By Monsi A. Serrano
Leftists often claim that the United States of America is a war freak — a standing, indelible reputation carried by history like an unwelcome heirloom. It is a favorite narrative of critics and cynics alike: Washington as the perennial warmonger, the hegemon with trigger happy fingers and a closet full of weapons deals. Fight weak countries, sell arms, bankroll ever-more advanced military hardware — rinse and repeat. For many, this cycle defines U.S. power.
But after four brutal years of war in Ukraine, that narrative has grown more complicated — twisted by geopolitics, hardened by domestic political decay, and dangerously aggravated by MAGA revisionism that undermines alliances while emboldening autocrats. What once passed as a critique of hegemony now collides with a far harsher reality: wars are not fought only on battlefields. They are fought in political myths, disinformation, transactional diplomacy, and the raw nerves of polarized electorates.
Tomorrow, the world will mark four years since Russia launched its illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine — a war sustained not by slogans, but by Europe’s collective will to defend its continent and its conscience.
When we were invited for a study visit to the Czech Republic by then Czech Ambassador to the Philippines, Her Excellency Jana Šedivá, and Polish Ambassador His Excellency Jarosław Szczepankiewicz, we requested the opportunity to see the situation on the ground for displaced Ukrainians who had fled Russia’s aggression. Entire families were forced into exile, pouring into neighboring countries such as the Czech Republic, Poland, and other EU states.
Both Czech and Polish embassies coordinated our visit to reception centers for displaced Ukrainians. There, we met Nina, a schoolteacher who continued educating Ukrainian children in exile — keeping classrooms alive while their homeland burned. Poland told the same grim story. Listening to children recount bombings, flight, and separation was not merely heartbreaking; it was searing.
What many still fail — or refuse — to grasp is the scale of Russia’s crime. The invasion of Ukraine constitutes the largest military assault on a European state since World War II, resulting in tens of thousands of civilian deaths and hundreds of thousands of military casualties on both sides. It is the bloodiest and most destructive conflict Europe has seen in generations, drawing unprecedented international involvement.
When Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, he deliberately branded it a “special military operation,” deceiving the Russian public into believing it was neither a war nor an invasion. Many Russians themselves were victims of that lie.
At the height of the war, a Russian friend of mine protested in St. Peter’s Square in Moscow, wrapping herself in a Ukrainian flag. Her father — a senior figure in the Russian military — warned her to flee the country. If she stayed, he would be ordered to arrest her. The consequences, he said plainly, could be fatal.
For those who still do not understand why this war is illegal and unprovoked, the historical record is unambiguous.
In December 1994, Ukraine signed the Budapest Memorandum, surrendering the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for security assurances from Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Russia explicitly committed to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and to refrain from the use or threat of force.
Moscow violated that commitment long before 2022.
In 2014, Russia illegally annexed Crimea — seizing airports and strategic sites, coercing a sham referendum under military occupation, and forcibly incorporating the territory into the Russian Federation. That act alone shattered the Budapest Memorandum and exposed Moscow’s utter contempt for international law.
In short, like China, Russia cannot be trusted. Treaties are disposable — mere “pieces of paper.” The logic mirrors how the Philippines’ jailed former president Rodrigo Duterte dismissed the 2016 arbitral ruling that invalidated China’s delusional nine-dash line.
MAGA emboldens Putin
Morally and politically, the United States and the United Kingdom are obligated to stand with Ukraine. They were not neutral observers; they were signatories who actively encouraged Ukraine to relinquish its nuclear deterrent during the Clinton administration in the name of global peace and stability.
Under Joe Biden, the United States largely honored that responsibility — providing military assistance, financial aid, and diplomatic backing essential to Ukraine’s survival.
Then came Donald Trump.
Trump openly undermined NATO, repeatedly questioned Article 5, threatened to abandon allies, delayed or obstructed Ukraine aid, and reduced U.S. foreign policy to crude quid-pro-quo transactions. His rhetoric — and his actions — signaled weakness, unreliability, and moral vacancy. Predictably, Putin stepped up.
Trump’s worldview is not anchored in alliances, law, or democratic values, but in ego, spectacle, and personal leverage. His foreign policy record reveals a consistent pattern of megalomania masquerading as strength. In Venezuela, he openly flirted with regime change, weaponized sanctions that punished civilians more than elites, and treated a sovereign nation as a chessboard for domestic political theater. He dangled recognition, aid, and coercion not to advance democracy, but to project dominance.
The same delusion surfaced when he proposed acquiring Greenland — not as satire, but as a serious geopolitical transaction — reducing sovereignty, history, and international norms to a real-estate fantasy. It was imperial nostalgia stripped of diplomacy, revealing how Trump views the world: territories to be bought, leaders to be bullied, and nations to be bent to his will.
With Iran, the recklessness escalated further. Trump tore up multilateral agreements, abandoned diplomacy, and replaced deterrence with provocation, pushing the Middle East closer to open conflict while posturing as a peacemaker. The pattern is unmistakable: destabilize first, then claim strength amid the chaos.
I was in Ukraine from 2023 until April 2025, as far as Donbas, and witnessed firsthand the magnitude of Russia’s devastation.
Historical churches and cultural centers were destroyed. Schools, hospitals, pharmacies, and residential homes were reduced to rubble; families obliterated; children left carrying trauma no child should ever bear. These acts constitute wanton disregard for the Geneva Conventions on war. And four years on, as February 24, 2026, approaches, the atrocities are not waning — they are intensifying. Putin sees opportunity to relentlessly attack Ukraine day in and day out, all enabled by Donald J. Trump, an apparent Nazi descendant.
Trump is not merely reckless; he is transactional, corrupt, and fundamentally amoral. He dangles aid as leverage, ties survival to “critical minerals,” and blurs the line between U.S. national interest and personal business gain. It is not America that stands to benefit from such arrangements — it is Trump and his shady corporations.
History will not remember him kindly. It will judge him as an enabler of atrocities, a saboteur of alliances, and a willing accomplice to authoritarian violence.
As for Ukraine, stay strong. I stand with you, and Filipinos will stand with you, because what China is doing to the Philippines now is the same playbook Russia used against you.
Truth, like light, blinds — and no one can hide it, even when falsehood is relentlessly peddled online.
Slava Ukraini. Heroyam Slava!