US President Donald Trump and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky. Discover how the Ukraine conflict challenges US foreign policy and what it means for America's future.
Image: SAUL LOEB / AFP
By Armstrong Williams
The iron law of international relations was expressed two thousand years ago by Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
Will Rogers voiced the same sentiment in describing the art of diplomacy as saying “’nice doggie’” until you find a rock.” Everything else is choreography.
The Sermon on the Mount was a bravura performance for peace. But what has it accomplished? War-the legalisation of first-degree murder-remains mankind’s worst, incorrigible scourge.
President Donald Trump recognises that he was elected President of the United States, not President of the world.
He instinctively is inclined towards the wisdom of President George Washington’s Farewell Address, i.e., no entangling alliances, no permanent friends, no permanent enemies.
He instinctively embraces the foreign policy articulated by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams in his landmark July 4, 1821, address to Congress: eschew racing abroad in search of monsters to destroy, as we did in squandering trillions of dollars and countless lives in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, among other misadventures.
He intuitively acknowledges the prescience of Senator Henry Clay in nixing United States intervention in defence of the 1848-1849 Hungarian Revolution suppressed by the Russian army:
“Far better is it for ourselves, for Hungary, and for the cause of liberty that, adhering to our wise, pacific system, and avoiding the distant wars of Europe, we should keep our lamp burning brightly on this western shore as a light to all nations, than to hazard its utter extinction amid the ruins of fallen or falling republics in Europe.”
(From left) Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Discover how the Ukraine conflict challenges US foreign policy and what it means for America's future.
Image: AFP
President Trump’s skepticism of the United States in NATO is more than amply justified.
Much ink has been spilt over the pyrotechnics in the February 28, 2025, Oval Office meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Trump.
It was a magnificent theater. But it clouded the question that has never been answered since Russia attacked Ukraine on February 22, 2022, more than three years ago: why should the United States become involved?
Russia is no existential threat to the United States. Vietnam discredited the domino theory, i.e., that if Russia is not rebuffed in Ukraine, then NATO members will be next in the queue.
Indeed, history teaches that if Russia occupies Ukraine, it will be bogged down with chronic insurrections and staggering occupation costs which would lessen its threat to NATO.
The experience of the Soviet Union in Central and Eastern Europe during the Cold War putting down recurring uprisings in East Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia is convincing.
The United States has wasted nearly $200 billion on Ukraine since the Russian invasion. That money would have been better spent on the Constitution’s foreign policy of invincible self-defence or on paying off our staggering $36 trillion national debt.
To continue to fund Ukraine’s war in exchange for rare earth metals would make us indistinguishable from mercenaries like the Hessians who fought for the British against the American Revolution.
If Europe feels threatened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europe should foot the bill of Ukraine’s defence.
Every country in the world acts in its self-interest.
The United States should not uniquely be in the business of philanthropy. Not a single American has lost a wink of sleep worrying about the Russian-Ukraine war.
Citizens know better than the multi-trillion-dollar military-industrial-security complex with a vested interest in the war’s continuation to sell more weapons.
Detractors of President Trump’s resistance to military support for Ukraine sermonise that Russia’s invasion violated international law. True enough. But international law is like a spider’s web.
It snares the weak but is thrashed by the strong. It is nothing but a euphemism for the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.
The United States 2003 invasion of Iraq and 2011 destruction of Libya also flouted international law.
United States General Curtis LeMay reportedly said: “If we lost [World War II], we would have all been prosecuted as war criminals,’ including for the firebombing of Tokyo incinerating civilians.
The wisest and cost-free influence of the United States abroad is the influence of example.
By practicing government by the consent of the governed, honouring unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and celebrating the rule of law, we would inspire people in other countries to do likewise or to pursue legal immigration to America.
That would mark our finest foreign policy hour.
Armstrong Williams
Image: IOL
* Armstrong Williams is an American political commentator, entrepreneur, author, and talk show host. Williams writes a nationally syndicated newspaper column, has hosted a daily radio show, and hosts a nationally syndicated television program called The Armstrong Williams Show.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.
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