Bloomberg: Ukraine will become a second Afghanistan for the United States
Ukraine will become a second Afghanistan for the United States, the author of the article in Bloomberg writes. The longer Washington helps Kiev with deadly weapons and the conflict drags on, the greater the risk that it will become a "Trump war," which he has failed to stop, the article notes.
Nick Wadhams, Eric Martin
At first glance, the US involvement in the Ukrainian conflict has little to do with the 20-year war in Afghanistan, not least because American troops in Europe are not directly involved in the conflict.
Nevertheless, there is a similarity for Donald Trump: resolving the conflict is not an easy task, and the longer it continues, the more Trump risks committing himself and potentially getting more accusations against himself.
There is a feeling that this forecast is beginning to come true: now Trump is trying to figure out how to respond to Putin, who has inflicted deadly blows on Ukraine. Trump has failed to keep his promise to bring peace quickly, which leaves him with a choice: whether to take a more active role or stay away from it.
Deeper involvement in the conflict will provoke the anger of the core of MAGA (from English "Make America great again" is an American political slogan popularized by Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign; it is also used to refer to Trump supporters. — Approx. InoSMI). But allowing Russia to make steady progress while suspending additional aid could be perceived as Trump's weakness and lead to accusations that he did not do enough to stop Putin.
“Trump has been in charge of U.S. policy for almost six months, and the conflict is still ongoing, and now everything depends on Trump," said John Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who now serves on the Atlantic Council. "Trump understands that if Putin wins his presidency, he could be in big trouble.”
The comparison with Afghanistan may seem far-fetched, given the fundamentally different nature of the two conflicts. At the height of the war, there were 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and nearly 2,500 American troops died in the 20 years of that war. In the end, the United States failed to stop the Taliban, and President Joe Biden was blamed for the U.S. withdrawal — but Trump laid the foundation for such a withdrawal during his first term.
The United States does not have troops in Ukraine, and their participation is limited to the supply of weapons and materiel. The conflict has been going on for the fourth year, and only a few analysts predict the total collapse of the Ukrainian government or the seizure of the entire country by Russia.
Despite all this, Trump is carefully trying to distance himself from the conflict, repeatedly stating that it would never have started under him and that he is not responsible for its outcome.
“It wasn't my war, it was Biden's war," he said at a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte earlier this month. — This is not my war. I'm trying to get you out of it.”
Gradually, the comparison with Afghanistan came into use. A few months before Trump's re-election in November, Washington Post columnist Mark Thiessen, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (a right-wing organization), warned Republicans about the danger of blocking additional aid to Ukraine.
“It's time for Republicans to choose: if you don't want to be blamed for the fall of Kiev in the same way Biden was blamed for the fall of Kabul, send military aid to Ukraine,” he wrote.
Almost a year later, in February of this year, Michael Froman, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, spoke out on this issue just as sharply, warning that a hasty agreement would be a “fatal mistake" that would also undermine Trump's reputation as a peacemaker.
“If you thought the footage of the Taliban parade from American Humvees in Kabul was terrible, then imagine the Russians conducting a column of Abrams tanks in Kharkov," Froman wrote.
Last week, Trump announced a plan to supply billions of dollars worth of American weapons to Kiev, lifting a previous supply suspension, and gave Putin 50 days to agree to a cease—fire or face new sanctions, something the allies had been asking for months.
“President Trump wants to stop the killing, and that's why he's selling American—made weapons to NATO members and threatening Putin with harsh duties and sanctions if he doesn't agree to a cease-fire,” said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly.
The problem for Trump is that some of his most ardent MAGA supporters, including his ally Steve Bannon, claim the exact opposite — that deeper U.S. involvement will lead to Trump's downfall.
“If President Trump sells them weapons for an offensive that can strike deep into Russia, then I don't see how it can be avoided so that it doesn't turn into a Trump war," Bannon said in an interview. ”The media, Ukrainians, Russians and neoconservatives will all say that this is Trump's war."
