Hey NATO Allies, Demand Payback from Trump for Your Aid in Afghanistan

“We are buying…not lending. We are buying our own security while we prepare. By our delay during the past six years, while Germany was preparing, we find ourselves unprepared and unarmed, facing a thoroughly prepared and armed potential enemy.”

United States Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the debate over a proposed “Lend-Lease” program in 1940 to send needed armaments and other resource to European nations suffering mounting casualties and loss of their territorial sovereignty by the Nazi onslaught, that this was not a mere giveaway, but essentially we will be “buying our own security while we prepare.”

The Lend-Lease program ultimately spared England from succumbing to Nazi invasion of their island and kept England in the war long enough for the United States to mobilize its industries and military. Quite possibly, this program spared an entire continent and other areas of the planet from authoritarian domination and loss of territorial sovereignty.

The unprovoked and unwarranted invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation under its dictator, Vladimir Putin, with its takeover and annexation Crimea in 2014 and its subsequent incursion into eastern and western Ukraine has been the first large scale European invasion into a sovereign nation since the end of World War II and the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

According to the Collective Defense Article 5 of the NATO treaty, when one signatory country comes under attack, all others enter for mutual defense. Since Ukraine is not currently a member of NATO, and other countries have not been willing or able to join with the Ukrainians directly with onsite military forces, these countries, including the United States, have initiated a version of the Lend-Lease program by supplying the Ukrainian military with materials and training in conducting the war.

Though not covered by the NATO treaty, some countries were fulfilling their commitments and obligations to the Ukrainian government under the terms of the Budapest Memorandum of 1994.

Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances is composed of three primarily identical political agreements signed at the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) conference in Budapest, Hungary, on 5 December 1994.

This Memorandum assures security relating to the accession of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The three memoranda were originally signed by three nuclear powers: Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom, and China and France gave some individual assurances in separate documents.

Following the fall of the Soviet Union, some of its formerly occupied territories, for example, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine had large stockpiles of nuclear weapons and materials that could go into constructing bombs.

According to the terms of the Budapest Memorandum, these three former Soviet-controlled regions were to relinquish all their nuclear materials with the assurance that Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom would not threaten or invade these countries by military force or economic coercion.

Russia violated the Memorandum by invading Ukraine in 2014 and again on 24 February 2022. Giving military and humanitarian support are the United States, Britain, and other nations, covering 41, and specifically the European Union member states, members of the G7, in addition to Australia, South Korea, Turkey, Norway, New Zealand, Switzerland, China, Taiwan, India, and Iceland.

Virtually none of the countries offering aid when initially given or since have presented the Ukrainian government with a bill of repayment or some sort of quid pro quo for something in return.

Several countries, Poland and other European countries, and the United States have taken into their homes and communities thousands of Ukrainian refugees to shelter them during the trauma of war.

Like former Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimpson, these other countries are also “buying [their] own security” since they know that if Ukraine falls, Putin with feel even more emboldened to continue his quest to return the Russian empire to its former boundaries by gobbling up an ever-increasing amount of territory.

While he has continuously promised and lobbied for a “big beautiful wall” on the U.S. border that “Mexico will pay for,” President Donald Trump has chiseled a potentially fatal crack in Ukraine and NATO states’ defensive wall blocking Russian expansionism.

As the forever apologist of Vladimir Putin, as someone who admires strongman authoritarians who sees himself as a celebrity of royal dimensions, not bothered by Putin’s imperial plans, and, importantly, in his role of Grifter-In-Chief, Donald Trump is calling on the Ukrainian government to return U.S. investment at the 11^th hour in the absence of an initial signed agreement to this effect.

Trump is attempting to embezzle 50% of Ukraine’s valuable rare earth minerals – approximately $500 billion — in exchange for entering into an agreement with the United States and Russia to end the current war, with no promise yet about Ukraine’s territorial integrity or guarantees for its security.

The U.S. donation to Ukraine must be understood as a downpayment on the U.S. not having to send our troops to risk their lives. In addition, most of the money (approximately 70%) earmarked for Ukraine was paid to U.S. producers of war materials, into, in Eisenhower’s terms, “the military industrial complex,” which made enormous profits through international tensions that sometimes lead to war. This money went back into stimulating the U.S. economy.

This pattern follows his first attempted quid pro quo with the Ukrainian leader by threatening to withhold armaments unless President Zelenskyy investigated the son of Trump’s Democratic rival for the U.S. presidency, Joe Biden. This resulted in the House of Representatives impeaching Trump on charges of “abuse of power” and “obstruction of justice,” while the Senate gave him a pass without ever calling a witness.

As Trump has been figuratively stomping his boots into the faces of other marginalized and politically weakened groups, for example, transgender people, undocumented immigrants, and others, Trump is grinding his boot into the very existence of the nation of Ukraine, one that has been seriously weakened by Putin’s war, one that is dependent on the kindness and empathy of other nations for its survival.

Trump smells blood in the water and is going in for the financial kill rather than considering helping Ukraine as the United States aided European countries devastated by World War II in something similar to the Marshall Plan.

The Marshall Plan, also known as the European Recovery Act, was a U.S. program to aid European economic recovery after World War II. Named after Secretary of State George Marshall, President Harry Truman signed the Plan into law on 3 April 1948.

The purpose was to help rebuild Western European economic systems to shore up more stable conditions for democratic governments and to promote world peace. It also provided humanitarian assistance and eventually helped to create markets for U.S. products and brought in dependable trading partners.

If Trump’s appropriation of Ukraine’s resources takes effect, maybe, then, our NATO partners should consider collecting U.S. reimbursement for its coming to the aid of the United States following the dastardly attack on our homeland on 11 September 2021.

Not being a student of history, Trump most likely never learned that the only occasion in which the Collective Defense Article 5 of the NATO treaty has been applied was following the 9/11 terrorist attack.

NATO countries joined the U.S. in going after Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Officials in NATO countries then did not object about who would pay their fair share of the costs and who would not. They had an essential job to perform for their mutual benefit.

While all nations have an obligation to assist in their financial commitment to NATO and to their own militaries, our alliances involve and concern much more than money. When Trump verbally attacks our long-standing and vital alliances while simultaneously imposing rigid tariffs on their products, he jeopardizes the national security interests of the U.S., and emboldens his friend and mentor, Vladimir Putin, to corrupt and eventually topple the liberal world order.

As Trump continues to verbally abuse the nation of Canada and its Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, someone must inform Trump that Canada was one of the top five countries sending troops to fight with the United States in its war with Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks.

Before and throughout his Presidency, Trump’s legacy has been one of grift and embezzlement.

Trump and his company have failed on numerous occasions to pay its contractors for completed work. Donald Trump has been charged with obtaining hundreds of millions of dollars in loans by falsifying financial statements.

In Trump’s quest to maintain wealth within his family, his buddies in Saudi Arabia transferred $2 billion into son-in-law Jared Kushner’s building construction company.

In addition, the Chinese government fast tracked a total of 41 trademarks to companies linked to Ivanka Trump by April of 2019 as documented in a new book by Forbes’ senior editor Dan Alexander titled White House Inc.: How Donald Trump Turned the White House into a Business.

He pulled in money from foreign governments by charging exorbitant prices at this Washington, DC Trump hotel.

And the grifting continues to line the endless subterranean depths of his pockets.