Trump chaos ‘could hand Putin victory in Ukraine’
Matt Dimmick, a Pentagon veteran, fears the party of Trump will abandon Ukraine or even NATO — and he’s little kinder about Biden
Donald Trump’s re-election would risk handing President Putin victory in Ukraine and wasting the “biggest investment in our national security the US has ever had”, the White House’s former Russia director during his previous administration has warned.
“I’m sure Ronald Reagan is turning in his grave wondering what happened to his party. They seem to be chomping at the bit to hand Russia victory out of the jaws of defeat,” Colonel Matt Dimmick told The Times, as a small but vocal group of Republicans continue to block President Biden’s latest aid package.
Donald Trump’s sympathy for Putin runs so deep he had to be “handcuffed” to protect America “from his own worst instincts” while he was in office, Dimmick said. “He was unable to work with Russia before because of a very heavy sanctions regime from Congress.”
Today’s Congress, hijacked by a handful of hard line conservatives in the House of Representatives, may not provide the same checks and balances. “Trump and his team are so chaotic when it comes to policy generation and views on where national security interests lie and how to get to those objectives, it’s really hard to predict what they will do,” Dimmick said.
He is also fiercely critical of the Biden administration’s policy of drip-feeding weapons into Ukraine, allowing President Zelensky’s forces to defend territory but not giving them an advanced enough armoury to defeat Russia. “It’s abhorrent from a military perspective,” he said. “We certainly would never fight like that. We would never subject our troops to rationing of equipment, or say: ‘Here’s this tool, now prove to us that you’re effective without drawing us into a world war’.”
Ukraine would be in a much stronger position if all the weapons systems the US was providing now had been dispatched at the beginning of the war, he added. “I don’t think the Biden administration has a valid reason for why they’ve drawn this out,” said Dimmick, who is now the Europe program manager at Spirit of America, an NGO that supports US military and diplomatic objectives.
“The only escalators item the Russians have are chemical or nuclear weapons, and that is such a high threshold of risk-taking. I don’t think the administration’s arguments hold water and the Ukrainians are paying the price for that. A lot fewer lives would have been lost and the Russians would not have had time to dig in.”
Dimmick, a career military officer, served as the National Security Council director for Russia in the Trump administration and was previously Russia director at the Pentagon under three consecutive secretaries of defence: Ash Carter, James Mattis and Mark Esper.
Throughout that time, he said, the US military was concerned that Russia’s overarching ambition was to break NATO apart. One of the most likely scenarios they planned for was if President Putin launched a limited incursion across the border of a NATO ally on the Baltic or the Black Sea, occupied a small piece of territory and tested the alliance’s response. “He knows we would have these debates in Congress where some Republicans would say: ‘Are we really going to go to war with Russia over a tiny piece of Estonia?’”
Should Trump be re-elected, that could destroy the alliance that has ensured security in Europe and America for more than half a century. “This is the same president who was seriously contemplating pulling out of NATO. He could say: ‘I didn’t want to be a part of this anyway, we don’t need to risk a nuclear war to support an alliance I was never in favour of’.”
Today the strength and unity of the NATO alliance is being tested in a similar way in Ukraine, he said – and failing to face down Russia would have long-lasting consequences. “If the US just abandons its policy of supporting Ukraine and shuts the taps off completely, that would be an unmitigated disaster.
“Putin will see that when it comes to the West, promises are cheap and we get very tired very fast. He’ll think, if they’re not willing to go to bat for Ukraine in the long term, maybe it’s time to test how willing they are to defend some of their NATO allies on the far-eastern flank.”
Europe would not be able to provide the level of the support the US has offered Ukraine, he said, and delays to arms deliveries caused by the Republicans were already forcing Kyiv to ration the use of its air defence systems, just as Moscow was increasing attacks on its energy infrastructure before winter.
“The real impact will come in the new year if there is no follow-on bill. When it does it will have a significant impact. No more armoured vehicles, no more Patriot missile batteries, none of the high-value items that are protecting Ukrainian cities, infrastructure and frontline troops.”
The potential defeat of Ukraine, after it had received so much western support at the outset, would send a dangerous message to China as it seeks to take over Taiwan, Dimmick added. “If we decide we’re tired, we’re fatigued, it tells China and other adversaries exactly what pain point they have to dial up when they’re contemplating aggression in their neighbourhoods.
“Do we want to send a message to China that when it comes to seizing territory and taking over a neighbouring country, you may get some initial pushback, but you can emerge victorious if you just wait that out?”
Allowing Putin to maintain his hold on Ukrainian territory would embolden him and other authoritarian states to ignore the international order, which would be “the precipitating factor that leads to long costly wars” in future, Dimmick said. “We can almost shut the door on that if we can give Ukraine the tools they need to decisively defeat Russia and take a generation’s worth of equipment and combat power off the table,” he said.
“If we don’t, it opens up the door to a host of more dangerous future contingencies that will make the dollars 50 billion we’re spending on Ukraine look like a drop in the bucket. Not to mention the thousands of casualties, the American blood that would need to be spilled, and the spectre of nuclear war.”
The Times
