25 April, 18:29
Donald Trump's Rhetoric as a Threat to American Political Foundations and International Law
In April 2025, former U.S. President Donald J. Trump publicly suggested that Crimea should "remain part of Russia" as part of a peace settlement for the war in Ukraine. This proposal does not merely represent a controversial opinion—it signifies a potential shift in American foreign policy away from its foundational principles and toward a model that validates international aggression and authoritarian logic.
Trump's justification for this position included the following statements:
“They speak Russian in Crimea.”
“The war started because Ukraine wanted to join NATO.”
“If I had been president, Crimea wouldn’t have been taken from Ukraine.”
These assertions merit a critical examination in the context of international law, historical precedent, and U.S. political philosophy.
Linguistic Justifications as a Mask for Aggression
Claiming a right to annex territory based on the language spoken by its population is a well-documented strategy of 20th-century authoritarian regimes. The most notable historical analogy is the annexation of Austria (Anschluss) by Nazi Germany in 1938, followed by the occupation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia—both justified by the presence of ethnic German communities.
International law does not recognize language as a valid basis for changing state borders. On the contrary, Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state [1].
In this light, Trump's statement not only contradicts the international legal order established after World War II, but aligns the United States with revisionist powers seeking to rewrite borders by force.
NATO as "Provocation": A Reversal of Responsibility
Trump's assertion that Ukraine’s aspiration to join NATO “provoked” the Russian invasion directly contradicts Article 51 of the UN Charter, which enshrines the right of sovereign nations to self-defense, and the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty, which affirms the voluntary nature of NATO membership.
To imply that seeking security guarantees is an act of provocation while waging war is a legitimate response, reverses the roles of aggressor and victim. It delegitimizes collective security frameworks and undermines the basic logic of deterrence and alliance-based peace.
Such reasoning effectively enables totalitarian regimes to define security arrangements in neighboring democracies as existential threats, thereby institutionalizing the logic of preemptive violence.
Ideological Erosion and the Internal Threat
What Trump promotes as a “peace plan” is, in effect, an institutionalized capitulation. It offers recognition of aggression in exchange for an illusory calm. This position not only legitimizes a war crime—the annexation of sovereign territory—but also erodes the moral and political fabric of American democratic identity.
By doing so, Trump departs from the political philosophy of the U.S. Founding Fathers and their successors:
George Washington warned against entanglements with autocracies and foreign manipulation [2].
Thomas Jefferson emphasized that freedom cannot exist without access to truthful information [3].
Abraham Lincoln proclaimed that government must be “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
Theodore Roosevelt believed patriotism meant placing the nation above personal ambition.
Trump’s rhetoric inverts these principles. He treats admiration for autocrats as pragmatism, considers critical media a threat, questions the legitimacy of elections, and replaces national interest with personal glorification.
Conclusion
These are not abstract concerns. They represent a real possibility of regression in American foreign policy, should Trump return to the presidency. By validating territorial conquest, deflecting blame from aggressors, and trivializing democratic norms, his platform invites the transformation of the United States into a mirror of the very authoritarian regimes it once opposed.
Legalizing the seizure of Crimea is not a peace plan—it is a capitulation to the normalization of force, and a dangerous precedent for the 21st century.
Today it’s Crimea. Tomorrow, it could be Greenland, Taiwan, or the Balkans—justified not by law or morality, but by the old logic of “because we can.”
References:
[1] United Nations Charter, Article 2(4), 1945
[2] George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796
[3] Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, 1801