FAFO TRUMP: (An open letter to the President of the United States), by Scipio

Mr. Trump. (I address you as “Mr.” because you are not acting “Presidential”).

How can you broker between two parties (Russia and Ukraine) when you are suppling most the money, arms, weapons, and ISR to one of the sides?  I wouldn’t take you seriously if I were on the other side of the negotiating table.

How can you publicly and vehemently draw redlines of what will cause you to walk away from negotiations and then turn around and say you will “negotiate as long as it takes”?  Where have we heard that phrase before.

You say you want to stop the killing and you say 5,000 Ukrainians are being killed a week.  You are an enabler of that killing. No, this is no longer Biden’s war, this is on you since Jan 20^th.  According to your estimated deaths that means in the last 16 weeks multiplied by 5,000 lives that equals 80,000 casualties you possibly enabled.   Well, half it. That would mean 40,000.  That is a disturbing amount of blood on the hands of a man of peace.

You listen to that cereal flake, Kellogg, when he proposes a 15-mile-wide DMZ to the Russians.  Do you know how to read a map?  If Russia did that, it would have to give up all the territory it has fought for so far.  It would have meant Russia’s SMO would have been for nothing.

In the Korean War, fighting continued for two years while peace negotiations were going one.  The UN was not asked to back up 15 miles from the line of contact to end the war.  That would have put Seoul behind communist lines!  Where did Kellogg get his military training, from the Call To Duty?

Russia is not going to make a “deal” with you.  From day one they have never changed their fundamental conditions for peace. Russia sees this as an existential threat, and they cannot negotiate a “deal” about their very existence.  Honestly, do you see Ukraine as place that needs peace or a place where you can extract a “deal” for resources or whatever without giving a hoot about the people dying on both sides?

Putin warned the West in his famous February 10, 2007 Munich speech of NATO’s continued encroachment on Russia’s borders but was laughed at (literally).  At the time Russia was too weak to do anything about it with the recent break up of the Soviet Union.  Fast forward to February 21, 2022 with a potential NATO Ukraine on its border, Russia saw their very existence threatened by the continued promises to not expand NATO only to see more countries join NATO.

Russia’s core position is the same today as it was at the start if the SMO.  It has not changed since your first negotiations with them.  You don’t understand that you are to Russia what Zalenski was to you in that famous February White House meeting where you told Zalenski, “You don’t have the cards,” Well, I hate to break the news to you, but you don’t have the cards either.  Your trump card won’t work here.

Russia has beaten the West in the field, and they have beaten the West’s sanctions.  You have no options.

Mr. Trump, there is no wiggle room in Russia’s stance.  There is no possible “deal”.  You are not in Kansas anymore.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Samuel Johnson

“God save us from people who mean well.” Vikram Seth

“Most of the evil in the world is done by people with good intentions.” T.S. Eliot

Sincerely,

Scipio