The War Trump Chooses

That wasn't Trump against Zelens'kyi. It was Americans against reason

The Americans claim that their attempt to humiliate the Ukrainian president in the White House yesterday was about peace. On that premise, nothing they said makes any sense.

The attempted mugging of a visiting president was about the world war that Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and JD Vance have chosen. If we attend to what Vance and Trump said yesterday, we can work our way to the unreason of American policy, and to the chaos that will follow.

JD Vance opened hostilities against Volodymr Zelens'kyi with a claim about negotiations with Russia, treating them as a formula that will magically end the war. Zelens'kyi had said, calmly and correctly, that negotiations with Russia have been tried before and have not worked. The Russians have betrayed every truce and every ceasefire since their first invasion in 2014. And that first invasion of course violated a number of treaties between Ukraine and Russia, as well as the basic principles of international law. Zelens'kyi ran for president in 2019 as the peace candidate, promising to negotiate with Putin to end what was then a war that had been ongoing for five years. Russia did not respond to these overtures, except with contempt, and then with the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

During and after the Oval Office meeting yesterday, Americans suggested that all that had happen was a unilateral Ukrainian ceasefire, and that then the end of the war would automatically follow. Americans indicated that Zelens'kyi was too stupid to understand this. Zelens'kyi's quite reasonable point was that a ceasefire would have to be followed by efforts to strengthen Ukraine, or the war would simply start again. The evidence is on his side. Even during Trump's ostensible peace campaign these last six weeks, Russian authorities have never said that they would end the war. The Russians keep committing war crimes every day. Yesterday Russia was attacking hospitals in Kharkiv. The Russians have only said that they would talk to Americans, which is not the same thing as agreeing to take part in a peace process. From the Russian perspective, a ceasefire is an opportunity to halt external support for Ukraine and demobilize the Ukrainian army, preparatory to the next attack. Even were this not obvious from Russian statements and actions, no responsible Ukrainian leader could simply accept the American premise that a ceasefire itself is all that is necessary, or simply take Americans at their word that all would be well afterwards.

After yesterday's confrontation in the Oval Office, Trump made clear just how unstrategic the American approach had been. He claimed that the real problem had been that Zelens'kyi had wanted to speak about Putin. Russia, of course, is the aggressor. It does not make sense to demand that the country under attack cease to defend itself, and to pretend that this in itself will bring peace. Had the United States under Trump been interested in peace in Ukraine, American power would have been engaged to deter Russia from continuing the war. There was never any meaningful sign of a willingness to do this, and certainly no new American policy, under Trump, to do this. On the contrary, the United States lifted Russia from its international isolation and accepted in advance most Russian demands. But even had that not been the case, the American position would have been illogical. During an ongoing war of aggression, the aggressor cannot simply be humored, as Trump proposes, during a process that aims at peace.

In the emotion of the White House, however, it was evident that the situation was psychological rather than strategic. In Zelens'kyi's presence, Trump confessed his fundamental sympathy for Putin. In Trump's view, he and Putin "had gone through a lot together." The grievance on display here was so capacious that not everyone could grasp what Trump meant. Trump said that he had been the victim of a "hoax," because people thought that Putin assisted Trump's presidential campaigns. But Putin, Trump claimed, rather extraordinarily, was also the victim of the "hoax." And indeed, according to Trump, this had been a very meaningful bonding experience between the two men. This casts some light on the one of the regular conversations between Putin and Trump these last few years. It reflects, though, an emotional commitment based upon a carefully curated unreality. There was, of course, no hoax. Putin supported Trump in all three of his presidential campaigns, right down to Russian bomb threats against predominantly Democratic districts last election day. But the emotional connection between the two men, as Trump revealed, real. For Trump, the imagined wound of ego to his friend Putin was the pertinent reality. The real wounds that real Russians have inflicted on real Ukrainians are not.

In the White House, Zelens'kyi asked Vance whether he had ever been to Ukraine, which is a reasonable question. Vance had issued one of his typically ex cathedra pronouncements. He speaks with great confidence about the war, telling security experts and Ukrainians alike that he is "right" and they are "wrong." Indeed, one of the most striking moments yesterday was Vance yelling at Zelens'kyi that Zelens'kyi is "wrong." Vance makes judgements on the basis of numbers, without any knowledge of how the battlefield looks or works. He also ignores the human factor, treating war as a math problem in which big numbers always win -- which, as a historical matter, is mistaken. Did the numerically stronger side win the Revolutionary War? Since 1945, it has been normal for the smaller, colonized country to defeat the larger, colonizing power. Vance's analysis also evades responsibility, as though it does not matter which side the United States took. Where his arrogance leads is the path he has in fact taken: the country that he personally thinks is stronger should win the war because that is what he thinks; if this is not happening, American power should be added to the side that he believes should be winning: Russia. His actions yesterday certainly furthered such a goal.

Also telling was the way Vance responded to Zelens'kyi's question. Vance took the position that it was better to look at the internet than to learn things in person. He started with the weird idea that Zelens'kyi was to blame for Vance's failure to visit Ukraine, because Zelens'kyi just took people on "propaganda tours." This is very illogical. It is true that Ukrainian governments accompany foreign visitors to killing sites, especially Bucha. No doubt those visits have an effect on people. But the mass killing at Bucha did in fact take place. When Vance attaches "propaganda" to the custom of visiting it, he falls painfully close to the Russian claim that the mass killing did not happen at all, and that the signs of it were staged. Because Bucha is a Kyiv suburb, and so relatively accessible for foreign delegations, it serves as a representative example of what are, sadly, many similar cases of the mass shootings of civilians. And that war crime, the mass killing of civilians, has in its turn to stand for many others, including torture, rape, and the kidnaping of children. Had Vance decided to go to Ukraine, he could have visited Bucha with or without Ukrainians, as he preferred. He could also have talked to people in Kyiv, or indeed ventured beyond, to other cities. He could have spoken to soldiers and officers in the Ukrainian armed forces. Nothing stopped him from doing so. He was, after all, a United States Senator, and then the Vice-President of the United States. He could have planned the journey as he liked, and others would have made the arrangements for him.

There is a reason that Vance will not go to Ukraine. He is an online person. Last year at the Munich Security Conference, he refused to meet Zelens'kyi, on the justification that he knew everything he needed to know already. Then he spent time on the internet in his hotel room and posted about certain adolescent concerns. This year at the Munich Security Conference it was made known that Vance would only see Zelens'kyi if the Ukrainians first signed a deed ceding much of the Ukrainian economy to the United States in exchange for nothing. When did meet Zelens'kyi, he did so surrounded by others. In the White House, yesterday, he broadcast the same fear of confronting something real. Yelling across the room to a visiting guest that "you're wrong, you're wrong" is not a sign of confidence or wisdom. Vance takes the safe course of dismissing other people rather than admitting that he might have something to learn. More important than visiting Ukraine, said Vance in the White House, was "seeing stories." It is better to take in information, as he has said, from his own "sources," those that confirm what he already thinks, than actually engaging with another country or with its people. Vance's "sources" have led him to repeat claims that originated very specifically as Russian propaganda and have been documented as such, for example the an entirely untrue claim that American aid goes to pay for yachts. Vance helped to spread this lie.

Kharkiv under Russian bombing, March 2022.

Perhaps sensing the awkwardness of his position, Vance then shifted to yelling at Zelens'kyi that he needed to thank President Trump. Zelens'kyi obsessively thanks American and other foreign leaders for their support of Ukraine. He did so during this visit to the United States as well. What Vance seemed to mean is that Zelens'kyi needed to express his thanks then and there, whenever Vance wanted, indeed right at the moment when Vance was yelling at him, and because Vance was yelling at him. Vance was demanding that Zelens'kyi thank Trump for aid that the Biden administration gave to Ukraine, and which the Trump people were threatening to take away -- and indeed at that point had almost certainly already decided to take away. The Trump policy to Ukraine, as of yesterday, was something like the following: meet with Russia without Ukraine; concede to every significant Russian demand in advance of any Russian concession and without asking Ukrainians; claim that Russia and Ukraine were jointly responsible for the war; refer to Zelens'kyi as a dictator without condemning Putin; vastly overstate the extend of previous American aid; claim Ukrainian resources as compensation for that aid. In this setting, the compulsive demand for ceaseless gratitude on demand is not only unreasonable: it shifts into the abuser's need to be portrayed by the victim as the great benefactor.

Even the press mockery of Zelens'kyi's clothing, perhaps the depths of yesterday's grotesquerie, reveals a similar disconnect from what is actually happening in the world. The implicit notion is that the people who wear suits and ties are the real heroes, because heroism consists, somehow, in always knowing how to adapt to the larger power structure and to blend it. But in history there do arrive moments when unexpected things happen and behaviors, including symbolic ones, must be adjusted. Zelens'kyi decided three years ago not to wear suits not, as was insultingly suggested yesterday, because he does not own one; and not, as was ridiculously suggested, because he does not understand protocol. Three years ago he decided that he would dress as appropriate to register solidarity with a people at war, his own people at war. This is, frankly, something that Americans should already know, rather than an appropriate subject for a question at the White House, let alone a mocking one. But it is the mockery itself that reveals an American illogic, or worse. Some Americans want to think that the most important thing is conformity, that sneering at human difference shows our own courage. Once we knew better. When Ben Franklin went to the French to ask for support during the Revolutionary War, he wore a coonskin cap, which was not comme il fallait. When Winston Churchill visited the White House during the Second World War, he wore a wartime outfit that not unlike the one that Zelens'kyi wore yesterday.

Trump similarly derided human courage when he demanded that Zelens'kyi accept that Ukraine would have immediately collapsed without American arms. That makes the Americans the heroes and Ukrainians the ones who must thank Americans on demand. It is true, of course, that American weapons have been very important, and that Ukrainians will now suffer from Trump's decision to shift American power to the Russian side of the war. But all the weapons that had been delivered by February 2022, by both the first Trump and then the Biden administrations, were obviously insufficient for the kind of full-scale land invasion that Russia mounted. The Ukrainians got weapons after February 2022 precisely because they resisted anyway.

Almost all Americans believed when the full-scale invasion began that Ukraine would immediately collapse under Russian might, and that Zelens'kyi would flee the country. But he did not. His physical courage in remaining in Kyiv, an echo of the physical courage shown by millions of Ukrainians, changed the overall situation. Because Ukrainians resisted, western arms began to flow. The courage of Ukrainians made possible an American and European policy to hold back Russian aggression. That same Zelens'kyi, the man who was brave enough to stay and lead his country when the Russians were approaching the capital and the assassination squads were already there, was yesterday made the subject of a public attempt at humiliation by Americans. No doubt Ukrainians should express their thanks to Americans. As they do. But it is illogical, to say the least, for Americans not to thank Ukrainians, or to treat their courageous president as an object of contempt. The coercive ritual of gratitude hides from Americans the basic reality of what has happened these last three years.

During this war, Ukraine has delivered to the United States strategic gains that the United States could not have achieved on its own. Ukrainian resistance gave hope to people defending democracies around the world. Ukrainian soldiers were defending the basic principle of international law, which is that states are sovereign and that borders should not be changed by aggression. Ukraine in effect fulfilled the entire NATO mission, absorbing a full-scale Russian attack essentially on its own. It has deterred Chinese aggression over Taiwan, by showing how difficult offensive operations can be. It has slowed the spread of nuclear weapons, by proving that a conventional power can resist a nuclear power in a conventional war. Throughout the war, Russia has threatened to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine, and the Ukrainians have resisted the nuclear bluff. Should they be allowed to be defeated, nuclear weapons will spread around the world, both to those who wish to bluff with them, and those who will need them to resist the bluff.

Yesterday Vance and Trump repeated familiar Russian propaganda. One example was Trump's claim that it was the Ukrainians who, by resisting Russia, were risking "World War Three." The truth is exactly the opposite. By abandoning Ukraine, Trump is risking a terrible escalation and, indeed, a world war. Everything that Ukraine has done these last three years can be reversed. Now that the Trump administration has chosen to throw American power to Russia's side, Russia could indeed win the war. (This was always Russia's only chance, as the Russians themselves well knew, and openly said.) In this scenario of an American-backed Russian victory, opened yesterday by American choices in the American capital, the horrible losses extend far beyond Ukraine. Zelens'kyi quite sensibly made the point that the consequences of the war could extend to Americans. This was, in a sense, overly modest: Ukrainian resistance has thus far spared Americans such consequences. He said so very gently, and was yelled at for it -- which is itself quite telling. The Americans have a sense of what they are unleashing upon the world by allying with Russia, and they made noise to disguise that.

The expansion of Russian power in Ukraine would mean more killing, more rape, more torture, more kidnaping of children inside Ukraine. But it would also mean that all of the strategic gains become strategic losses. Russia, rather than being prevented by Ukraine from fighting other wars, is encouraged to start new ones. China, rather than seeing an effective coalition to halt aggression, is emboldened to start wars. American endorsement of wars of aggression leads to global chaos. And everyone who can builds nuclear weapons. That is an actual scenario for a third world war, authored by the people who scripted yesterday's attempted mugging in the White House.

If one starts from the premise that the United States was engaged in a peace process, then what we saw Americans do yesterday makes no sense. The same goes if we begin from the assumption that present American leadership is concerned about peace generally, or cares about American interests as such. But it is not hard to see another logic in which yesterday's outrages do come into focus.

It would go like this: It has been the policy of Musk-Trump from the beginning to build an alliance with Russia. The notion that there should be a peace process regarding Ukraine was simply a pretext to begin relations with Russia. That would be consistent with all of the publicly available facts. Blaming Ukraine for the failure of a process that never existed then becomes the pretext to extend the American relationship with Russia. The Trump administration, in other words, ukrainewashed a rapprochement with Russia that was always its main goal. It climbed over the backs of a bloodied but hopeful people to reach the man that ordered their suffering. Yelling at the Ukrainian president was most likely the theatrical climax to a Putinist maneuver that was in the works all along.

This, of course, might also seem illogical, and at an even higher level. 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.

In the White House yesterday, those who wished to be seen as strong tried to intimidate those they regarded as weak. Human courage in defense of freedom was demeaned in the service of a Russian fascist regime. American state power was shifted from the defense of the victim to the support of the aggressor. All of this took place in a climate of unreason, in which actual people and their experiences were cast aside, in favor of a world in which he who attacks is always right. Knowledge of war was replaced by internet tropes, internalized to the point that they feel like knowledge, a feeling that has to be reinforced by yelling at those who have actually lived a life beyond social media. A friendship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, a masculine bond of insecurity arising from things that never happened, became more important than the lives of Ukrainians or the stature of America.

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 you are thinking today about how to help Ukrainians, here are some possibilities: Come Back Alive, a Ukrainian NGO that supports soldiers on the battlefield and veterans; United 24, the Ukrainian state platform for donations, with many excellent projects); RAZOM, an American NGO, tax-deductible for US citizens, which cooperates with Ukrainian NGOS to support civilians; and BlueCheck Ukraine, which aims for efficient cooperation with Ukrainian groups and is also tax-deductible.