What The US Is Doing To Ukraine Is Far Worse Than Yalta
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Yalta Conference
15 min read
The article centers on comparing Trump's Ukraine policy to FDR's actions at Yalta. Deep understanding of the actual conference proceedings, agreements, and participants would provide essential historical context for evaluating the author's argument.
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Provisional Government of National Unity
12 min read
The article discusses the 'Lublin government' that Stalin installed in Poland. This Wikipedia article covers the specific political entity and the transition from the Soviet-backed provisional government, which is central to understanding what FDR was negotiating about.
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Western betrayal
15 min read
The article invokes the concept of democratic nations being 'sold out' to totalitarian rule. This Wikipedia article covers the broader historical pattern and perception in Central and Eastern Europe of Western powers abandoning smaller nations to Soviet domination, providing context for the 'betrayal narrative' the author references.
Hi All,
If history does not exactly repeat itself (and it does not) then it does often rhyme. What we are seeing from the Trump administration is unprecedented in its betrayal of Ukraine. The US is now acting like an agent of Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship in bullying democratic Ukraine to surrender parts of it territory, a wealth of natural resources and millions of its people to Putin’s brutal rule. The USA is not negotiating between Ukraine and Russia, it is putting enormous pressure on Ukraine to agree to a deal that might appeal to Putin. This is what I mean when I say that the US is now the enemy of freedom. It wants to strengthen dictatorships at the expense of democracies.
However there are some interesting historical comparisons that people are making—the rhymes as it were. The one most commonly thrown around in US history is Franklin Roosevelt at Yalta. In this case the US supposedly accepted the expansion of brutal totalitarian rule over countries that wished to be their allies. Aha, we are told, Trump is nothing new. The USA has in the past sold out possible allies into dictatorial rule.
Btw, before Donald Trump took over the Republican Party, you could reliably expect to hear any Democratic attempt to reach a compromise deal described by Republicans as a potential sell-out of the type Franklin Roosevelt supposedly did at the Yalta Conference (February 4-11, 1945). Ronald Reagan, for example, was a constant critic of Roosevelt’s actions at Yalta, with examples ranging from the 1950s through his two terms in office.
The widely shared Republican critique was that the Roosevelt too easily trusted Stalin, deferred to the USSR and as a result consigned half of Europe to totalitarian rule for generations.
So it is rather bitterly ironic today that it is the GOP, after decades of attacking FDR for “betraying” Poland, that is using all of America’s might to betray and weaken a democratic Ukraine. That being said, what Trump is doing is far far worse than anything FDR was accused of. To understand just how large the differences are, I will start with a short primer on Yalta and FDR.
Roosevelt and Yalta
What happened factually at Yalta is actually not an area of disagreement.
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