“You Were Given the Choice Between War and Dishonor. You Chose Dishonor and You Will Have War”
Those were Winston Churchill’s words, as Britain’s Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, returned from his meeting in Munich with Adolf Hitler, promising “peace in our time.”
And, here we are now, in a mirroring of those very circumstances, as the Orange Man and Vladimir Putin put their heads together to divide among themselves the land, the resources and future of Ukraine.
There is no other word for the Orange Man’s side of that meeting than ‘dishonor.’ The issue was settled 31 years ago.
The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, signed on December 5, 1994, was an agreement under which Ukraine surrendered its nuclear weapons in exchange for security assurances from Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
Key Points included Ukraine’s willingness to give up its nuclear arsenal (which was the third-largest in the world at the time) and join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a non-nuclear state. In return, Russia, the U.S., and the U.K. pledged to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence, and existing borders.
Therefore, there is no ‘peace talk’ to attend, no phone call to be made, no Ukrainian lands or resources to divide.
Russia agreed not to use force or threats of force against Ukraine and pledged not to use economic coercion to influence Ukraine’s policies. Nor, were there any references made at the time to either Europe or NATO.
None.
Yet, Russia violated that agreement, first in 2014 when it invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea, then again in 2022, in a full-scale invasion of Ukraine that further breached the memorandum.
Tellingly, the Budapest Memorandum did not include a legally binding enforcement mechanism, meaning that, while it provided security assurances, it was not a formal security guarantee, like NATO’s Article 5.
To put the Orange Man’s outreach to Putin in perspective:
Just a tad over five months after Chamberlain’s guarantee of peace in our time, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia, moving quickly after that to an invasion of Poland, and mutual declarations of World War Two.
In this full circle of the run-up to WWII, the Orange Man has willingly taken on the role of Neville Chamberlain.
Dishonor was his, in a shameful demand for repayment of exaggerated costs for military support by America thus far in the Russian invasion, and further proven in a shameless public humiliation of the Ukrainian president in the Oval Office of the White House. It’s as if Britain had bargained away half of Czechoslovakia to satisfy Hitler, then humiliated its President Masaryk, in public, in Berlin.
Yet, the Orange Man gives not a damn about either the legality, history, or morality of Russian faithlessness. His part of the spoils is the expectation of a Nobel Peace Prize.
Just as Chamberlain enabled Hitler’s destruction of Europe, the Orange Man’s concessions to Putin will fail to quench his thirst.
Europe knows this, as does Ukraine.
There is no prize, Nobel or otherwise, for dishonor and the sell-out of an ally.