Witkoff Proposes Giving ‘NATO-Like Guarantees’ to Ukraine

Give Steven Witkoff some credit. When the man starts negotiating, we end up with not only the worst possible deal in the world, but a self-defeating one that drugs us into the middle of a war, and does everything that we never wanted to do in the first place.

After Witkoff’s triumphs in Gaza, we’re stuck with rebuilding Gaza, meditating between Israel and Hamas, and trying to create a ‘Palestinian’ state.

Little surprise really because Witkoff admitted that he just picked up where the Biden team left off.

Now, Witkoff appears to be trying to pull off an even worse disaster in Ukraine.

The U.S. is offering Ukraine security guarantees similar to those it would receive as part of NATO, American officials said Monday.

The proposal of so-called Article 5-like guarantees comes amid marathon talks among special envoy Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner and Ukrainian and European officials in Berlin as Washington tries to pressure Kyiv into accepting terms that will end the war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and many European leaders have been reluctant to reach a deal without an explicit U.S. security guarantee, fearful that Russia, after a period of time, would attack again.

“The basis of that agreement is basically to have really, really strong guarantees, Article 5-like,” a senior U.S. official said. “Those guarantees will not be on the table forever. Those guarantees are on the table right now if there’s a conclusion that’s reached in a good way.”

This is lunacy.

There are some out there who believe that Russia invaded Ukraine because we ‘provoked’ Putin with NATO expansion into Eastern Europe. (That’s putting the chicken before the egg since Eastern European countries wanted into NATO because they feared, understandably after centuries of history, that Russia would invade them.) Now if you believe that, handing Ukraine NATO guarantees is pouring oil on the fire.

But forget that. Given the opportunity, Russia will invade Ukraine again. If you know anything about Putin, Russian history and the region, you know it’s coming. Especially if it gets a favorable territorial settlement this time around.

Handing over NATO-like security guarantees to Ukraine means we’ll be in the middle of it next time around.

And the insane part of this is that, much like Gaza, this is completely unnecessary because we do not need to make peace.

There is zero obligation for us to be involved, let alone to try and push Russia and Ukraine into a settlement that neither side wants and that will just set the stage for the next war.

Understanding that is actual realpolitik. Instead of realpolitik, we get real estate tycoons playing ‘let’s make a deal’ in conflicts and cultures they have no understanding of.

We don’t need to be involved in this war. If we want to support Ukraine, we can dispense weapons. If we don’t, we can let the Euros do it. If we want to get involved though, then we had better have a plan to win.

Witkoff’s latest disaster is the worst of every possible world, handing Russia a victory and then lining us up to be on the front line of the next Russia-Ukraine war.

This makes Witkoff’s Gaza disaster almost look good by comparison.

I know that there are folks in the administration who want some sort of Christmas peace stunt announcement. How about just having a nice Christmas tree out front and not getting the United States into a war with Russia 5 years from now when Trump is out of office and Newsom or someone even worse is at the wheel and half the military has been reassigned to put up solar panels.

The Trump administration handed Article V protection to Qatar, an Islamic terror state that is tied to half the terrorist groups in the world, obligating us to defend them if any of their victims fight back. Now we’ve moved on to Article V like (whatever that means) protection for Ukraine. The plan to end the Ukraine war, which we’re not fighting, is to have us fight the next one.