The Grand Illusion
Last Friday, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance browbeat Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the oval office and and attacked him for being ungrateful, as well as blamed him for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
What Trump, Vance, and the MAGA Republicans (who all fell into line behind Trump like the good little sycophants they are) seemingly forget is that the Russia/Ukraine conflict has never required the U.S. to put troops in the field, unlike all the other wars in which we’ve been involved. Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians have never asked for troops, only for weapons and equipment.
Trump (et al) also ignored the horrific acts continuously perpetrated by Russian troops, not to mention the prolonged drone attacks on civilian populations, and kept claiming that Zelenskyy wasn’t properly grateful. Shortly after that, CNN aired a montage of more than thirty separate occasions over the past three years in which Zelenskyy offered lengthy public thanks.
As usual, Trump made a raft of lies and misstatements, as is his wont, but when Zelenskyy attempted to set the record straight, that apparently offended Vance. No matter that both the British Prime Minister and the French President had to correct Trump as well when they met with him.
To date, Ukraine has lost 46,000 soldiers in combat, with 380,000 wounded, and suffered 40,000 civilian casualties, including 12,000 documented deaths, of which at least were 600 murdered children. In addition, Russia has illegally kidnapped nearly 20,000 children.
Russian military death claims total 85,000, and the Russian casualty figures are at least 500,000 and could be as high as 875,000. If I wanted to be purely mercenary about it, I could point out that we made a very good investment in supporting Ukraine, just because of the military and economic burden our aid imposed on Putin, all without costing an American life.
All Trump and the Republicans are concerned about are dollars, but the total of U.S. military aid sent (as opposed to that appropriated for possible use) to Ukraine amounts to some $120 billion, while European governments have supplied $140 billion – figures very much at variance with those incorrectly claimed by Trump.
But Zelenskyy clearly wasn’t subservient enough to Emperor Trump. But why should he be? He’s speaking on behalf of a nation that’s suffered roughly 60,000 deaths and half a million casualties from a Russian invasion, while Trump is demanding that Ukraine surrender to a despot so that the U.S. can save less money than it wastes annually (according to Trump), while claiming the U.S. is sending far more assistance that it actually has.
All this suggests that we’ve got an ignorant bully in the bully pulpit.
This past weekend I had a 77 year old Vietnam veteran complain that Zelenskyy was responsible for the war and that it’s his fault for the war dragging on and costing the lives of so many people. From what I could gather, his premise was that they had no hope of winning against Russia and should have never resisted in order to prevent the deaths of so many.
I decided not to engage him further in the conversation for obvious reasons, but I was still floored that someone could come to this conclusion. That’s when I realized that this was not the product of independent thought but simply the current narrative being handed out.
It now feels like a sci-fi novel where the main character is the only one that isn’t being mind controlled and how difficult it is to navigate societal interactions. I just never wanted to be in one of those novels…
I think the only way for Zelensky to ‘win’ in this exchange is to cut the Trump administration out completely. I believe he has started down that road by immediately meeting with the UK and French governments post WH affair. Now, what will the US conservatives say when those much coveted mineral rights go either to the EU or eventually to Russia and China should a peace deal (with good security assurances) be brokered without the US being involved? The US does not have extensive sources of rare earth – containing ores that are necessary for high tech manufacture. So, it really seems very stupid to put that at risk for the sake of ‘sticking it to Ukraine’.
And, from what I’ve read about the military equipment sent by the US to Ukraine, a lot of it was older and would have had to be scrapped in the near future. The money was mostly spent on US arms manufacturors for new equipment for the US army to replace the old equipment that was sent overseas.
So the US army got their equipment replaced/upgraded earlier than planned, and US arms manufacturers got lucrative contracts from the US government to do so, boosting the US economy – but the full cost of that early replacement strategy is counted as ‘money sent to Ukraine’, even though people in the US profited by it as well.
It was helpful to get the equipment to Ukraine faster by doing it this way, but that was not the only consideration for why the money was spent in this way.
The White House row clearly showed the two visions of how this war ends; Trump wants peace now, Zelensky and Western Europe want victory, at least eventually, since the continual demonization of your opponent – justified or not – means only that you want to win not to negotiate. I strongly believe that each side has the right to act on their conviction, so Trump immediately ceasing any and all military aid (including intelligence etc) to Ukraine and normalizing relations with Russia is as legitimate as Ukraine wanting to fight supported by the Europeans only and escalating the conflict by consfiscating all Russain assets there etc. I may or may not agree with the former decision, but I think Trump as President is allowed to make it and this I think ultimately what the row is – while the US has accepted the legitimacy of Trump, I think Europe and Ukraine are still in denial and believe that the Democratic-leaning bureaucracy (DC is 92% Democratic voting) is still in charge. Looking through this prism, the row is a continuation of Trump policy to assert his Presidential rights and only Congress and to a very limited extent the Courts can limit that, but not Zelensky, Europe, the bureaucracy etc
You’ve outlined the views on both sides fairly accurately, but you’re way off on the political leanings of the DC government bureaucracy. As a long-time registered Republican who worked as both a Congressional staff director and as a political appointee at the U.S. EPA, in my experience, the career staff in the federal bureaucracy is more like 60/40, i.e., 60% inclined Democratic, 40% Republican.
I think it’s beyond disingenuous to lay it out as “Trump wants Peace and Zelensky wants Victory.”
That paints it as Trump trying to mitigate death while Zelensky is out to “Win”.
But that’s not accurate, is it? Because Trump wants Russia to come away with the prizes they want and the atrocities they committed ignored. Zelensky wants Russia to get out of his country and not take anything that belonged to Ukraine.
Let’s make a REAL simple analogy here.
Every day a bully steals lunch money from a kid. The kid eventually starts fighting back but isn’t really able to do so as well as needed.
So the Principal comes along and says “We need to stop fighting, violence is never okay. You two need to just agree to leave each other alone.” The Bully agrees but the victim says “If he gives me my money back and stays away from me, sure.”.
You’re claiming the Principal is “against violence” while they’re actually teaching the bully he can get away with it. Meanwhile you’re claiming the victim is out for “Victory” when he just doesn’t want to lose what is his in the first place.
Look at the bigger picture, too. Can Ukraine rely on the US? Clearly not. So, what should the Baltic states, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Germany, Taiwan, South Korea, and others do, if they want to stay free?
The likeliest way to keep Putin off your land is to be a nuclear state. What are the odds for massive proliferation?
That leads to another problem. From Russia’s point of view, if a non-nuclear state that is a realistic potential adversary is getting close to gaining nuclear capabilities, the best course is a massive preemptive (non-nuclear) strike to destroy those capabilities, with the stated goal of “preventing nuclear proliferation”. And you have the direct threat of going nuclear if the non-nuclear state retaliates.
@Conrad, if Trump is saying he wants peace now, it looks like he doesn’t mean a real reliable peace, just ‘peace for now’, a pause for Russia to rearm so it can attack again, while Trump can claim he negotiated a peace (by giving the agressor everything he wants, in return for a truce or a treaty. Russia has already broken such treaties and agreements multiple times in recent years, as soon as they’ve rearmed and recovered enough to start again, so relying on them keeping such a promise now, without further serious guarantees and consequences, is incredibly foolish of any world leader. Trump even admitted tgat Putin has repeatedly broken such treaties in recent years, but says he wouldn’t this time because he’s dealing with Trump now. Who believes that, with all the previous examples, and no guarantees?
When Putin spent Trump’s previous term building his army for the big push to take over Ukraine, after he’d promised not to do so when Ukraine was pressured into ceding Russia the Krim because Europe and the US wanted peace instead of supporting the country that had been invaded. Ukraine is not falling for that trick again, and neither is most of Europe.
One would expect the president of the USA, long seen as the most important leader of the world, to have some grasp of international politics and the consequences of his actions.
Instead he was behaving like a bully and a gullible fool with no notion of recent history or longer term geopolitical consequences, not looking beyond immediate personal gain for those billionaires who would get to exploit Ukraine’s extorted natural resources.
Trump does have the right, conferred on him by the US voters and the Supreme Court, to follow any whim that strikes him, unless perhaps Congress occasionally manages to act like the checks and balances intended at the founding of the USA, which doesn’t ook likely at the moment.
But that doesn’t mean that saying Trump wants peace now and Western Europe only wants eventual victory and does not want to negotiate is a factual representation of the situation. Western Europe does not want any invaders of our neighbors to be rewarded with even more territory, when it has been demonstrated a few times already that such concessions lead to further agressive invasions and bombardments. If Putin were willing to stay inside his Russian borders and stop bombing former USSR vassal states to annex them again, and solid military backstop guarantees were negotiated to make sure he would be forced to keep his word this time, Europe would be willing to negotiate that. Appeasement of aggressive dictators by giving tgem whatever they want has been proven not to work, including with Putin in the last 20 years, and is thus not a viable negotiating strategy. Being clear-eyed about that is not the same as being unwilling to negotiate.
As I understand it, the ‘bully’ position is that there wouldn’t have been a war if Ukraine had surrendered as soon as Russia first invaded in 2014.
On that basis, surely the USA should now be part of Canada, rather than the other way around? They did occupy the White House, which is further than Russia has got in Ukraine.
PS: no-one has done more to unify the Canadian public than the Donald. The outrage covers the whole political specturm