Feb. 19 (UPI) — This week’s meetings in Saudi Arabia between the United States and Russia began with a goal of ending or resolving the three-year war in Ukraine.
President Donald Trump is exactly correct. The fighting in which hundreds of thousands have been killed and Ukraine laid to waste must stop. But this should have Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky very worried. Ukraine has not been included, just like a wake that lacked a corpse.
The administration argues that Ukraine is involved. The presidents have talked. And a dual and separate track has begun in which the United States is the go-between in talks with Russia and Ukraine.
Still, Zelensky should not be happy. President John Kennedy explained why. Kennedy tartly observed that the only thing worse than being an enemy of the United States is being a friend. He was correct.
In 1956, the United States and the USSR forced the United Kingdom, France and Israel to withdraw from the Suez Canal after initiating the war. Six years later, the U.K. was abandoned by the United States.
The United States’ closest ally, and part of the special relationship, had based a substantial amount of its nuclear deterrent capability on an air-launched ICBM called Skybolt. Because the technology was not up to the task, the United States quickly canceled the program, causing quite a strain in the special relationship.
When President Richard Nixon entered office in 1969, he put in place the Paris Peace talks with North Vietnam to end the war. The talks, negotiated by National Security Adviser and later Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, ultimately led to an agreement. South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu was forced to accept the terms.
The Nixon administration had imposed a “Vietnamization” on the Army of Vietnam to assume responsibility for its own defense against the north, hoping it would work after the United States withdrew. Congress cancelled the funding. Thieu was gone. And the scene of the disastrous U.S. evacuation from the U.S. Embassy in Saigon was a tragic pictorial of a war gone bad.
The Trump administration intended to end America’s longest war in Afghanistan. In 2019, it entered into the Doha Agreement with the Taliban. The United States would withdraw by April 2020. The Taliban would provide the security. And guess who did not come to dinner — Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.
The Biden administration took office in January 2020 and debated about Afghanistan. Despite the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommending retaining 2,500 troops at Bagram Air Base outside Kabul, Biden chose a complete withdrawal, extending the date to August. But like Thieu, Afghani President Ashraf Ghani played no part in negotiating away his country.
The withdrawal was a debacle. Thirteen U.S. service personnel were killed in a terrorist attack. Images of panicked Afghans trying to force themselves aboard the landing wheel compartments of U.S. air transports filled TV, computer and smartphone screens.
Ghani and his administration had fled the country earlier, leaving Afghanistan without a government. Despite forecasts that Kabul would hold out for months, everything collapsed. The Taliban took over just as quickly as it fell after the U.S. 2003 intervention.
The talks have a long way to go. Ukraine cannot survive without foreign support. But if European states who are members of NATO deploy troops to Ukraine and conflict breaks out, will Article 5 — an attack against one shall be considered an attack against all — be invoked, committing the alliance, including the United States, to war?
This question is one of many profound and perplexing quandaries that must be addressed if an agreement is to be reached in Afghanistan. Zelensky, like Thieu, will be given a fait accompli. His only leverage is the threat to fight on, no matter. In that case, the outcome seems predictable. Russia will win.
Perhaps shuttle diplomacy will work. Separating the two combatants may be the only way to conduct the negotiation. Still, will Zelensky’s and Ukrainian interests be preserved?
Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth’s remarks at the Munich Security Conference last week were called a “rookie mistake” by U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., tipping the administration’s hand. Ukraine would not join NATO or regain its pre-2014 borders before Russia occupied Crimea.
While the White House tried to modify the remarks, it did not. Ukraine must see how this could turn out. The Vietnam and Doha talks are important indicators. If Trump really wants to end the war, he can — at Ukraine’s expense. And if the talks move to Paris, Zelensky needs plans A, B, C, D and so on.
Harlan Ullman is UPI’s Arnaud deBorchgrave Distinguished Columnist, senior adviser at Washington’s Atlantic Council, chairman of a private company and principal author of the doctrine of shock and awe. His next book, co-written with General The Lord David Richards, former U.K. Chief of Defense and due out late next year, is The Arc of Failure: Can Strategic Thinking Transform a Dangerous World. The writer can be reached on Twitter @harlankullman.
