After five weeks in which Trump made clear his determination to scrap America’s traditional sources of power – its alliances among like-minded democracies – and return the country to an era of raw great-power negotiations, he left one question hanging: how far would he go in sacrificing Ukraine to his vision?
Well, ….
1 March 2025 — The remarkable showdown that played out in front of the cameras early yesterday afternoon from the Oval Office provided the answer to my question above.
And, yes, as I noted yesterday, this is my birthday weekend and I was going to just 😑 and enjoy 🍝 and 🍷. I wrote that I don’t think it is possible to contribute to the present moment in any meaningful way while being wholly engulfed by it, so you need a break by stepping out of it, by taking a telescopic perspective.
But I also wrote that all writers understand writing. Every other writer I admire is a kind of monomaniac. So herein just a few points.
One of my staffers (who speaks Polish, Russian and Ukrainian) sent me clips from one of Russia’s “breaking news” broadcasts that was live during the White House (she attached an English transcript) which had Russian political scientist Alexander Voskoboinikov noting:
Trump simply lured Zelensky to the White House for this meeting. I can’t explain it any other way. What happened there was a pre-planned operation that was meant to show the whole world that Americans are getting out of this situation. At least, this is what they are demonstrating.
The host of the show, Sergey Karnaukhov giddily described these events as “incredible,” his voice trembling with excitement:
Zelensky got what he deserved. This is his fate. The trial of history started before our very eyes.
At the conclusion of the broadcast, the channel aired a new commercial that began broadcasting last week. It started with the words, “We are one step away from victory. This is the moment of truth… It’s now or never”.
And, my staffer said, yesterday’s event was totally expected in Russia. The day before Zelensky’s Oval Office ambush, State Duma member Oleg Morozov on 60 Minutes, a Russian state TV show, predicted it:
Note to readers: the State Duma is the lower house of the Russia legislature, with the upper house being the Federation Council.
Morozov said:
You watch, this meeting will be a lesson in humiliation, designed to condition Zelensky to capitulate to the United States—and later to Russia. The Ukrainian president was flying to America to sign an act of capitulation [referring to the rare earth mineral deal Trump was determined to get as a “payback” for previous aid to Ukraine]. Trump is Zelensky’s Daddy.
You watch. They will rub his nose into everything, like a messy puppy. Then he will sign whatever he is told to sign. But first, Daddy will flog him”.
During the same show, Vitaly Tretyakov, Dean of the Higher School of Television at Moscow’s State University, praised Trump by explaining:
I really like what Trump is doing right now. I like his revolutionary approach. He is doing our job for us. Trump is strangling America’s friends and allies. He is pursuing policies that are beneficial for Russia, just as he has been instructed. With respect to Ukraine, he is ready to give Russia everything it wants to take. It’s beautiful.
If you have read the Russian experts and pundits over the last months, they repeatedly articulated that Moscow isn’t seeking peace but instead wants to conquer as much of Ukraine as possible. Getting Zelensky out of the way is essential to achieve the Kremlin’s goal of subjugating its neighbor.
The Trump administration’s aim of forcing Ukraine into signing over its mineral rights played straight into the hands of the Russian propagandists. They openly expressed their intent to use the one-sided deal to besmirch Zelensky as an “illegitimate” president who agreed to sign away Ukraine’s future, effectively turning generations of Ukrainians into indentured servants of the United States – all without obtaining any security guarantees.
Trump’s commentary about the urgent need for a wartime election was said to be a result of Vladimir Putin’s conversations with the American president and his special envoy, Steve Witkoff. Top Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov said that the views of the Trump administration are in total alignment with the way things look from Moscow – and Friday’s debacle confirmed this yet again.
Trump chastised Zelensky, comparing his situation with a game of cards. He told him “You have no cards to play”. A German colleague of mine said “Yes, we’d call it abgekartetes Spiel, which means a rigged game”.
What is clear that the three-year wartime partnership between Washington and Kyiv was shattered. Whether it can be repaired, and whether a deal to provide the United States revenue from Ukrainian minerals that was the ostensible reason for the visit can be pieced back together, remains to be seen.
But the larger truth is that the venomous exchanges made evident that Trump regards Ukraine as an obstacle to what he sees as a far more vital project. What Trump really wants, one senior European official said this week before the blowup, is a normalization of the relationship with Russia.
Last last night, David Sanger offered some perspective on his blog. He is the senior White House and National Security correspondent for The New York Times, reporting on all matters of foreign policy but focused especially on its intersection with technology, politics and superpower conflict, and most especially on the revival of superpower conflict and its implications. His book The Perfect Weapon is quickly becoming the standard reference on those intersections of technology and international security.
Last night he wrote:
Trump needs to rewrite the history of Moscow’s illegal invasion three years ago, dropping investigations of Russian war crimes and refusing to offer Ukraine long-lasting security guarantees That is the deal Trump wants.
To anyone listening carefully, that goal was bubbling just beneath the surface as Mr. Zelensky headed to Washington for his disastrous visit. Secretary of State Marco Rubio — once a defender of Ukraine and its territorial sovereignty, now a convert to the Trump power plays — made clear in an interview with Breitbart News that it was time to move beyond the war in the interest of establishing a triangular relationship between the United States, Russia and China. “We’re going to have disagreements with the Russians, but we have to have a relationship with both,” Mr. Rubio said.
He carefully avoided any wording that would suggest, as he often said as a senator, that Russia was the aggressor, or that there was risk that, if not punished for its attack on Ukraine, it might next target a NATO nation. “These are big, powerful countries with nuclear stockpiles,” he said of Russia and China. “They can project power globally. I think we have lost the concept of maturity and sanity in diplomatic relations.”
Mr. Trump makes no secret of his view that the post-World War II system, created by Washington, ate away at American power. Above all else, that system prized relationships with allies committed to democratic capitalism, even maintaining those alliances that came with a cost to American consumers. It was a system that sought to avoid power grabs by making the observance of international law, and respect for established international boundaries, a goal unto itself. To Mr. Trump, such a system gave smaller and less powerful countries leverage over the United States, leaving Americans to pick up far too much of the tab for defending allies and promoting their prosperity.
While his predecessors — both Democrats and Republicans — insisted that alliances in Europe and Asia were America’s greatest force multiplier, keeping the peace and allowing trade to flourish, Trump viewed them as a bleeding wound. In the 2016 presidential campaign, he repeatedly asked why America should defend countries running trade surpluses with the United States.
In the five weeks since his second inauguration, Trump has begun exercising a plan to destroy that system. It explains his demand that Denmark cede control of Greenland to the United States, and that Panama return a canal that Americans built. When asked how he could seize sovereign territory in Gaza for redevelopment in his plan for a “Riviera of the Middle East,” he shot back, “Under the U.S. authority.”
But Ukraine was always a more complicated case. Only 26 months ago, Zelensky was feted in Washington as a warrior for democracy, invited to address a joint meeting of Congress and applauded by Democrats and Republicans alike for standing up to bald aggression by a murderous foe. Yesterday, as Trump admonished Zelensky and warned him that “you don’t have the cards” to deal with Putin, and as his attack dog, Vice President JD Vance, dressed down the Ukrainian leader as being “disrespectful” and ungrateful, it was clear that the three-year wartime partnership between Washington and Kyiv was shattered.
After yesterday’s blow up, the world retreated to its familiar corners.
Macron, siding with the Ukrainian leader, urged that the West thank the Ukrainians for being the forward defense of freedom. He was joined by the nervous Eastern Europeans, led by Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.
But in private, several European diplomats said they thought the damage might be irreparable. The Russians celebrated their good luck. Former President Dmitri A. Medvedev thanked Trump:
The insolent pig finally got a proper slap down in the Oval Office. I urge Trump to suspend all remaining American aid.
Medvedev might get his wish. Making life unlivable for Ukrainians is now Trump’s goal, exactly as Putin’s:
Rubio was among the first to congratulate the president for putting in his place a man the secretary of state used to applaud as a modern-day Churchill in a T-shirt. On his social media accounts he said:
Thank you @POTUS for standing up for America in a way that no President has ever had the courage to do before. Thank you for putting America First.
Of course, it is far easier to repeat Trump’s favorite slogan – and to blow up an existing world order, than to create a new one. It took decades to assemble the post-World War II rules of global engagement, and for all its faults, the system succeeded at its primary objectives: avoiding great power war and encouraging economic interdependence.
Trump has never articulated at any length what he would replace those rules with, other than that he would use America’s military and economic power to strike deals — essentially an argument that keeping the peace is as simple as weaving together minerals agreements and trade pacts, maybe with a few real estate transactions thrown in.
As David Sanger noted, there is little precedent to suggest that approach alone works, especially in dealing with authoritarian leaders like Putin and Xi Jinping of China, who take a long view in dealing with democracies that they view as lacking the sustained will necessary to achieve difficult objectives.
But judging by yesterday’s display in the Oval Office, Trump seems convinced that as long as he is at the helm, the world will order itself as he commands.
I need to return to my birthday bash or She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed will lock me into my study. A few concluding points.
At least the Oval Office meeting was held in front of the cameras. False friendliness in public by Trump and Vance, followed by behind-the-scenes treachery, would have been much more dangerous to the Ukrainian cause. Instead, Trump and Vance have revealed to Americans and to America’s allies their alignment with Russia, and their animosity toward Ukraine in general and its president in particular.
The truth is ugly, but it’s necessary to face it.
But what particularly galled me, as it did many, was that Zelensky has endured tragedies, and risked his life, in ways that men such as Trump and Vance cannot ever imagine. Vance has said “I served in Iraq”. Vance served in the Marine Corps for four years, from 2003-2007, and was a public affairs officer during a 6 stint in Iraq, embedded in the protected “Green Zone”, never seeing combat. He never had to huddle in a bunker during a Russian bombardment.
Russian autocrats, after slaughtering innocent people for three years, now look forward to enjoying the spoils of their invasion instead of standing trial for their crimes.
The rest of the world has to move on from America. It now knows that the American people can’t be trusted. One cannot trust a country where foreign policy does a complete 180 degree every four years: tearing up treaties, reneging on deals and withholding payments because a growing populace full of grievances over corporate rent-seeking rather believes their problem is that too many black women have jobs.
And even in the U.S. “the people” now realize the U.S. hasn’t been a democracy for a while. It is just easier to see. It’s an oligarchy disguised as one. Billionaires and corporations buy elections, gerrymandering rigs the system, and voter suppression silences millions. The two-party monopoly blocks real change, while unelected institutions like the U.S. Supreme Court and intelligence agencies hold unchecked power. Add media manipulation and growing economic inequality, and the people’s voice is drowned out. Democracy in name only.
The U.S. has become a stack of corporations pretending to be a country. And that started a long time ago.
Even though I have no skin in the game, I get depressed watching billionaires consolidating their control over every aspect of America – its government, its legal system, and its social and political relationships.
So Europe must get to grips with the fact that Trump and his bloodhounds have no interest whatsoever in peace in Europe, or an economic trade relationship. The are only interested in tumbling the whole Western world into economic crisis – the reason they team up with Putin as then they both get more rich and powerful by building a new world power of oligarchs and gangsters.
