The 12th century English theologian and philosopher John of Salisbury summed up the progress of human knowledge with the memorable phrase, “We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior … but because they raise us up.”

Applying this medieval metaphor to today’s politics (and intending no disrespect to those with the genetic condition of dwarfism), former President Donald Trump and his MAGA allies in Congress are dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of dwarfs.

They want to jettison the trans-Atlantic alliance assembled three-quarters of a century ago by statesmen such as George F. Kennan, George C. Marshall and Dean Acheson, giants of their generation. That system, which employed collective security to deter aggression, has kept the peace for its members and prevented a repeat of two world wars that claimed as many as 100 million military and civilian lives during the first half of the 20th century.

At a Feb. 10 presidential campaign rally, Trump casually remarked that he would “encourage” Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to a NATO member country that didn’t “pay” for collective defense. Trump was referring to the failure of 13 of NATO’s 31 members to meet their commitment to spend at least 2% of their national GDP on defense. He believes the Europeans have been fleecing us by not paying their fair share.

The notion that the U.S., under a Trump presidency, could not only refuse to come to the defense of a NATO member country, but would actually encourage Russia to attack that country, stunned our national security establishment and alarmed Europeans politicians, diplomats and military leaders. President Biden called Trump’s remarks “appalling and dangerous.” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Trump’s rhetoric “puts American and European soldiers at increased risk.”

While Trump was running his mouth on the campaign trail, MAGA House Republicans were doing their best to sabotage a military aid bill to Ukraine, an applicant for membership in NATO and the first European country to suffer foreign invasion since World War II. GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson said that he wouldn’t be “rushed” into approving a $95.3 billion foreign aid package, including $61 billion for Ukraine, which recently passed the Senate with bipartisan support. Authorization for additional aid to Ukraine has been stalled in Congress since last October.

The neo-isolationist MAGA rationale for opposing the Ukrainian aid was summed up Florida GOP Congressman and Trump sycophant Matt Gaetz, who said he didn’t believe his constituents cared “which dude gets to run Crimea.”

Delayed approval of a new military aid package to Ukraine has forced that country’s military to ration its ammunition, cease offensive operations, and even allow Russia’s army to advance into areas which had been stubbornly defended, most recently the city of Adviika.

NATO was established during the administration of President Harry Truman shortly after the end of World War II, when it became clear that cooperation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union (Russia), wartime allies, was rupturing and that Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had designs not only to dominate Eastern but to destabilize Western Europe.

Stalin was determined to establish a buffer zone between the Soviet Union and Germany, which had invaded it in both World War I and II. His armies having liberated East Germany, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Albania from Nazi control, he used military occupation to force the establishment of puppet governments subservient to Russia. The Soviets also sponsored local Communist movements in Western Europe, especially Italy and France, which threatened to undermine democratic governments there.

The United States, which rapidly demobilized after the war, had reduced its armed forces from 12 million to 1.5 million men and did not have the conventional military might to stop an all-out Soviet attack. In place of massive remobilization, therefore, it deployed every strategic tool at its command — economic aid, deft diplomacy, and military alliances — to contain potential Soviet aggression. A keystone of that strategy was NATO.

In 1949, the U.S., Canada and 10 European countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty, the founding document of NATO, to establish long-term collective security. In the words of Truman’s biographer, Robert J. Donovan, this was “the culmination of America’s resolve after the Second World War to participate in the enforcement of peace for the sake of its own security rather than to retire behind the oceans as the United States had done after 1918.”

The end result was that the U.S. was able to successfully stalemate the Soviets in a “Cold War” which lasted over four decades until the Soviet Union collapsed from internal stresses and its empire disintegrated in 1989.

Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin has made no secret of his grand vision to reverse that imperial decline and restore Russia to the great-power status it once held. The conquest of Ukraine is just the first step in his master plan.

Unfortunately the MAGA faction in Congress can’t see that far, because they’re not sitting on the shoulders of giants, just on the shoulders of Donald Trump.

Elliott Epstein is a trial lawyer with Shukie & Segovias in Lewiston. His Rearview Mirror column, which has appeared in the Sun Journal for 17 years, analyzes current events in an historical context. He is also the author of “Lucifer’s Child,” a book about the notorious 1984 child murder of Angela Palmer. He may be contacted at epsteinel@yahoo.com

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