Trump Can’t Believe Putin Lied To Him
This week I recommend an article by the Ambassador to Ukraine who resigned.
Trump has parroted the Putin position that Ukraine started the war and that president Zelensky is a dictator. While negotiating and requiring concessions from Ukraine, Trump also conceded from the beginning to many Russian demands without any significant concessions. Russia has now not agreed to a ceasefire and Trump thinks that something about Putin has changed.
“I’ve always had a good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY! He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers. Missiles and drones are being shot into cities in Ukraine for no reason whatsoever,” Trump posted on Truth Social (WSJ).
Trump has also said, “What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is—if it weren’t for me, a lot of really bad things would have already happened in Russia. And I mean really bad. He’s playing with fire.”
Trump in his personal diplomacy has been naive about Putin’s personal ambitions and his ideology. Putin wants to restore as much of the Soviet empire as he can and has appealed to an Orthodox/Slavic culture and history which defeated both Napoleon and Nazi Germany in “the Great Patriotic War.” His government, however, is also a ruthless kleptocracy that uses coercion as a means of staying in power. Putin has not changed.
Trump has an admirable goal to stop the killing and the wars which can easily escalate to a global war on infrastructure or a nuclear conflict. Considering the military and economic power of Russia, China, and Iran and their collaboration as an axis of autocracies some compromises will have to be made. Three years of war in Ukraine have led to trench warfare, land mines, drones and essentially a war of attrition with a huge loss of both military and civilian life.
Trump wants to create a more stable world order based on the advantages of commercial cooperation, prosperity, and peace, but he has underestimated the role of what can best be described as tribalism in international affairs. We can be territorial and tribal about our ideas and ideologies as well.
The war in Ukraine is thus about more than real estate. President Zelensky has described it as a conflict between freedom and fear. Trump in his pursuit of peace has promoted cooperation, commercial prosperity and peace, which he thinks can be one area where Russia, China, Iran and the Western world should have common ground. It is a reasonable first approach even though such efforts in the past have failed. Trump, however, has unnecessarily minimized the role of ideas and values in international relations. The universal values of the United States and the Western liberal tradition of human rights, individual personal dignity and our common humanity were described in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after WWII in order to create a more stable world order. These are the values now being challenged by the axis of autocracies and their proxies in an attempt to create a new world order which will more readily accommodate their coercive use of power.
It is the values of America and the Western liberal tradition, however, which may be the most important advantage that we have in international relations. These values are also perhaps that which is most in the “national interest” of America. We also could not “Make America Great Again” without them.