How to promote freedom, advance U.S. interests, and show strength to Russia
Washington DC, June 29.─ President Trump’s trip to Poland next week is an exceptional opportunity to reassert U.S. leadership and American greatness. In Warsaw Mr. Trump can reaffirm the U.S. commitment to European security by giving Ukraine the weapons it urgently needs to defend itself against Russia’s continuing aggression.
Russia’s violations of the 2015 Minsk II accords grow daily in both number and intensity. Moscow has reconstituted four armies on Ukraine’s borders, rebuilt the Black Sea Fleet, created a powerful antiaccess and area-denial bubble in the Black Sea, militarized Ukrainian energy installations there, and prepared the logistical infrastructure for a major war with Ukraine, including potential amphibious operations in the South. It is building nuclear bunkers in Feodosiia and Sevastopol. The Russian military clearly regards large-scale, protracted conventional war, backed by mounting nuclear threats, to be a real possibility.
Vladimir Putin believes that he is already at war with the West, even if shots are not yet being fired. How else to explain repeated overflights of Europe, close encounters with U.S. and other NATO naval and air forces, election subversion in France, Germany and Holland, massive information-war campaigns throughout Europe that coincide with continued hacking against America’s political system?
Though Mr. Putin occasionally praises Mr. Trump, his actions demonstrate that he is contemptuous of the American president—and of U.S. resolve.
The Obama administration’s strategic dereliction compounded the Russia problem. Mr. Trump’s trip will be closely watched as a sign of his willingness to advance U.S. and European security ...
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