Remember: Donald Trump had set an August 8 deadline for Vladimir Putin to agree an immediate ceasefire or face a formidable new round of economic sanctions. Instead, Trump welcomed the Russian dictator effusively in Anchorage, Alaska, as if he were the leader of a friendly superpower and ended up adopting Putin’s position (go for a full peace settlement rather than a ceasefire first) instead of his own.
So where are we after three weeks of Trumpian political theatre?
Putin’s delight. We don’t often see Putin smiling broadly, but we did through the rear side-window of “the Beast,” the US president’s heavily fortified car, as he sat there at Trump’s invitation – the war criminal warmly welcomed by what we long ago used to call ‘the leader of the free world.’ The beast in the Beast.
The very fact of this meeting was a big win for Putin. Imagine FDR receiving Adolf Hitler for a friendly summit in Alaska in late 1940, while German planes bombed London in the Blitz, and then holding a joint press conference in front of a US-designed backdrop saying “Pursuing Peace.”
The single concession Putin made was that for the day of the summit Russian drones and missiles only targeted Ukrainian frontline cities such as Kharkiv and Sumy, not Kyiv and Lviv. Big concession, that.
And then, predictably, Putin ran rings around Trump. For Putin, it’s perfect to keep talking endlessly with the US about peace talks, while he continues to prosecute a war that he thinks he is slowly winning in Ukraine.
Five days later, a Russian air attack struck a US factory in western Ukraine. Putin’s contempt for Trump could not have been more eloquently expressed.
Trump’s disgrace. Because politicians are trying to make the best of it, and commentators keep looking for silver linings, we don’t say often and loudly enough how morally disgraceful, diplomatically incompetent and frankly ludicrous his conduct is.
Narcissism and self-interest (including the commercial interests of his family) seem to account for at least 70% of his behavior. He keeps spinning in the wind, like an over-lubricated weathervane, repeating pretty much what the last person told him. His vanity is beyond belief and he spouts a lot of rubbish.
Yes, he has a few consistent themes (e.g., tariffs; America First; dislike of war as such) and a brilliant political instinct for the narratives and performative acts that keep his voters on board. But much of the time he behaves like a grotesque character in one of the political parodies of Sacha Baron Cohen.
Seven European leaders dropped everything in the middle of the summer holidays so as to dash to Washington to support their fellow European leader, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Europe’s solidarity. Seven European leaders dropped everything in the middle of the summer holidays so as to dash to Washington to support their fellow European leader, Volodymyr Zelensky. Bravo. If you’re looking for a silver lining, there it is. And this was not just a single transient act of solidarity. These leaders, including almost all the continent’s most important ones (although with politically deadlocked Poland a lamentable absence from the table), are now personally committed to supporting Ukraine.
Humiliatingly, the presidents and prime ministers then all had to massage Trump’s ego, while skilfully – and in well-coordinated fashion – pulling him back towards the previously agreed position on the need for a ceasefire and planning for security guarantees. Their continued flattery of this ghastly narcissist is embarrassing, undignified, indeed deserving of what the British satirical magazine Private Eye calls the OBN (Order of the Brown Nose) – but it’s what European leaders just have to do, unless and until Europe itself becomes a three-dimensional superpower. (As it should, but don’t hold your breath.)
Where does this leave Ukraine? Pretty much exactly where it was before. The outcome of this war won’t be determined by any peace talks any time soon. (The White House claimed Putin had agreed to meet with Zelensky next; but Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov says he won’t. Another slap in the face for Trump.)
No, the outcome of this war will be determined by the course of this war - and by the defense and deterrence arrangements in place when it finally reaches a ceasefire.
No, the outcome of this war will be determined by the course of this war - and by the defense and deterrence arrangements in place when it finally reaches a ceasefire.
‘Security guarantees’ are not a matter of words on paper. (Ukrainians remember the fine words of the security assurances given by the US, UK and Russia in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which turned out to be not worth the paper they were written on.) In real life, security guarantees are a matter of steel, firepower, electronics, physical presence and mutual trust.
If Ukraine can keep holding the line, with only small losses of territory despite its acute shortage of young men ready to fight, and Europe (together with countries like Canada, and some vital strategic enablers from the US) can sustain its military, defense-industrial and economic support for Ukraine while planning for longer-term deterrence – particularly in the skies – the pressure can eventually become greater on Russia than it is on Ukraine.
That’s more likely to happen next year than this. Only then, if Putin finds he is getting nowhere militarily while the returning bodybags and a faltering economy begin to threaten the stability of his regime, might he be ready to start talking seriously.
If Trump gets fed up with being (to use one of his own favorite words) a loser in his relationship with Putin, and imposes tougher sanctions, that will help – but nothing in his track record suggests that this will happen, let alone that it would be sustained for long enough to shorten the timeline to a hurting stalemate.
The rest is all Trumpian sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Reprinted with permission from the author’s History of the Present blog. See the original here.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.