Cortés’s Misread of the Ukrainian Conflict | The American Spectator

This column doesn’t make a practice of picking fights with other columnists. But once in a while, as I did with Fox News personality Andy Napolitano about a year ago, someone writes a column that is so off base that I feel compelled to respond. Mr. Napolitano was feted in Moscow by Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and by Alexander Dugin, Mr. Putin’s philosopher and close adviser. He was taken in by them and believed everything they told him. Which was entirely false.

Such is the case with the column written by Mr. Steve Cortes in RealClearPolitics on Saturday.

Mr. Cortes paints a picture of President Trump’s burden and opportunity to bring peace to Ukraine. Mr. Cortes recounts how Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky first investigated and then exiled Gen. Valeri Zaluzhnyi. Mr. Cortes, a pollster, then relies on some of his own polls to conclude that U.S. voters want us to end the “quagmire conflict” in Ukraine. He adverts that the Ukrainian people deserve a new election but that cannot be done, he writes, without Mr. Trump creating a cease-fire or possibly a peace treaty.

First, Gen. Zaluzhnyi was “exiled” to serve as Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Kingdom — a key partner providing much of Ukraine’s weaponry. How is that a demotion?

Second, is this a quagmire conflict for the United States? It absolutely isn’t because we have no boots on the ground nor any airpower engaged in the war.

Third, Mr. Cortes avoids any discussion of the other party to this war, Russia, which has control of how the war will end.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in 2005 that the fall of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century.” Mr. Putin wants nothing more than to reassemble the old Soviet empire by force or other means.

Mr. Putin is, as I’ve written as many times, a “Duganist,” i.e., a follower of Russian philosopher (and I use the term loosely) Alexander Dugin. Mr. Dugin has written, in his Foundations of Geopolitics, that unless Ukraine is returned to Russian rule, Mr. Putin may as well not bother to try to try to reassemble the rest of the Soviet empire because it will be impossible.

Mr. Putin has no desire for peace in Ukraine and he, above any other participant in the war, gets the decisive vote.

About ten days ago, Russia hit Ukraine with some 948 drone attacks in a single day, the largest such attack since the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine began in February 2022. (That is according to The Economist magazine which has an abiding dislike for Mr. Trump.)

Russia’s economy is on a war footing. Iran has a factory in Russia to manufacture drones. Iran may be diverting some of the drones to its own war. According to several reports, Russia is providing Iran with intelligence to help it attack and kill Americans.

Mr. Trump, as he should be, is preoccupied with the war in Iran. His war efforts and his best negotiators are trying to end Iran’s nuclear ambitions. They won’t succeed unless there is regime change in Iran.

How Mr. Trump is supposed to create a peace or even a cease-fire Mr. Cortes doesn’t say.

What compromises could Mr. Trump make to end the war in Ukraine? Mr. Putin isn’t interested in compromise. He wants to win the war and is exceptionally unlikely to engage in negotiations that would stop the war unless Ukraine concedes much of its territory and, even then, Russia would have the opportunity to rearm and relaunch its war of conquest in Ukraine.

As Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said, “Ukraine is not America’s war — and yet we’ve contributed more to that fight than any other country in the world.” It is a European war and the NATO nations and the European Union are content to let it continue as a stalemate rather than engage their diplomats in trying to end it. They are content to let it go on unless and until Mr. Trump causes a cease-fire or peace deal. Once again, they — and Mr. Cortes — want us to take on a responsibility that isn’t ours.

Mr. Cortes is entitled to his opinions. But he needs to back up those opinions with the facts of the Ukraine war. He needs to include in those opinions more than hope that Mr. Trump can make a deal for a cease-fire or any sort of peace.

If Mr. Trump could wave a magic wand and create peace in Ukraine he would have done so by now. It’s not within the realm of possibility while Mr. Putin objects to any semblance of peace.

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