Timothy Snyder - (archived: https://archive.ph/BzT8R ) Trump risks unraveling world order with his Ukraine approach

Will Trump concede America’s great source of strength or nourish it?

By Timothy Snyder
Updated November 12, 2024, 10:52 a.m.



During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump was vague on foreign policy, claiming only that he would be strong and that other leaders were his friends and would listen to him. Now that he is president-elect, those words and those expectations begin to make contact with reality. Among many other boasts, Trump declared that he could end the war in Ukraine immediately. The outlines seem to involve giving the Russians what they want and then expecting the Ukrainians to concede.

In other words, Trump’s idea is to be weak, export weakness, and see what happens. What happens will not look like strength. Were Trump to fail to achieve such a deal, Russia would be in a better position thanks to Trump’s concessions and Ukrainians would be dying in greater numbers to defend their country.

Should Trump manage to force Ukraine into a weaker position where it loses the war, this would be more disastrous still.

It’s easy to take things for granted, especially for Americans. We tend to see other people as problems, not solutions. We imagine that somehow we are the ones doing the real work in Ukraine, when the truth is that Ukrainians are fighting a war of unimaginable cruelty with an endurance that has protected our own way of life. The simple strength of what they are doing is undeniable: They are fulfilling the entire NATO mission on their own, doing all the fighting, supported by American and European aid.

Thanks to Ukrainians, the international legal order is sustained. It depends on the principle that borders are inviolable, which they are defending. Thanks to Ukrainians, nuclear war is less likely. Because they resist the nuclear threats of a nuclear power with an effective conventional response, other countries are not building nuclear weapons. Should Americans choose to weaken Ukraine, this will change quickly. And Ukraine is deterring China from offensive actions in the Pacific Ocean by showing how difficult such operations are.

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