In a recent speech, Mike Pompeo dismissed the possibility that Ukraine–Russia negotiations could bring about a durable peace.
The former secretary of state dismissed the possibility that negotiations could bring about a durable peace.
M ike Pompeo called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a “planned genocide” akin to the mass starvation in the country nearly a century ago and dismissed the idea that the war could be ended through negotiations with Vladimir Putin, calling instead for a robust effort to propel Ukraine to decisive victory.
He made the comments in an address delivered at a closed-door Hudson Institute event on Wednesday, a recording of which will be made public later this morning.
His goal, he said, was to explain why Americans should view robust U.S. assistance to Ukraine as consistent with the national interest: because aiding Ukraine’s war effort would deter a Russian attack on a NATO state that would bring in the U.S., prevent Russia from consolidating its dominance over the global energy supply, and undermine a fast-solidifying “Russian-Chinese axis bent on exerting miliary and economic hegemony.”
One of Putin’s central aims in this military campaign, Pompeo said, is to reconstitute the Soviet empire — which is served by eliminating Ukraine as a country and as a people.
“Putin’s illegal, assaultive war represents a planned genocide, which is the deliberate obliteration of a people, as defined in 1948 by the United Nations,” he said, according to a copy of his prepared remarks shared with National Review. “Though each genocide is unique, they are absolute to the individual.”
“This genocide, like the Holodomor engineered by Stalin that murdered millions of Ukrainians, must be named to be fought,” he continued.
The U.N. criteria for genocide stipulates that an entity is carrying out the destruction of a specific group, in whole or in part, through killings and other acts, including those intended to lead to the “physical destruction” of a group.
The discovery of corpses strewn across the Kyiv suburb of Bucha in April touched off an international debate about whether Russia’s mass murder of Ukrainians amounted to genocide. Pompeo’s use of the word echoes both President Biden and Donald Trump, who each used it in comments after Bucha (though the White House later said that Biden’s comments didn’t reflect an official determination).
The destruction inflicted on the Ukrainian population by Putin, including the Bucha killings and a missile attack that killed 50 people at a train station in the city of Kramatorsk, Pompeo added, proved the futility of seeking a negotiated settlement to the war.
“America and the nations of the world cannot continue the pretense that the war in Ukraine can end in a negotiated peace, which mollifies Russia, for such a peace cannot be negotiated with Putin.” He added, “Ukraine must win this war decisively if it is to realize peace, independence, and freedom.”
Pompeo also said that to ensure African countries, which receive some 40 percent of their food supply from Ukraine, don’t starve, the international community must consider using naval convoys to protect outbound Ukrainian grain exports from Russian attacks.
The former secretary of state and potential 2024 presidential contender called for continued U.S. shipments of the “most capable conventional weapons” to Ukraine. In addition to “an unending supply of ordnance,” he wants to transfer U.S. Abrams tanks, currently in storage, to Ukraine, as well as Patriot air-defense systems.
The war in Ukraine also has sweeping implications for the U.S. posture in Asia, he argued, calling for “strategic clarity: “We must prevent the formation of a pan-Eurasian colossus, incorporating Russia but led by China.”
He added that these intertwined challenges necessitate the “swift ascension” of Finland and Sweden to NATO membership and that Washington should create a new global network centered around “three lighthouses for liberty.”
“Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan can be the hubs of a new security architecture that links alliances of free nations globally, reinforcing the strengths of each member state. In time, linking these bastions with NATO, as well as the new and expanded security framework for the Indo-Pacific, will form a global alliance for freedom.”