AMERICA’S MUNICH
The Steady State | By Susan Koch
In September 1938, the Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom and France signed an agreement in Munich with Hitler and Mussolini. That has gone down in history as a synonym for ultimately catastrophic disgrace -- a counterproductive effort to appease an insatiable dictator. Less than a year later, the Second World War broke out. Beginning in 1945, the United States led a successful effort to create a new political, economic and military order based on immutable principles of democracy, firm alliances, free economic and financial ties, and respect for the rule of law, national sovereignty and territorial integrity. We recognized that America’s vital self interests required adherence to those principles, and refusal to follow misguided paths like Munich.
This week the Trump Administration threw that all away. Its proposals for a supposed peace in Ukraine violates all the principles, and the enlightened self-interest, that have served us so well for over 75 years. Like Neville Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier, Trump proposes to abandon a loyal partner, sacrificing its territorial integrity and sovereignty to an insatiable aggressor, in the hope that it would provide “peace in our time.” But all Munich did was convince Hitler and Mussolini that aggression pays. Ultimately they were proved wrong, but at horrendous, unimaginable cost.
The parallels between Trump’s “peace proposal” and Munich are unmistakable. The Agreement called on Czechoslovakia, a formal ally of France, to grant a large part of its territory to Germany. Czechoslovakia was not present at the meeting and had no choice but to accede to this ultimatum. Trump’s proposal was not negotiated with Ukraine or with any of our allies who stood so staunchly with us against the unprovoked, illegal Russian aggression against Ukraine. When Prime Minister Zelenskyy rejected its provisions as unacceptable, Trump erupted, making clear his view the Ukrainian President had no right to defend his country.
The Trump Administration has also followed the Munich playbook by pretending that Russia somehow has a right to the Ukrainian territory that it illegally occupies. The Munich Agreement granted the Sudetenland – the German-speaking areas of Bohemia, Moravia and Czech Silesia – to Germany, on the specious, ahistoric grounds that they rightly belonged to it. The Trump Administration astonishingly often publicly blames Ukraine for the February 2022 Russian invasion, and claims that Crimea and the Russian-speaking areas of Eastern Ukraine rightly belong to Russia.
It is telling that Vice President Vance referred on April 23 to Ukrainian territory that Ukraine and Russia now “own.” Using that word is an attempt to legitimize Russian claims over occupied areas. It flies in the face of longstanding principles of international – and by treaty, American – law regarding national sovereignty and territorial integrity. It is beyond shocking. Did the United States ever refer during World War II to occupied France, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway as “owned” by Germany? The notion was inconceivable then, and should be now.
The lesson Hitler learned from Munich was that France and the United Kingdom would not stand in the way of Germany’s relentless expansion. In his public demands for Lebensraum (room to live), he made clear his territorial ambitions. By the same token, Putin has made no secret of his desire to recreate the Soviet Union, calling its dissolution the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century. By supporting his demands in Ukraine, Trump is making the same mistake that Hitler and Daladier did. There is no reason to expect that Putin will stop at Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. A first move could be to seek to take the rest of Ukraine. Subsequent other possibilities could be Moldova and Georgia. After that, perhaps even the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, even though they are NATO Allies. Putin might even try to do some or all of this as quickly as possible, while Trump is still in office; he might not want to risk that the next U.S. President could follow President Biden’s example of a firm stand against Russian aggression.
Another element of Trump’s “peace proposal” that echoes Putin’s demands also reinforces the danger that he would act quickly to take all of Ukraine. The proposal that Ukraine never be able to join NATO would remove any risk, however small, that a further invasion there might meet a NATO military response under Article V. It also directly contradicts the Washington Declaration issued at the NATO 75th anniversary summit just last July. That declaration stated that “Ukraine’s future is in NATO,” and that “we will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the Alliance when the Allies agree and conditions are met.”
At Munich, France abandoned an ally. Ukraine is not a formal Treaty ally of the United States, but in December 1994 we made firm commitments in the Budapest Memorandum. Ukraine relied on those to make the historic step of giving up the many nuclear weapons on its soil. In the Memorandum, among other provisions, Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom reaffirmed their commitment to respect Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and existing borders. Russia obviously violated that commitment in its invasions of 2014 and 2022. Now the Trump proposals would do so as well. More broadly, they would violate the basic principles of international relations that the United States has followed throughout its history.
It is completely understandable that Ukraine has rejected the Trump proposals. President Trump has changed course on many other subjects in the few short months since his inauguration. He must do so on this vital issue as well. The future of Ukraine, of NATO and of the entire international order that has preserved peace for over 75 years could be at stake.
Dr. Susan Koch’s federal government service included work in the White House National Security Council Staff, State Department, Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, specializing in weapons of mass destruction arms control and nonproliferation. She is a member of The Steady State, an organization of former national security officials..