A version of this story appeared in the daily Threat Status newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive Threat Status delivered directly to your inbox each weekday.
OPINION:
President Trump now sees Vladimir Putin through clearer eyes. I suspect first lady Melania Trump deserves much of the credit.
As Mr. Trump has recounted, after phone conversations with Russia’s longtime ruler, he would tell the first lady, “You know, I spoke to Vladimir today. We had a wonderful conversation.” She would reply, “Oh, really? Another city was just hit.”
Among the Ukrainian cities Mr. Putin has hit with missiles and drones after such conversations: Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro and Odesa. Among Mr. Putin’s targets: kindergartens, hospitals, schools and residential apartment buildings.
It should come as no surprise that Mrs. Trump, nee Melanija Knavs, born in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, was not fooled by Mr. Putin, a former KGB lieutenant colonel who cries no salty tears over death tolls — Ukrainian or Russian.
Yugoslavia means “Land of the South Slavs.” Yet despite their shared historical, linguistic and cultural roots, Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, Macedonians, Montenegrins and Slovenes never really shared a national identity. Josip Broz Tito, the most effective anti-Nazi resistance leader during World War II, held them together from the end of that conflict until his death in 1980.
After that, no one, and certainly no variant of communist ideology, could keep the country from breaking apart.
Similarly, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was never a real union. When it collapsed in 1991, its 15 “constituent republics” — never real republics — became independent nation-states.
Mr. Putin, however, sees Russia as more than a nation-state. He sees it as an empire, and he’s not wrong.
You may not think of Russia that way because its conquests of others took place on foot rather than by ship.
Its non-Russian colonial possessions include Chechnya, Tatarstan, Dagestan, Tuva Republic, Chuvashia, Bashkortostan, North Ossetia-Alania, Udmurtia, Buryatia and Sakha Republic.
Though those Russian colonies stretch over 11 time zones, the Russian empire hasn’t been as small as it is today since the Russian civil war, which began with the toppling of Czar Nicholas II in 1917 and ended with the formation of the USSR in 1922.
After World War II, Josef Stalin turned the nations of Eastern and Central Europe into satellites, making the Soviet empire larger than the Russian empire had ever been.
Making Russia great again — “great” in the literal sense of “big” — is Mr. Putin’s mission and obsession.
He is determined to conquer those who resist subjugation, the Ukrainians highest on his list as he made clear in a 2021 essay titled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.”
Ukrainians are fighting to maintain their independence, to remain citizens of a free nation and to avoid becoming subjects of a new czar in the Kremlin.
They also remember all too vividly that, in the 1930s, Stalin imposed a famine, the Holodomor, that killed millions of Ukrainians as punishment for their farmers’ resistance to socialist collectivization.
Today, Mr. Putin erects monuments to Stalin.
He also has turned Belarus into a vassal state under the unpopular dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko.
In 2008, he seized two territories in Georgia — Abkhazia and South Ossetia — and he is increasingly manipulating Georgia’s government.
He is attempting to do something similar in Moldova using aggressive influence operations, and he is threatening Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — nations the U.S. never recognized as Soviet possessions and that are now NATO members.
Finland and Sweden recently joined NATO, less out of solidarity with Ukraine than out of fear of becoming Mr. Putin’s next targets.
This brings us to the decisions Mr. Trump is now pondering.
He has warned Mr. Putin that if he does not agree to a ceasefire by Friday, the U.S. will use sanctions to cut off funding for his war machine. In addition, Mr. Trump has begun supplying more weapons to Ukraine, paid for by our NATO allies.
A “peace through strength” approach must include not just air defense systems but also long-range missiles and permission to use them to strike military targets deep inside Russia.
President Biden was unwilling to give such permission for fear of “provoking” Mr. Putin.
Last month, Mr. Putin launched a staggering 6,443 drones and missiles into Ukraine, the highest monthly total since the war began in February 2022 and nearly 13% more than in June.
His bombardment of Kyiv on Thursday killed more than 30 civilians, including four children. Mr. Trump called this “disgusting” and “a disgrace.”
Dmitry Medvedev, a former president of Russia and Mr. Putin’s lapdog-cum-attack dog, has been threatening that his boss might decide to launch a few nukes at America.
On Friday, Mr. Trump announced that he was repositioning two nuclear submarines to “appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than that.”
Those arguing for the U.S. to cave to Russian nuclear blackmail need to understand that the rulers of communist China and North Korea are quick learners.
Last week, the McCain Institute’s Russia task force released a report containing a long list of policy recommendations. Among them: that Russia’s $300 billion of sovereign assets abroad (mostly in Europe) “be used to arm and rebuild Ukraine.” Coordinated by Daniel Twining, president of the International Republican Institute, the task force comprises 22 national security professionals. (I’m one of them.)
The report emphasizes that Russia is a member of an “axis of aggressors” led by Beijing, with Tehran and North Korea as junior partners. All three are supporting Mr. Putin’s war of conquest in meaningful ways.
Right now, the key question is this: Will Mr. Trump do what it takes to persuade Mr. Putin to recalculate the costs and benefits of continuing to slaughter Ukrainians in pursuit of imperial restoration?
You know who might be able to make an educated guess? First lady Melania Trump.
• Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a columnist for The Washington Times and host of the “Foreign Podicy” podcast.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.