332 - Appeasement: The Selling out of Ukraine is Underway, Unless...

If you wish to curry favor with Putin, or if you are already in cahoots with him, then you are prepared to sell out Ukraine and to tell your henchmen to trash whatever negotiating leverage the world's sometime dominant world power still possesses. You can even instruct your vice-president to extoll fascist political movements throughout Europe and tell your unqualified new secretary of defense publicly to deny Ukraine membership in (and the protection of) NATO. This is all upside down, and not how best to keep America great or restore any greatness that may have been lost.

Putin and China's Xi Jinping welcome the trashing of USAID and European democracy, for it serves their pretense of providing help to Africans and Asians and moving closer to Europe. It also materially assists China's competition with the U. S. in far off places like Africa south of the Sahara. Diplomatic initiatives from Washington (and collaboration in the UN) are vitiated by sabotaging USAID, and by calling its dedicated workforce criminal and lunatic. Already, Sudan has granted Russia a naval base along the Red Sea despite anxious U. S. objections.

Putin and Xi further welcome Vance's praise of the political extreme right in Germany, Serbia, Slovakia, Hungary, and France. Those authoritarian outposts all prefer good relations to Putin, embrace Chinese factories in Europe, and welcome immigration cutoffs instead of the nurturing of democracy. They prefer giving Russia what it has taken from Ukraine and what Russia might try again to grab even after a treaty or ceasefire immensely favorable to Putin is brokered by Trump and his acolytes.

Ironically, as eastern European leaders say, “Putin has failed. He planned a three-day special operation [in Ukraine], and now instead of that, he’s waging a third year of war with no strategic breakthroughs... Now he wants to get results during the negotiations that he did not get during the war.” Why should Washington prop up Putin's losing gambit? It makes no sense, but very little that Trump does is sensible or worthy. He speaks often of "common sense," those are code words for destruction and retribution.

There is another, radically unexpected, result that Trump could embrace. Since he is known (heaven forfend) to be seeking a Nobel Peace Prize, my wild fantasy is that Trump suddenly realizes that his only conceivable path to such a goal includes being bold, imaginative, and statesmanlike in its pursuit. That is, by switching from knee-jerk anti-wokism and the decimation of our overseas knowledge base to exerting (not diminishing) a positive role internationally, Trump could gain respect and credibility and cease being derided as bumbling and purely self-interested.

Here is what he could do to create sustainable peace in Ukraine (still my fantasy): He could emphasize America's historic role as the defender of freedom everywhere and our hostility to fascist rule in Europe. Trump could tell Putin (first privately and then in public) that he (Trump) was ordering him to pull his troops back into Russia and was prepared to broker a war-ending agreement. That would mean Trumping taking credit for calling off the war and, in order to obtain a Nobel Prize and general acclaim, to bully Putin into relinquishing at least half of the Donbas to Ukraine, plus approving its entrance into NATO. There would be some tough haggling over Crimea and reparations, but if Trump really wanted the acclaim of the world, he would have to condemn Russia as the aggressor. He would have to scold Putin. He would have to alter the articulated anti-Western utterances of his vice-president and secretary of defense.

Readers rightly will see these approaches as highly implausible. Leopards don't change their spots, and Trump is the narcissistic animal he has always been. That characteristic will blind him to appreciating how by standing up to Putin, instead of dancing the toyi-toyi with him, he could elevate himself to a higher plane of esteem. Europeans would love it and him more. Crucially, too, if Trump backed Ukraine and Zelensky with appropriate cries of "freedom!" he could in fact elevate these United States to greatness. The course of human history would be altered and Trump could get what he desperately wants -- global popularity and resumed greatness for the U.S. under his presidency.

Trump is erratic and impulsive enough to move forward with such an unexpected departure from what we could call his "norm." But my fear and my readers' expectations are that Trump admires Putin and other strong men too intensely to realize what his better policy options might be. Indeed, having unleashed the inner prejudicial hostilities of Vance and Hegseth, and given our intelligence oversight to the thoroughly compromised Tulsi Gabbard, Trump might now be unable to rein in the many coaches of distress that pull endlessly at the traces of prejudice.

As Nicholas Kristoff wrote yesterday, “This is a question not of ideology but of power grabs: Leftists eroded democracy in Venezuela and Nicaragua, and rightists did so in Hungary, India and (for a time) the Philippines and Poland. The U.S. is the next test case.” And, he goes on to say, Republicans in Congress are supine.s

Our enemies and those who threaten the continued greatness of these United States rule China and Russia (and North Korea). They are not the European, Asian, or Western Hemispheric countries that are our proven allies. Yet, to help Putin and Xi and so as to demonstrate that he is a big man, Trump wants to hammer our friends with punishing tariffs. He calls them reciprocal, which is propaganda. He also empowers Musk to destroy the greatest and most loyal civil service in the world, all to the blasting beep of Russian produced falsehood-purveying videos on social media and, especially, on X.

Maybe, as I hinted at the beginning of this Newsletter, Trump really is in cahoots with Putin. Or at least seeks to curry favor. Woe to us. Goodbye to the greatness of our country, its constitutionalism, and the meaning the republic itself.

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