Donald Trump is doing everything he can to help his friend Vladimir Putin prevail in Russia’s three-year long invasion of Ukraine and unfortunately it’s working on the battlefield.
Following the infamous Oval Office ambush by Trump and Vice President JD Vance of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the U.S. suspended military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine, followed in short order by even commercial satellite support, a decision one Ukrainian officer has said already led to “hundreds of dead” as Russia uses the opportunity to pummel them.
This certainly does make an imminent end to the war likelier, but with Moscow’s victory, not in a negotiated settlement way. These actions have hampered Ukraine’s capabilities to the point that it has weakened Kyiv’s leverage and negotiating position and made it more likely to essentially lose outright, which is an outcome that Trump increasingly seems to be publicly open to, or at least indifferent about. There are a few potential explanations for this, none of which are good.
Perhaps Trump genuinely wants to aid Putin, either because the Kremlin leader really has some direct sway over him or Trump simply admires the despot and his consolidation of power.
Perhaps it’s exclusively because Zelenskyy just did not prostrate himself sufficiently enough at Trump’s feet, and in the only language Trump understands he has to be the “winner” or the dominant party in any exchange.
Perhaps Trump quite simply does not care or even understand why supporting Ukraine in its efforts to defend itself from the unprovoked invasion is both a correct moral and practical choice.
What seems to have most set Trump off during his Oval Office tantrum was Zelenskyy’s suggestion that the U.S. might be sitting pretty now but would feel the impact of an emboldened and aggressive Russia later on. Trump interrupted him, yelling “you don’t know that” and “don’t tell us what we’re going to feel.” He seems to believe, for whatever reason, that Putin could prevail in Ukraine, surely supercharging his designs against the rest of Europe — our longtime allies as well — and that none of this is going to blow back on the United States.
Already, irreparable harm has been done. In addition to the lives lost and at risk in Ukraine as the U.S. pulls back on critical military and intelligence supports, even if Ukraine receives an outpouring of support from the rest of Europe and continues to hold its own and eventually prevail, the trust and cooperation painstakingly built in the decades of the post-WWII order will have collapsed, torpedoed by Trump in less than two months.
We are pleased to see that wiser leaders in France, Germany, the U.K. and elsewhere are waking up to the reality that there’s no U.S. cavalry over the hill and they must beef up their own intelligence and military capabilities, though they will have to do so fast.
In this version of the future, though, it is not all of us together, like it was in the aftermath of 9/11, the only time that NATO’s Article 5 was invoked and our allies came to our assistance when we were attacked. In this version, the U.S. is an adversary, and we’ll all be worse off for it.
