Friday, November 6, 2026
Nearing the close of World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt, Great Britain’s prime minister, Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin met at Yalta to divide the postwar world into spheres of influence. FDR’s and Churchill’s intent was to create a structure whereby countries that had been invaded by German dictator Adolf Hitler would regain their independence, and the major powers would prevent future invasions of sovereign nations.
Their hopes were dashed almost immediately, as Stalin established Soviet rule over Eastern Europe, creating what Churchill would label the Iron Curtain. One tyranny had been replaced by another. FDR died soon after Yalta. His successor, Harry S. Truman, a traditional Democrat, realized that America could not afford to be isolationist and delude itself into believing that wars in Europe would not impact America, and took strong action to counter the Soviets.
Truman also realized that the Soviet Union, like Germany, was too powerful for individual European nations to withstand. There had to be a unified effort, with America in the lead. Thus was born the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which, whatever its faults, has proved to be the most effective military alliance and deterrent force in history, preventing any invasion by any European nation against another for almost eight decades.
Fortunately, the Republican leaders at the time discarded isolationism and forged a bipartisan foreign policy, which, in addition to NATO, supported aid to Greece and Turkey as well as the Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe. This would eventually lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the entrance into NATO of the captive nations that had been subjugated to Soviet rule.
But Vladimir Putin, who assumed control of a diminished but still nuclear-armed Russia in the late 1990s, retained the Soviet goals of weakening NATO and expanding Russian influence and power into those former captive nations. Putin’s goals, unfortunately, coincided with a resurgence of American support for isolationism. Putin invaded sovereign, independent Ukraine in 2022, which was clearly reminiscent of Hitler’s aggression in the 1930s.
Russia’s invasion was met by heroic resistance from Ukraine and leadership from its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, which in turn was reminiscent of Churchill and the British people in the early days of World War II. Fortunately, the U.S., under President Biden’s leadership, allied with Europe and imposed severe economic sanctions on Russia while aiding Ukraine with military supplies and armaments. That enabled Ukrainian forces to inflict more than a million Russian casualties and halt Russian advances.
Unfortunately, with the war now stalemated on the battlefield and Russia’s economy shattered, President Trump has reversed American policy and leaned toward isolationism and enabling Putin by reducing military aid to Ukraine, lifting Russian sanctions, blaming Zelensky for causing the war and calling for his removal as president. All this while Russia continues rocket and missile attacks on innocent civilians in Ukraine, which has accepted the American peace proposals that Putin has rejected.
In a reversal of form, though, Europe has stood strong with Ukraine, providing it with almost twice as much aid as the U.S. It has done all this while Trump wages verbal and diplomatic war with NATO and member nations including Great Britain, Denmark and Italy as well as the pope. Trump is now reportedly considering a summit meeting in Asia with Putin and China’s dictator, Xi Jinping — but without Zelensky — to determine Ukraine’s fate.
This is eerily reminiscent of Yalta, where, without the participation of their leaders, Eastern European countries had their fates determined based on misguided trust in Stalin’s good faith — much as Trump now expresses faith in Putin. The philosopher George Santayana warned that those who fail to learn from the mistakes of the past will be condemned to repeat them. Let us pray that Trump heeds that warning.
Peter King is a former congressman, and a former chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security. Comments? pking@ liherald.com.
