It’s Bob Kustra, not Trump, who betrays Ronald Reagan’s Realpolitik on foreign affairs

 

It’s Bob Kustra, not Trump, who betrays Ronald Reagan’s Realpolitik on foreign affairs

 

In his Chicago Tribune commentary, ‘Donald Trump’s actions against Ukraine betray Ronald Reagan’ former Illinois political leader and current foreign affairs commentator Bob Kustra mis imagines how long deceased President Reagan would react to President Trump’s efforts to end the Ukraine war.

 

Reagan talked tough to the old Soviet Union telling them to “Tear down this (Berlin) wall.” But he negotiated with the Russians on issues of nuclear disarmament and avoiding hot war. When the Soviets shot down Korean Flight 007 killing 269 on September 1, 1983, Reagan howled in protest, then went silent. When 241 US soldiers were killed in the October 23, 1983, Beirut bombing, Reagan didn’t go in for revenge with guns blazing. He pulled out US forces, because he sensibly realized the US had no business there in the first place.  

 

Kustra implies, without stating explicitly, that Reagan would give Ukraine every miliary tool needed to prevail against Russia. Yet the only basis for that is claiming Reagan won the Cold War against the Soviet Union “with sharp ideological rhetoric, military strength and diplomatic skills.” That is an irrelevant word salad that has no connection to the current war in Ukraine. 

Kustra appears oblivious that Ukraine is careening toward collapse which will not be helped by US sanctions whatsoever. Kustra’s claim that Trump’s diesel fuel revenue "will bolster his (Putin’s) struggling war economy” is ludicrous. Biden imposed the ‘mother of all sanctions’ on Russia in February 2022 to achieve victory. Russia simply pivoted east and south, bypassing the West and is doing just fine financing their approaching victory.

 

Kustra follows the scrip of the entire pro Ukraine war clique that Putin is another Hitler: “Putin’s expansionist Russian strategy seems eerily like Adolf Hitler’s advances across Europe and certainly reminiscent of Soviet Russia building an Iron Curtain around Eastern European nations after World War II.” Utter hyperbole, Mr. Kustra.

 

Bob Kustra has no plan for victory over Russia besides sanctions and cancelling the diesel fuel deal. He doesn’t demand we squander another $175 billion in weapons and other aid which has done nothing to keep Ukraine from losing more territory and another million casualties. He doesn’t advocate sending American soldiers to fight alongside the disappearing Ukraine military. He does not advocate threatening Russia with nuclear annihilation if they do not cease hostilities.

 

If Kustra wants to invoke his beloved Ronald Reagan, then he should encourage President Trump to continue his negotiations with both Ukraine President Zelensky and Russian President Putin to end the war at the negotiating table, not on the battlefield. If he could pop in down from Conservative Heaven, that’s precisely what the Gipper would be doing.

 

Walt Zlotow  West Suburban Peace Coalition  Glen Ellyn IL