Posted on 03/01/2025 2:23:52 AM PST by RoosterRedux
Vance’s role here is electric. Calling Zelensky “disrespectful” wasn’t petulance -- it was a generational torch-passing, a signal that the MAGA vanguard rejects the old GOP’s interventionist dogma. Vance, a Rust Belt warrior, knows the cost of foreign overreach: hollowed-out towns, veterans adrift, families stretched thin. His clash with Zelensky flipped the script. Experience isn’t the issue; principle is. America First doesn’t mean isolation -- it means discernment. Vance and Trump aren’t anti-Ukraine; they’re pro-America, a distinction lost on the warhawk relics clutching their think-tank sinecures.
Yet balance demands we weigh Zelensky’s bind. He’s not wrong that Russia’s word is as brittle as its economy -- Crimea’s annexation and Donbas’s ruin prove it. His fear of a ceasefire ceding ground is real; no leader wants to sign away sovereignty. But his defiance in the Oval Office -- jabbing at Vance, snubbing the minerals deal -- was a miscalculation. Trump thrives on loyalty, a currency Zelensky spent recklessly. Had he played ball, Ukraine might’ve secured a lifeline: mineral revenues to rebuild, U.S. firms as partners, not overlords. Instead, he bet on European guilt and American patience -- both finite resources.
The conservative lens reveals a deeper truth: this clash is a referendum on globalism’s failures. For decades, we’ve been sold a lie -- that America must police the world, that our prosperity hinges on perpetual war. Trump shatters that illusion. His minerals gambit wasn’t greed; it was genius -- a chance to onshore critical supply chains, slashing reliance on China while giving Ukraine a stake in its own salvation. Imagine a future where American factories hum with Ukrainian titanium, not Shenzhen’s scraps. Zelensky’s rejection didn’t just tank a deal; it spurned a vision.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
“Yet balance demands we weigh Zelensky’s bind. He’s not wrong that Russia’s word is as brittle as its economy — Crimea’s annexation and Donbas’s ruin prove it.”
Either that, or Russia looks out for the 10 million Russians that got stranded in Ukraine and were in the process of being driven out, or worse.
“10 million Russians that got stranded in Ukraine”
Zelensky is one of them. Being “Russian” is not the same as wanting to be subjects of Moscow.
Zelensky doesn’t strike me as particularly bright. He seems to be a rigid, linear thinker, unable to grasp Trump’s simple “card” metaphor, let alone the broader abstraction of the mineral deal.
The mineral deal would have secured the U.S. involvement he wanted—without boots on the ground—while making it clear to Putin that American operations would be backed by military force if necessary. On top of that, it would have placed U.S. mineral operations and personnel in DMZs and even in Russian-controlled areas, reinforcing strategic leverage.
It’s shocking that he failed to see the obvious. It might be that he didn’t want to see the obvious.
It might also be that he has no confidence that Trumps plan is going to work. That is full of huge assumptions. And that Ukraine will end up with some futile grasping at that Trumpian straw.
On the other hand he can pecker out a tune on a piano.
So, if he has no such confidence, what are his options?
He relied too much on European who mostly still hold “ideals” that since Putin was at fault, the only acceptable solution to the conflict is to aliniate Putin, defeat Russia in war and punish them. This way of thinking, based on “what should have or ought to” is good, but at one point it has to reconcile with reality. The reality is no way Ukraine win the war even with European help. Surely without the US help. So, at the end, it will simply a perpetual war.
Trump tries to avoid this by oferring a realistic scheme which unfortunately now fall apart.
“Zelensky is one of them. Being “Russian” is not the same as wanting to be subjects of Moscow.”
True, Zelensky was from the Russian part of Ukraine. At this point he probably wishes the borders there were drawn CORRECTLY when the Soviet Union dissolved, as it’s harder to have to fix them later.
He relied too much on European who mostly still hold “ideals” that since Putin was at fault, the only acceptable solution to the conflict is to aliniate Putin, defeat Russia in war and punish them. This way of thinking, based on “what should have or ought to” is good, but at one point it has to reconcile with reality. The reality is no way Ukraine win the war even with European help. Surely without the US help. So, at the end, it will simply be a perpetual war.
Trump tries to avoid this by offering a realistic scheme which unfortunately now fall apart.
Keep fighting. Perhaps the situation will change along the way. When your choice (collectively) is between war and death, then war is better.
Do you recall Solzhenitsyn?
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... “
The Gulag Archipelago
Keep fighting. Perhaps the situation will change along the way. When your choice (collectively) is between war and death, then war is better.
Do you recall Solzhenitsyn?
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... “
The Gulag Archipelago
RTA-——Z’s defiance in the Oval Office — jabbing at Vance,
snubbing the minerals deal — was a colossal miscalculation.
Trump thrives on loyalty, a currency Zelensky spent recklessly.
Had Z played ball, Ukraine might’ve secured a lifeline:
<><>mineral revenues to rebuild,
<><>U.S. firms as partners, not overlords.
<><>but he bet on European guilt and American patience — both finite resources.
Here’s a novel idea.
Trump should amend the mineral deal to include a requirement that Zelensky step down.
Though this may seem outrageous, it directly responds to Zelensky’s apparent refusal to negotiate for peace—something confirmed by Trump, Vance, and even Zelensky himself yesterday.
And while unprecedented and potentially controversial, simply offering a deal with conditions—even one requiring Zelensky’s resignation—is not interference in Ukraine’s domestic affairs. Ukraine would retain full sovereignty to accept or reject it.
Something else... Z was scared. He is in fear of his existence. Win, lose or draw, his time in control is limited. Perhaps he thinks he can broker a deal where he can remail in power as a strongman and he might have gotten such a deal under Biden or Kamala.
The American gravy train is dried up, even the rare mineral deal wouldn’t bring him in the cash he would need to hold power in one of the most corrupt governments in the west.
He is toast.
remail = remain
Trump’s approach:
Zelensky can't do that without U.S. support and Trump has said that isn't going to happen.
Without the U.S., Russia will end this thing.
Go fight.
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