Anchorage and Munich

On March 11, 2022, just a few weeks after Russia's invasion of Ukraine began, I suggested here that NATO should very seriously consider entering the war on Ukraine's side. I did so because I thought the whole post-1945 world order was at stake and because Ukraine was making an all-out effort to defend itself.  Not only did the Biden administration immediately rule out direct intervention, but I do not know of a single other commentator who openly agreed with me.  The invasion did lead Sweden and Finland to join NATO and European nations to begin beefing up their defenses.  The Ukrainians have mounted an extraordinary defense, but the Russian threat has grown bigger, not smaller, over the last few years, and Ukraine has now been losing ground--although it is a long way from being militarily defeated.  In these respects, the situation today is very different from the crisis over Czechoslovakia in 1938 that led eventually to the Munich agreement conceding German-speaking areas of Czechoslovakia to Germany, and leading just five months later to the entire destruction of Czechoslovakia.  Donald Trump's meeting with Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, however, does have echoes of the crisis of September 1938 and may lead to something similar.

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain actually met Hitler three times in 1938: first in Berchtesgaden when he agreed in principle to Hitler's demand for the Sudetenland, then at Bad Godesberg where Hitler escalated his demands further, and then at Munich, where Hitler had accepted Mussolini's invitation to meet with Chamberlain and French Premier Daladier, rather than attack Czechoslovakia after the Czechs, the French and the British had all rejected his Godesberg demands.  At Munich Hitler got most of what he wanted from Czechoslovakia, and signed a declaration, proposed by Chamberlain, in which the British and German governments expressed their desire never to go to war again.  The situation today is different, of course, because Russia and Ukraine have already been in full-scale war for two and a half years.  The Anchorage meeting resembles the first, Berchtesgaden meeting.  Trump received Putin claiming to want an immediate cease-fire, as Ukraine does, but he apparently not only dropped that demand, but accepted Putin's demand that he receive the entire Donbas region--much of which remains unconquered--in return for peace.  In addition according to reports this morning, Ukraine's security would depend in the future on the Russian government's promise not to attack it again, which, without going into detail, is pretty much what the Czechoslovak government got to insure its future security after Munich.  

Trump now faces the same task that Chamberlain faced after Berchtesgaden: to sell not only the embattled Ukrainians on such a deal, but to convince his traditional allies, the other NATO nations, to go along with it.  Chamberlain did in fact persuade both Czechoslovakia and his French allies to agree to the cession of the Sudetenland after Berchtesgaden.  President Benes of Czechoslovakia did not threaten to fight Germany alone and gave in, and the French government was more interested in keeping Britain on their side in case war with Germany eventually broke out than in standing up for Czechoslovakia, with which they had a treaty of alliance.  Now Zelensky has already said that he will not accept the formal transfer of any territory to Russia, and he will almost surely insist--as I believe he should--on the freedom to conclude security agreements with other powers.  Whether he could fight on if Trump washed his hands of the conflict depends on the attitude of the European powers, how much help they can give him, and on the speed and effectiveness of new Ukrainian military innovations, most of them involving drones, which have so far helped Ukraine avoid defeat while bringing the war into Russia itself. 

Both at home and abroad, I am convinced, Donald Trump cares more about drama than results.  Every week he introduces a new act of the long-running play, Donald Trump, Superstar, identifying a disastrous problem that must be solved and promising an imminent solution.  Like Chamberlain in 1938, he is poised to proclaim that a peace agreement with Russia guarantees peace for our time and claim the Nobel Prize that he craves so ardently.  At this point, it looks very unlikely to me that Zelensky or the major European states will agree to the surrender of additional Ukrainian territory or the renunciation of effective Ukrainian guarantees.  Ukraine has already proved that it is not Czechoslovakia in 1938: it is orders of magnitude larger in territory and population and it has fought effectively for more than two years.  The major European powers are all breaking with Washington now on the issue of Israel and Palestine, and I don't expect them to knuckle under to Trump this time.  In short, it looks to me as if Trump's current production will fail to produce the kind of triumphant climax that Chamberlain enjoyed, briefly, in September 1938.  I could easily be wrong, but I expect the war to continue.