Why America (and New Zealand) Should Be on Ukraine's Side and Not Putin's Side, explained in 8 minutes.

 

'A Day of American Infamy' [update 2]

"In August 1941, about four months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt met with Winston Churchill aboard warships in Newfoundland’s Placentia Bay and agreed to the Atlantic Charter, a joint declaration by the world’s leading democratic powers on 'common principles' for a postwar world. ...
    "The Charter, and the alliance that came of it [including the supply of military equipment to Britain by Lend-Lease] is a high point of American statesmanship. On Friday in the Oval Office, the world witnessed the opposite. Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s embattled democratic leader, came to Washington prepared to sign away anything he could offer President Trump except his nation’s freedom, security and common sense. For that, he was rewarded with a lecture on manners from the most mendacious vulgarian and ungracious host ever to inhabit the White House.
    "If Roosevelt had told Churchill to sue for peace on any terms with Adolf Hitler and to fork over Britain’s coal reserves to the United States in exchange for no American security guarantees, it might have approximated what Trump did to Zelensky. Whatever one might say about how Zelensky played his cards poorly — either by failing to behave with the degree of all-fours sycophancy that Trump demands or to maintain his composure in the face of JD Vance’s disingenuous provocations — this was a day of American infamy.
    "Where do we go from here?"

~ Bret Stephens from his editorial 'A Day of American Infamy 

PICS: Bottom, war leader Winston Churchill at the White House 3 January 1942, wearing his air-raid suit (Imperial War Museum); top, a war leader at the White House with two thugs (Getty Images) 

UPDATE 1: 

"What does seem clear is that Trump is putting an end to the foreign policy the United States has pursued since the end of World War II. Indeed, his worldview seems to rest on two assumptions that run directly counter to the way in which, for all the serious differences between them, every president since 1945 has thought about America’s role in the world.
    
"The first is that Trump has a fundamentally zero-sum view of the world. America’s relationship with allies like Japan or the United Kingdom has been based on the assumption that both sides would benefit from the partnership. In particular, America would provide its allies with a security guarantee; in return, it would enjoy international stability, reap the benefits of free trade, and have huge sway over the rules governing the world order. Even if the United States might be a net contributor in the short run, expending more for its military budget than its partners, these alliances would over the long run serve the country’s 'enlightened self-interest.'

"Trump, by contrast, seems to believe that every deal has a winner and a loser; since American allies in Europe or East Asia are not unhappy about the current arrangements, this must mean that it is his nation that’s the sucker. ...

"The second assumption shaping Trump’s foreign policy is his belief that spheres of influence are the natural, and perhaps even the morally appropriate, way to organise international relations. ... [and] that maintaining an alliance structure that ignores spheres of influence is naive, needlessly costly, and fundamentally sentimental. ...

"Panama and Greenland are in America’s sphere of influence, and so Trump believes that he is entitled to make outrageous demands on them. Conversely, he seems to regard Ukraine as falling into Russia’s natural sphere of influence ...

"If Trump gets his way, the world will become much more transactional. America’s erstwhile allies in the western hemisphere will either need to learn to stand on their own feet or to pay financial tribute to their protector. Those which happen to be located in the vicinity of the world’s most powerful authoritarian countries will need to accommodate themselves to the diktat of Beijing or Moscow ..."

~ Yascha Mounk from his post 'Help Me Understand... The New World Order'

UPDATE 2:

"In light of the events of the past week [which includes the US siding with Russia and North Korea on a UN resolution condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and a three-ship Chinese naval circumnavigation of Australia], the Washington faction of NZ's Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade faces a new and major problem. ...

    "President Donald Trump’s affection for dictatorial regimes; the brutality of his transactional approach to international affairs; and his apparent repudiation of the 'rules-based international order' in favour of cold-eyed realpolitik; makes it difficult for America (and its increasingly apprehensive allies) to retain their footing on the moral high-ground.
    "It is difficult [therefore] to criticise the transactional elements of the relationships forged between China and the micro-states of the Pacific – the Cook Islands being only the latest in a succession of Chinese-initiated bilateral agreements negotiated in New Zealand’s 'back yard' – when the United States is demanding half of Ukraine’s rare earths in part-payment for the American munitions supplied to counter Russian aggression.
    "What those three Chinese warships have produced, however, is a much more compelling argument for aligning New Zealand’s defensive posture in general and its military procurement in particular with Australia’s. In the much colder and more brutal world that is fast emerging from the collapse of the 80-year-old Pax Americana, only the Australians can be relied upon to protect us – and only then if they are satisfied that the Kiwis are pulling their weight."

 ~Chris Trotter from his post 'What Are We Defending?'

AUKUS: "NZ indeed is missing out on a guarantee of security, which given the limited firepower of its armed forces some would suggest leaves it without any protection."

"Thomas Nash, co-director of the independent think-tank, New Zealand Alternative ... says many of the opinion writers [decrying NZ's exclusion from AUKUS] appear to prioritise a militarist worldview but he contends if we are to enjoy a peaceful future, we should do the exact opposite 'and forge closer relations that share our anti-nuclear values.' NZ [he says] should resist pressure to fall into line with the military power of the US, the UK and Australia. Instead of focusing our diplomatic and security efforts on the Five Eyes, he argues, we should strengthen our relationships in Asean countries, Latin America, and in our neighbouring nuclear-free Pacific Islands.
    "Among those who might not agree with Nash are the NZ cricketers who stepped away from a potential terrorist threat in Pakistan, just weeks ago, thanks to a timely warning through a Five Eyes channel.
    "That incident underlined how valuable it is for NZ to belong to that particular arrangement and receive critical intelligence when it discloses threats to New Zealanders’ security....
    "In not being invited to even consider membership of AUKUS, NZ might have been written off, not just by the US, but by the countries which it fought alongside in the world wars of last century.
    "NZ indeed is missing out on a guarantee of security, which given the limited firepower of its armed forces some would suggest leaves it without any protection.
    "Additionally it is accepting being locked out from the agreement of the three countries to share their most sensitive technology. As The Economist noted in an editorial last week:

'The three countries’ co-operation promises to embrace cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and more besides.... 

    '[AUKUS’ true significance however is] a step towards a new balance of power in the Pacific…. It is a decades long commitment and a deep one.... At least eight nuclear submarines suggests a contract value in the tens of billions of dollars. As a strategic shift it is even bigger. The pact is America’s most dramatic and determined move yet to counter what it and others in the Indo-Pacific region see as a growing threat from China.'

"As Point of Order noted earlier this week, no-one in Wellington yet grasps the full impact of the AUKUS deal."

~ Point of Order, from their post 'AUKUS – it’s all very well expressing our moral repugnance but that won’t halt China’s bullying'