Warning to Trump: Putin is not your friend

Trusting Russia's autocrat Vladimir Putin on Ukraine or anything of any significance to him is like trusting his role model, Joseph Stalin.

Life under Stalin-imposed communism in Poland and years of news reporting have taught me that any trust put in the ex-KGB spy currently calling the shots in the Kremlin is going to end badly for President-elect Trump, Vice President-elect Vance, the Republican Party and the American people. 

Consider what President Franklin Roosevelt's naive trust in Stalin did to millions of East Europeans who lost their lives or spent decades in fear and poverty under communism after FDR had sold them down the river to the Soviet dictator. 

The Yalta Agreement he signed in 1944 with Stalin failed to bring lasting peace as FDR had naively hoped it would. Russia and communist China initiated proxy wars with the U.S. in Korea and Vietnam, in which tens of thousands of Americans were to lose their lives. At the same time, the Red Army brutally suppressed anti-Soviet uprisings in East Germany and Hungary and the peaceful Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia. 

Putin, who had served the brutal Soviet regime as a spy, knows how to manipulate naive leaders, journalists, and ordinary citizens of Western nations. He learned his craft from his KGB spymasters, who learned it from Lenin and Stalin. It is indeed puzzling why some conservative Republicans allowed themselves to be deceived by Russian propaganda that this ex-communist spy is now a reborn Christian who wants nothing but peace and good relations with the U.S.

Soviet dictators knew that lying and blackmail gave them a significant advantage over the West. They also knew that Westerners craving money and fame or being blinded by ideology could easily be bought and duped.

Grateful for helping him hide his responsibility for the Katyn massacre, in which thousands of captured Polish military officers were massacred during World War II, Stalin gave as gifts two cavalry horses to FDR's wartime ambassador to Moscow, W. Averell Harriman, and his daughter, Kathleen, who freelanced for the U.S. government as a journalist. Earlier, the Soviet secret police had corrupted Pulitzer Prize New York Times Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty and several of his Western colleagues to get them to deny that millions of Ukrainians had starved to death in the early 1930s after the Bolsheviks took their farms. 

I understand why Trump does not like wars. Most Americans want peace between Russia and Ukraine. But if the U.S. forces Ukraine to capitulate to Putin's demands, it will only give him time to rebuild his army to launch more low-scale aggressive wars. They will not amount to World War III Armageddon, as he likes to bluff. Putin is not such a great fool as to attack any NATO country, now or in the future. But he will continue his hybrid war against the U.S. using his Iranian and Hamas allies and employing other means to divide and weaken the West.

The good news is that dictators come and go. When Mikhail Gorbachev emerged in the old USSR, Margaret Thatcher and President Reagan decided they could "do business" with him. Still, even then, Reagan said, "Trust but Verify." Before negotiating, he called Russia "The Evil Empire" and demanded, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." 

Putin is no Gorbachev. There is no way to verify his promises. Trusting Putin, Trump risks a repetition of President Obama's "2009 Reset with Russia," which rewarded Putin's grab of Georgia's border regions in 2008. Ignoring warnings from East European anti-Soviet resistance leaders Lech Wałęsa and Václav Havel, Obama wanted to be conciliatory and generous. Putin repaid him by invading and annexing Crimea in 2014.

For now, the heavy toll of war on ordinary Ukrainians and Russians continues. If there is to be peace, only the Ukrainian people can decide the terms of any agreement with Russia. Otherwise, it would be a betrayal of the brave Ukrainians who are making heroic sacrifices to defend their country. An American capitulation to Putin would also betray Poland, the Baltic States, the Czech Republic and other loyal NATO allies. 

Suppose President-Elect Trump's future administration tries to reach a deal with Putin without Ukraine's approval, as FDR did with Stalin without agreement from the people of Poland and other East-Central European nations. If that happens, most Americans will see a betrayal of American values and sooner or later punish the Republican Party at the polls just as American voters of East European extraction punished the Democrats when FDR's Yalta sellout became widely known. 

In his speech in Warsaw in July 2017, near the beginning of his first term, Trump talked about the 1939 deal between Hitler and Stalin that led to the outbreak of World War II and the division of Poland between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. He also mentioned how Stalin ordered the Red Army to stop its advance in August 1944 so that the Germans could exterminate Polish leaders and soldiers fighting in the anti-Nazi Warsaw Uprising. 

Putin will behave like Stalin. Just as FDR's faith in Stalin did not turn out well for the Democrats and the free world, giving in to Putin's imperial ambitions would not only be bad for Trump and the Republican Party. It would also destroy the international order, weaken the U.S. and strengthen Russia and China. 

Ted Lipien was chief of Voice of America's Polish service during Poland's successful struggle for democracy. He later served as VOA's acting associate director and president of Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty.