Hand it to Donald Trump: he really hates war.
In Yemen, Gaza, Ukraine, and Iran – the man consistently blocks military action. Historians will wonder where this attitude came from, and how it can be reconciled with Trump’s image as an aspiring fascist.
The origins of Trump’s dislike for war are a matter of speculation. Some might argue that the real estate developer in him sees war as a disruptor of business. Others might turn to his college years’ confluence with the Vietnam War, a formative experience for that entire generation, especially for those who avoided the draft.
Whatever his attitude’s roots, the world has by now seen and heard enough to expect no ideological consistency from Donald Trump. And so, in terms of classification, the verdict right now is that Trump is a populist, but no fascist. Yet that’s academic. What’s not academic is the dire situation of Ukraine, which has lost its main protector and now needs an alternative patron.
FASCISTS SEE war as a natural part of history, and a sublime event in a nation’s life. A nation, said Benito Mussolini, is people who fight together. That’s not Trump’s attitude, and this should be said in his favor.
In fact, Trump’s abhorrence of war is so intense that he assumed everyone feels the same, including his friend, Vladimir Putin. That’s why Trump thought the war Putin is fighting is either his enemy’s fault, or some kind of misunderstanding.
That is what an astonished Trump meant when he told reporters on Sunday, “I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin,” shortly before tweeting: “He has gone absolutely CRAZY.”
As the antiwar Trump sees things, there was no other way of explaining Putin’s unleashing last weekend on multiple Ukrainian cities, including apartment blocks and university dorms, 69 heavy-duty missiles peppered with 298 attack drones.
How, Trump wondered, can Putin actually want war? Worse, how can the dude wage an attack while the American president himself tells the whole world he is brokering a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine?
Yes, Trump initially didn’t get it. He didn’t get that back when his generation was politically baptized in an antiwar America, Putin was being baptized in the KGB, where war was seen as part of life by some, and as an ideal by others.
Now, however, Trump gets it. The fighting in Ukraine will continue because that’s what Putin admires and wants. And since Trump entered the Ukrainian fray to serve himself, hoping to emerge from it celebrated as a peacemaker; and since he did not intend to serve any ideal, like defending liberty, America will now abandon Ukraine to Russia’s devices.
Who, then, will defend the Ukrainian democracy against its tyrannical invader? No one knows who, if anyone, will, but this writer knows who should: Europe.
THE IDEA of Europe fighting a war in unison, let alone winning one, is almost outlandish.
It’s been more than 330 years since anything remotely like that last happened, back when a European coalition of Austrians, Germans, Poles, Lithuanians, and Cossacks defeated the Ottomans at Vienna’s gates. Otherwise, Europe was the big loser in almost every one of modern history’s grandest wars.
The two world wars go without saying. Yes, their victors included Europeans, but the losers were also Europeans, and victory was delivered by the non-European Americans.
The rest of modern Europe’s great wars – the Thirty Years War, the Seven Years War, the Napoleonic wars, the Crimean War, the Franco-German War – were all about Europe defeating itself.
Russia is Europe's newest challenger
Now, for the first time since its war with Muslim invaders, Europe is challenged by what its leaders see as a non-European intruder – Russia.
Russia’s challenge is first and foremost military. Russian divisions along European borders, from Finland through the Baltic republics to Poland, can no longer be assumed to be there for decoration. They attacked the much larger Ukraine, and will readily charge elsewhere if so ordered. And such an order, Europe now knows, might arrive unannounced in the future as it has in the past.
Underpinning the military challenge is the moral threat. The Europeans – all of them, from Scandinavia to Albania – want the democracy that Russia’s leaders spurn, fear, and actively fight.
And since the menace hasn’t been as palpable since the worst days of the Cold War; and since America is no longer prepared to lead, or even just participate, in a showdown with Russia – Europe must face this challenge by itself.
Does this mean sending French, German, or Italian troops to fight in Latvia, Moldova, or Ukraine? It doesn’t. It means launching a massive industrial drive to produce and supply the hardware Ukrainian victory demands.
Ukraine’s military, like its population, is large, educated, and motivated. Its problem lies in its equipment and its defense industry’s limitations. That’s where Russia’s edge lies.
As NATO Commander Lt.-Gen. Chris Cavoli told the Senate last month, this year alone Russia will produce 1,500 battle tanks, more than 10 times the American yield, in addition to 3,000 armored personnel carriers, and 250,000 shells, which will put it “on track to build a stockpile three times greater than the US and Europe combined.”
Yes, Russia has size. However, Europe has much more size, in both workforce and treasure, and its products are far superior to Russia’s. If Europe decides to do so, it can equip Ukraine with thousands of German-made Leopard tanks and hundreds of French-made Mirage bombers, Swedish-made Gripen fighter jets, and squadrons upon squadrons of the Tornado and Typhoon Eurofighters that Britain, Germany, and Italy co-produce.
Russia’s hardware is inferior to all these, and if Europe decides to out-produce Russia, Russia will lose, and Europe will do what it hasn’t done since 1683: win.
www.MiddleIsrael.net
The writer, a Hartman Institute fellow, is author of Ha’Sfar Ha’Yehudi Ha’Aharon (The Last Jewish Frontier, Yediot Sefarim 2025), a sequel to Theodor Herzl’s The Old New Land.