There were a great many people who thought that when Joseph Biden left the US presidency, things could only get better. After all, Jake Sullivan’s statements about the invasion and wider comments from others about how attacking refineries would threaten to wobble the price of oil seemed about as unhelpful as they could get.
Enter the stage, Donald Trump.
What has transpired since the start of his presidency left few people surprised. A former real estate agent, his speeches right up to the presidency were replete with transactional maneuvers and opportunistic jibes. I don’t think I have yet heard Trump give a speech, written by himself, which draws on the ideals of liberty and the wider notions of democratic values. I’m happy to be proven incorrect.
He doesn’t seem to have any proclivity to think in broader terms of principle, but at the risk of getting personal, that may be a symptom of the fact that I’m not convinced he has read many books in which ideas of freedom are expressed by some of history’s finest writers. I’m not sure he has ever read the foundational document of his country, “The Federalist Papers,” in detail, let alone anything else from Locke to Hayek. He should do.
I’m an academic, so people will probably roll their eyes at my comments. There is no reason for everyone to be bookish. However, at the current time, I think it is important for the leaders of the democratic world to grasp principles, ideas and to act on them. It reflects not just on their own motivations, but it influences the people around them. History’s greatest men and women of action in the fight for freedom were often well read.
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s recent meeting with Trump at The White House was a demonstration of what happens when we have leaders without this informed inner spirit of principled conviction. Following the meeting, the White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt stated that the US is growing “weary and tired” of the war. She said that both sides need to “recognize the reality on the ground”.
The “reality on the ground” is that Russia has invaded the territory of a free sovereign nation, killing and maiming countless people. I am under the impression that the Ukrainian side has grasped this reality and that they satisfactorily understood it in February 2022. Personally, I also found that the “reality on the ground,” in the form of a ballistic missile slamming into central Kyiv at 3 a.m. and murdering sleeping families while my whole building shook was not too difficult to understand.
It takes a lack of principle to see the invasion of Ukraine as some sort of equalizing stalemate between two armies in which both sides need to get together and come up with a plan to stop the fighting. In fact, it takes an abject lack of any moral sensibility at all. Yet that is where the current US Administration stands. At least Jake Sullivan had the moral compass to describe it as a “barbaric war of aggression.”
The problem with lack of principle is that it leads to a deficit of courage. One loses that inner energy and certainty to act, because there is no clarity about what one fights for. Putting aside Leavitt’s concern that the US was “weary” (tell that to Ukraine’s defenders), it permeated everything in the meeting.
Zelensky was met on his arrival by his embassy staff. Trump should have been on that tarmac, shaking Zelensky by the hand as soon as he stepped off the plane. A leader of freedom would have acted as Ronald Reagan did when he stood next to the Berlin Wall and demanded it be pulled down – in other words, with courage, determination and example.
The Secretary of Defense, Peter Hegseth, who just a few days ago was metaphorically banging his fists on the table with bravado and machismo, yelling about warfighter this and warrior that, was seated in silence.
Trump was in another self-congratulatory flush, having been flattered by Putin for two hours the day before. He even seemed triumphant, relieved even, that Putin has explained to him nice and clearly that he shouldn’t give Ukraine any long-range weapons. He was off the hook. As usual, he was playing what he thought was diplomacy to protect another meeting with Putin, this time the possibility of some sort of agreement in Budapest. Budapest gives me a feeling of déjà vu, but perhaps I’m imagining things.
Long range defense was thrown out of the window despite weeks of working up to this point, completely collapsing US credibility once more and demonstrating to the Russians, again, that Trump’s ego and the lure of a Nobel Prize can be worked like clay. Trump continues the fatal delusion that with enough pleading and hedging, some sort of deal can be done that will cease Russia’s clear objective to humiliate, degrade and destroy Ukraine.
Zelensky did his usual damage limitation and concluded the debacle with positive statements about working on productivity and assistance. He shouldn’t have to do this. He should be able to walk away from Washington with his head held high, knowing he has the full support of all those with the guts and backbone to defend freedom. He should have come to the capital of the US not to beg and handle the capriciousness of the Trump Administration, but to look at those who defend liberty straight in the eye with the expectation of their full and uncompromising support in any way that is necessary.
The painful irony of it all is that the weariness and tiredness of which Leavitt speaks is the result of indecisive action to stop this invasion. The Europeans have been slothful too (that they have just concluded that we should be able to act alone after nearly four years of this war on European soil is itself exasperating), but whataboutism doesn’t diminish the situation of the US.
A second irony is that holding back weapons to keep stockpiles full is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Lukewarm defense of Ukraine is leading to greater violence in the world and the assertiveness of autocracies. Eventually, American blood and missiles will indeed be needed to stop it, if ultimately at America’s borders. Some people will conclude that the US was right all along to keep the weapons, without understanding that if they had handed them over to the country being invaded in the first place, the spread of war could have been averted.
Charles Cockell is Professor of Astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh.
The views expressed are the author’s and not necessarily of Kyiv Post.