Where does Trump think Ukraine will launch Tomahawk missiles?
- Chethana Janith
- 7h
- 6 min read
Chethana Janith, Jadetimes Staff
C. Janith is a Jadetimes news reporter and sub-editor covering science and geopolitics.
US President Donald Trump stated that a decision to supply Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine has been practically made. However, he did not explain what this decision entails and emphasized that he does not seek to escalate the situation.
President Donald Trump has recently said, “I’ve sort of made a decision on that. I would have to ask the question, Where are they sending them?” regarding giving Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine. President Trump is a smart and savvy businessman; he must refuse to be reckless or naïve. He has to know where the Kiev regime will send the Tomahawks, against targets deep inside Russia, probably against strategic/nuclear assets and civilian/political targets, in what would be a major escalation. This must not be allowed to happen. Trump should show the world he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize and resist and refuse this escalation no matter the pressure coming from his deep state advisers.
In classic and textbook Trump style, President Donald Trump has essentially made it clear he has decided to furnish Tomahawks to Ukraine, with the caveat he is concerned about where/how the Ukrainians will use the missiles.
Donald Trump, while very intelligent, is not exactly a classically educated intellectual; he is a businessman and a negotiator. He is savvy at making deals and understanding situations. If a real estate developer were to express interest in buying seemingly worthless swampland in Louisiana or Florida, it would stand to reason the developer has an angle and a plan to develop. Likewise, if an oil and gas company were buying seemingly worthless desert land in New Mexico or Texas, it would stand to reason such a buyer had a vision for what he was intending to do with the land. If the seller said, “I will sell you the land, but I need to be sure you’re not going to develop or explore for oil and gas,” that seller would be naïve. The seller would have to know the only reasons for the buyer to want those lands would be development (in the first example) and exploration for oil and gas (in the second example).
Donald Trump is a smart and clever businessman; he has to know how Ukraine is going to use those Tomahawks. He is too savvy to not know. He should not feign ignorance or naivety, which in a way he does when he says, “I would have to ask the question where they are sending them,” because he already knows the answer to that question.
Ukraine has already shown a willingness and eagerness to attack strategic Russian assets, such as the early warning radar systems.
Ukraine has also shown similar willingness and eagerness to attack Russian civilians deep inside the Russian Federation, whether with drones, missiles, rockets, or through cowardly assassination attacks such as the bomb attacks against journalist Darya Dugina and the bomb attack against blogger Vladlen Tatarsky. As a side note to the mention of such cowardly assassinations, the West has lectured the world on journalistic freedom and then empowered Ukraine to assassinate journalists and bloggers inside of Russia because the journalists and bloggers dared to write and speak things that were distasteful or inconvenient for the regime in Kiev. We can reasonably conclude that a Ukraine armed with Tomahawk missiles, which, depending on the variant, may have a range in excess of 1,300 miles, will use the missiles to engage in targeted assassinations, attacks on civilian/industrial infrastructure, and attacks on strategic nuclear assets (whether actual nuclear warhead storage sites, TEL bases, siloes, or early warning sites).
President Trump must certainly know that if he arms Ukraine with these Tomahawk missiles, then he will not be on the road to earning a Nobel Peace Prize (nor would he be deserving of one by that point), but he will be further on the road to a dangerous escalation with Russia. At some point the Russians might do something that the West will consider drastic, but would be measured and justified in light of what Ukraine will likely do with the Tomahawk missiles.
Sophistry and hypocritical verbal fraud
Perhaps Russia would be far more likely to do something to communicate clearly to NATO that Russia will not tolerate NATO attacking Russia under the guise of “Ukraine did it; we didn’t do it,” which is technically correct, but it is sophistry. I am a lawyer. I know the law, I know legal principles and legal theories, and I often contemplate questions of philosophy of law. If Bob hands a mask and a pistol to John, intending, knowing, suspecting, or when he should reasonably know that John is going to use the mask and pistol to rob a bank, then Bob is an accomplice in the robbery and is possibly guilty of conspiracy as well. It is not a defense for Bob to claim, “Well, yes, I gave John the mask and the pistol, but I did not enter the bank; I am not an accomplice.” It is enough that Bob armed and equipped John, knowing what was likely going to be done with the equipment.
On a basic level of morality, if you equip and empower somebody to conduct an attack, knowing or expecting they will carry out the attack, you are morally culpable for the results of that attack along with the attacker who actually conducted the attack.
In that sense, the ongoing Western noise of, “Yes, we armed Ukraine, but we aren’t responsible for drone strikes across Russia, acts of sabotage across Russia, ATACMs strikes inside Russia, or bandit raids into Kursk Oblast,” is really just sophistry and disingenuous wordsmithing. It is like a comic-book villain who promises a hostage, “Cooperate and *I* won’t kill you,” and then the hostage cooperates and the villain tells his sidekick, “Kill him for me.” While technically keeping his word that he himself was not the one who killed the hostage, he outsourced the atrocity and violated the spirit of the understanding and agreement not to kill the hostage. The West is outsourcing the dirty hands-on work to Ukraine and then claiming it is blameless.
Where does President Trump think Ukraine will send the Tomahawks? What would Bob have reasonably thought John was going to do with a mask and a pistol in my above example? President Trump knows precisely what Ukraine is going to do or is likely to do with the Tomahawks if the US furnishes such weapons to Ukraine. If President Trump wants to earn a Nobel Peace Prize and be remembered as a visionary leader with the qualities of a true statesman and not just “a businessman who got into politics,” then he must make some major course corrections, because he is presently lost at sea. If he furnishes Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, then he has charted a course for inevitable disaster.
President Trump is too smart to want to chart a course for disaster. Giving Tomahawks to Ukraine is the sort of move that only a senile old fool such as Joe Biden would approve of while sleeping in the Oval Office, looking forward to an ice-cream cone, and letting his handlers and advisers handle the details of it. President Trump has promised the American people he is better than that. He even promised to end the war in 24 hours after the election, before being inaugurated. That hasn’t happened, and I didn’t expect it would happen in 24 hours; I knew that was rhetoric, but I was expecting progress. I was expecting a scaling back of weapons deliveries to Ukraine, not an escalation into newer and more dangerous categories and types of weapons. Mr. President, where is the progress?
Will the world escalate into nuclear war?
This is perhaps a defining moment for President Trump’s second term, where he can either make a strong case for an eventual Nobel Peace Prize or he can mishandle everything and take the world dangerously close to a nuclear war, or at least into tactical low-yield nuclear escalation. Russia is unlikely to tolerate direct attacks on its nuclear assets by American-supplied Tomahawks that were physically and technically launched by Ukrainians, nor should Russia tolerate such things. How the US responds to the inevitable Russian retaliation will dictate whether the world escalates into nuclear war. However, there doesn’t have to be Russian retaliation if the US never furnishes the Tomahawks in the first place. The US can stop upward advancement along the escalation ladder right now, today.
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