The Next President Should Ignore Trump's Ukraine "Peace Plan"

How come only bad guys get to blow off treaties?

Neville Chamberlain gets a bad rap: We think of him as the doe-eyed naif who got suckered by a tyrant, but he’s really a doe-eyed naif who got suckered by a tyrant. What happened to him happens all the time – the historical examples of leaders blowing off international agreements are too numerous to count. World War I started when the German Chancellor dismissed the treaty that said “No starting a World War I” as “a scrap of paper”; the treaty that supposedly ended the Vietnam War just let the NVA break for lunch before pushing on to Saigon. Often, international agreements are like traffic rules in Boston: violated so egregiously that you wonder why they exist at all.

If Trump strong-arms Ukraine into accepting his “peace plan” – which, in its initial form, would really be a surrender – the next president should not consider themselves bound by that agreement. You might be surprised to hear me say that, since LOLing at a treaty is usually the provenance of dictators, not pointy-headed liberals. But I think it’s time for liberals to wake up and acknowledge the way that treaties are and always have been used.