if America is involved, because he feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiations. I don’t want advantage, I want PEACE. He disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office. He can come back when he is ready for Peace.” Later, the President insisted that the deal is still on the table, should President Zelensky want it, he only need ask in a remarkable olive branch considering how quickly the situation devolved.
If President Zelensky’s performance wasn’t enough, that it rests on the equivalent of a combination of platitudes and pipedreams makes the outcome even more subversive to his ultimate goals. According to reports and his comments in the Oval Office itself, the Ukrainian President isn’t happy with the proposed deal because he believes there aren’t sufficient security guarantees to protect Ukraine from Russia in the long term. Though the agreement calls for Ukraine to remain “free, sovereign and secure,” it doesn’t specify any shipment of arms or actions the US “must” take should the country be threatened, much less commit US troops to protect the country, and to a large extent, Ukraine will be forced to rely on faith that we will do what it takes should the need arise. Given President Putin’s penchant for violating deals almost as soon as they are written, President Zelensky has a reasonable concern in this regard, despite President Trump stating multiple times that arms and other weapons shipments will continue. At the same time, there’s a reason for the old expression that there are no guarantees in life whatever anyone may claim, and the expression certainly applies when the topic at hand is vague, international guarantees of any kind. In this case, whatever he may want or even whatever President Trump may even promise to put in writing, there is no language, however strong, that could be written into an agreement that would guarantee anything in perpetuity in this fashion. Ultimately, the Russians are going to do what they are going to do and the United States, whether under President Trump or some future President, is going to respond as we are going to respond. Writing down what we might do now is meaningless, save as a promissory exercise. In fact, there’s already a security agreement in place that some have said has been violated, leading to the notion bandied about in certain quarters that we have already betrayed Ukraine once. Under the terms of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine agreed to surrender its nuclear arsenal in exchange for so-called security guarantees enforced by the US, the United Kingdom, and Russia itself. As we all know, Russia violated the agreement by taking Crimea in 2013, if not earlier, and neither the Obama Administration nor our British counterparts were willing to enforce the security guarantees at the time – or ever after. Instead, we shipped them money and blankets, delivered some stirring and not so stirring speeches about democracy and the like, while doing nothing to eject President Putin from Crimea. Even in the lead up to the full Russian invasion in 2022, President Biden sat blithely by, authorized a “minor incursion,” and did not act to protect Ukrainian interests until after the country’s territory was already violated.
To be sure, I don’t recount this to criticize either President, though certainly there is enough blame to go around, merely to state the reality that no guarantee, however strongly worded, compels the United States to either fund an endless war or even worse, to go to war with Russia directly. While diplomatic elites and the broader global establishment like to pretend as if words written on a page are somehow binding in international affairs, they are not and never have been. An international treaty, even one properly ratified by the United States Senate with a full two thirds majority as the Budapest Memorandum was not, is not the same as an enforceable contract, where parties can rely on the legal system to resolve disputes and the government will ensure settlements are adhered to. This is because there is no international body with that kind of power over sovereign countries, though some pretend there is, and no country can force another to do anything short of defeating them in a war. Yes, even the vaunted NATO alliance, generally considered to be the most long standing and successful in history, is nothing more than a promissory note that the participating countries will act in a certain manner under certain conditions, such as the mutual defense clause. This is why many, including me, have been concerned that growing NATO to include more and more countries over the years has weakened it rather than strengthened it. The reason is simple. A country can only fight a war if the people have a will to do so. The ties that bind the United States to our closest allies like Britain, France, Germany, and Poland are most likely deep and long standing enough that American people would rise up to defend an attack on their sovereignty, but even then, no one should be under any illusions that our defense would be in perpetuity or at the risk of our own destruction. For better or worse, the same cannot be said should there be an attack on a country like Estonia or any of the other Baltic states, which few could find on a map or name a single thing about, and rightly or wrongly, most do not believe there are any real shared interests to protect. Putting this another way, I am not sure why anyone believes America would commit to an all out, potentially nuclear war, at the cost of millions of lives and billions if not trillions of dollars, over a country the average person never heard of beyond an occasional reference in the media.
While the establishment may tell you otherwise, acting in umbrage at even the suggestion we would fail to honor the NATO agreement, their rather naive view on these matters is a relatively new phenomenon, one not broadly shared until very recently. None other than George Washington would argue the opposite, in fact, having written in his farewell address, “The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.” In his mind, “The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.” Regarding Europe in particular, Washington noted, “it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities,” ultimately concluding, “Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice? It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.” Of course, times have changed since Washington’s day and especially following the horrors of World War I and II, horrors Washington himself, could not have imagined, so-called civilized countries have increasingly relied on treaties and alliances to resolve disputes rather than war. While this is a good thing in many ways, the underlying reality has not changed. No piece of paper can fully commit a country to going to war on behalf of another, and we should be wary of any that say otherwise. Rather than lecturing President Trump, President Zelensky should probably have read up on his George Washington to better understand his country’s predicament, accepting that strong commercial relations are the foundation for mutual defense, not words on a page.
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