The question that sparked the blazing row between Trump, Vance, and Zelensky was from a Polish journalist, who first pointed out that Poland had been under Russian control for decades after the Second World War. He told Trump that as a kid he had looked at the US, not only as the most powerful country in the world, but also as a “force for good.” But now, he said: “My friends in Poland are worried you align yourself too much with Russia. What's your message for them?”
It was the old question to which the president gave a rambling, implausible and unconvincing answer.
Let’s face it, the journalist's mates aren’t the only ones puzzled by Trump’s apparent friendship and loyalty to Vladimir Putin. He is well known for ditching associates and colleagues on a whim but his obvious fondness and respect for a blood-stained dictator seems unshakeable.
Governments around the world struggle to understand what possible benefit or benefits Trump hopes to gain. Political commentators are baffled and members of his own party equally so. Even appointees in his first administration don’t know the answer. Trump himself doesn’t help by offering any cogent or consistent explanation and I don’t think his spokesperson could enlighten us.
Yet, this has led to a 180-degree pivot in US foreign policy in Europe that has stood firm for at least 80 years.
I read the Substack blog of Professor Timothy Snyder who says this on the subject:
“The current American alliance system is based upon eighty years of trust and a network of reliable relationships, including friendships. Supporting Russia against Ukraine is an element of trading those alliances for an alliance with Russia. The main way that Russia engages the United States is through constant attempts to destabilize American society, for example through unceasing cyberwar. (It is telling that yesterday the news also broke that the United States has lowered its guard against Russian cyber attacks.) Russian television is full of fantasies of the destruction of the United States.
“Why would one turn friends into rivals and pretend that a rival is a friend? The economies of American's present allies are at least twenty times larger than the Russian economy. And Russian trade was never very important to the United States. Why would one fight trade wars with the prosperous friends in exchange for access to an essentially irrelevant market? The answer might be that the alliance with Russia is preferred for reasons that have nothing to do with American interests.”
I think his conclusion, that it does not and cannot advance American interests is right, but like the rest of us, he is just as much in the dark.
Snyder ends with this:
“There was a logic to what happened yesterday, but it was the logic of throwing away all reason, yielding to all impulse, betraying all decency, and embracing the worst in oneself on order to bring out the worst in the world. Perhaps Musk, Trump, and Vance will personally feel better amidst American decline, Russian violence, and global chaos. Perhaps they will find it profitable. This is not much consolation for the rest of us.”
If the Kremlin has some kompromat on him, Ukraine and Europe are paying a hell of a price for Trump’s face and reputation, both essentially worthless. If he hoped to win contracts to build some Trump towers in Moscow and St Petersburg to expand his business empire, it’s still an incredible price, no matter how big the sums of money involved are.
JD Vance and diplomacy
Anyway, Friday's row developed because Vance clearly believed Trump's response on Russia and Putin lacked credibility, so he dived in with this:
“For four years in the United States of America, we had a president who stood up at press conferences and talked tough about Vladimir Putin and then Putin invaded Ukraine and destroyed a significant chunk of the country. The path to peace and the path to prosperity is maybe engaging in diplomacy.
“We tried the pathway of Joe Biden of thumping our chest and pretending that the President of the United States' words meant more the President of the United States' actions. What makes America a good country is engaging in diplomacy. That's what President Trump is doing.”
He sat back with a self-satisfied smile as if he had somehow justified Trump's love-fest with an indicted war criminal.
The notion that anyone in Trump’s circle could or would even attempt to achieve anything through diplomacy was laughable. Which world leaders use social media to criticise and attack other world leaders almost on a daily basis, or have senior members of their administration post in support of other countries' opposition parties or appear at opposition rallies? But this is how the President of the USA conducts his country’s foreign policy, which at the moment, depends solely on what he thinks at the time. He's a bull in a china shop and believes, like Marie Antoinette, that he personally is the embodiment of the state.
Vance just demonstrated that he and Trump have zero idea what diplomacy entails and triggered a row that almost derailed the entire peace effort before the train even got underway.
Diplomacy is thinking carefully before you speak, using prepared texts, weighing every word carefully and certainly not talking down to the president of a friendly ally or attacking him publicly while his country is at war. It involves having some empathy and an appreciation of how your pronouncements might be construed by other parties. None of that happened last Friday. Vance was just shooting from the hip. To borrow one of Trump’s phrases: Nobody has ever seen anything like it before.
You certainly don't involve other countries in your own domestic politics, as Trump did in 2019 when he pressed Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden, and as Vance did in Washington last week. But this is what they do and who they are.
A conflict of interest
An intermediary may well be needed between Trump and Ukraine. How can the US negotiate a peace deal equitably while it’s a financial beneficiary of a minerals deal with one side and a future economic partnership with the other? There is a glaring conflict of interest that Trump can’t see.
In any event, Trump's skills are in negotiating contracts with suppliers or landowners, not international peace agreements between warring parties. He is a convicted felon and an adjudicated rapist who thinks only in terms of money and self-promotion and how best to ‘stiff’ as many people as he can by not paying his bills.
In his answer by the way, Trump claimed in a typical word salad that he was not aligned with anybody and also aligned with the world (i.e. everybody). Later, Dimitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, spoke about the joint US-Russia veto on a UN General Assembly resolution, which he claimed contained "a perfectly balanced formulation regarding the Ukrainian crisis", meaning the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
He said: "This was truly unimaginable before. The new administration is rapidly reshaping all foreign policy configurations. In many ways, this aligns with our vision."
Russia obviously thinks Trump is aligned with them, as does everyone else.
Starmer
Finally, Starmer has grown in stature this past week. He's stepped effortlessly into a leadership role in Europe together with Macron. He did well with Trump on Thursday and might have helped to recover from the disastrous situation after Friday's clash between Trump and Zelensky.
He chaired the summit in London, with European leaders plus Pierre Trudeau from Canada, presenting a united front in support of Ukraine and is now developing a peace plan that he and Macron will take to Washington. Not a bad week’s work.
I don't see Russia ever accepting the plan, but that’s for another day.
