Summers Calls US Demands in Ukraine Talks ‘Beyond Versailles’

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers denounced the pressure being applied by the Trump administration on Ukraine to turn over a share of its natural resources to the US, drawing a sharp distinction with American traditions in past major conflicts.

“What the Trump administration seems to be proposing — and to be fair, we have not seen all the details — is a Versailles-like agreement imposed, not on aggressors, but imposed on the victims of aggression,” Summers said on Bloomberg Television’s Wall Street Week with David Westin. He was referring to the post-World War I Treaty of Versailles, which imposed strict financial and other penalties on Germany and is widely viewed as ensuring the inevitability of another major war.