In President Trump’s recent spat with President Zelensky, along with a whole slew of falsehoods about the level of US funding of Ukraine and who started the war, Trump did make one true statement: prior to going into politics, Zelensky was a comedian. That is, he was an outsider to politics and to the horribly corrupt political system in Ukraine, which was relentlessly mocked in the comedy show in which he starred, Servant of the People (IMDb rating 7.3). In 2019, he fought against the corrupt oligarch-friendly Petro Poroshenko and succeeded on an anti-corruption ticket, running for a political party named after the TV show.
Whilst Donald J. Trump’s TV show The Apprentice (IMDb rating 4.7) wasn’t really a comedy, it was light entertainment (with its own running gag: “You’re fired!”) Like Zelensky, Trump used his TV fame to go into politics as an outsider, on a largely anti-corruption or ‘Drain the swamp’ ticket against notoriously corrupt opponents. And like Zelensky, Trump has had more than one person get close to assassinating him (although in his case they weren’t Russian special forces).
The similarities continue. One of Trump’s top political priorities has been to repel what he has described – arguably, quite accurately – as an “invasion” along the US’s southern border. Zelensky has found himself with an inarguably real one, along multiple axes. Both are, unquestionably, patriots.
Trump has been accused of having committed fraud, in separate legal proceedings shamelessly brought by his political opponents in order to get him out of the way. He’s also been accused of illegally trying to hang on to power. Zelensky has now faced similar accusations – sadly, from Trump – describing him as a dictator and claiming vast sums of US money have gone missing under his watch, apparently in order to get him out of the way, so he can make a “deal” with the next Ukrainian president to siphon off large chunks of Ukraine’s mineral resources.
Ukrainians are familiar with people trying to pinch Ukrainian industry and resources. That’s been the Russian plan for some time now, but it’s also been the case that Ukraine has had its share of home-grown oligarchs. One alleged grifter is Mykola Zlochevsky, former owner of Burisma Holdings Ltd, and currently wanted by the Ukrainian authorities for bribery. Trump might remember Burisma, the company that was inexplicably paying Hunter Biden large amounts of money for some kind of, erm, expertise. And he might also remember asking Zelensky to dish the dirt on the connections between Burisma and the Bidens – because his political opponents went through a rather silly process of trying to remove Trump from office because of it. Both have been essentially on the same side of trying to stop that kind of corruption.
However, while Trump and Zelenskyy are similar in many – sometimes superficial – respects, Trump has more in common with Vladimir Putin – even being effectively in league with him at this point – when it comes to his rampant mercantilism. He seems to approve of plans that would appear morally reprehensible or outright illegal if done in a private capacity – such as trying to extort $500 billion in protection money – so long as they’re done under colour of national interest. But Ukrainians have seen it all before.
Nonetheless, sometimes Trump’s mercantilist thinking is so radical as to be wildly, crazily brilliant. When I heard about his plan to turn Gaza into a holiday resort, and once I’d stopped laughing, I ended up thinking what an extraordinarily insightful and optimistic outlook it demonstrated. It’ll never work of course, but I love the fact that he said it, showing in one neat mental image just how malignantly destructive all the so-called Palestinian leaders have been for generations. No career politician or diplomat could ever possibly have said such a thing, and for this and in many other respects I’m grateful that Trump exists and won a second term. Good riddance to all the DEI nonsense, too, and I’m glad J.D. Vance said what he did in Munich.
However, for this free-market conservative it’s been Trump’s mercantilism and belief in tariffs that sticks in my craw. I’ll leave it to real economic thinkers to argue about the merits – or otherwise – of his worldview, but at the very least it lacks any consideration of anything other than dollars and cents. Trump was doubtless upset that Zelensky refused to sign some kind of legal or quasi-legal agreement to hand over Ukrainian mineral wealth, but he omits from his political calculation the fact that Ukraine has been systematically destroying Russian Soviet-era materiel to such an extent that the threat posed by Russia has been dramatically diminished for a generation – and at a cost of roughly 4% of the US defence budget, with much of that money either being spent on US arms production or being by way of loans, and thus potentially repayable by Ukraine. And US aid was certainly nothing like the $300 billion, or this week $350 billion, that he claims. But if Trump is insistent on repayment in addition to the strategic victory which is in his power to effect, loans of some sort would be the correct and legally-enforceable way to do it.
Of course, Trump is rightfully annoyed that the US has been paying for Europe’s defence for a very long time, and the savings have been used to pay for an over-indulgent welfare state – infantilising and enfeebling Europe. Trump, quite rightly, wants Europe to look after its own security, with a view to focusing on the bigger threat: China. However, he seems to forget that US security also depends on eliminating the threat from Russia and maintaining the rule of law, in particular the sanctity of national sovereignty and territorial integrity. It’s not merely coincidental that the forces of freedom and democracy are arrayed on one side, with Iran, North Korea (now a co-belligerent) and a sympathetic-but-careful communist China on the other. A defeat in Ukraine would be a defeat for the US and its allies, which would undoubtedly embolden its enemies. We’re not just talking about Taiwan or even the Philippines, but potentially South America, where China has been making inroads, and the rest of the world.
Unfortunately, the deeper problem with Trump’s approach is that he is making the same mistake that most recent US Presidents (and indeed most Western politicians) make when first dealing with Russia. Upon entering office, there tends to be an assumption that Russia just needs to be treated fairly, and it will respond in kind. The ‘Russia reset’ under Obama was a particularly lame and inept example of this. But Russia’s modus operandi is to make ludicrously maximalist demands, without ever expecting to get them and while lying through its teeth, before ‘generously’ reducing its demands to something slightly less comical – which it often gets without offering anything in return. Western politicians tend to learn, just before leaving office, that they’ve been made fools of. Exactly the same thing is playing out again, with Trump already conceding key points like eventual NATO membership and territory, even ending up spouting the worst vatnik drivel about Russia “deserving” to keep the Ukrainian territory it’s murderously acquired. I don’t think he’d surrender California to illegal immigrants because, you know, they’ve worked really hard to cross the border – or because it’s hard to get rid of them – and I don’t think he knows how foolish he sounds when he says such things. Russia may end up getting part of Ukraine, but it certainly doesn’t deserve it.
Nevertheless, before the election there were some positive signs coming out of the Trump camp. General Keith Kellogg, now in Kyiv, co-authored a rather good policy paper that I found myself greatly in agreement with, only differing on points related to the genesis of the conflict and the assessment of Putin’s motives – which (charitably) may have been Kellogg’s attempt to get the document a favourable hearing from Trump, but which is more likely the result of US solipsism and a genuine ignorance of post-Cold War Ukrainian politics that a disappointingly large number of Republicans exhibit. I do, however, agree with Kellogg on what needs to be done, so I will end by quoting him, and wishing him the very best of luck:
Like other NATO leaders, Biden correctly kept US troops out of the conflict directly. Biden failed to recognise until it was too late, however, that it was in America’s interests and the interests of global security for the United States to do everything possible short of direct US military involvement to help Ukraine. To promote American interests and values, President Biden should have provided Ukraine with the weapons it needed to expel Russian forces early in the war and used all forms of statecraft to end the war, including sanctions, diplomatic isolation of Russia and, ultimately, negotiations.
The main objective of military assistance to Ukraine, short of direct US military involvement, was to prevent the precedent of an aggressor state seizing territory by force and defending the rules-based international order. It also was in America’s interests to ensure that Russia lost this war because, due to Putin’s decision to make Russia an aggressor state, a defeated and diminished Russia was the best outcome for US and global security. Some believed this would prevent Russia from invading other states, including NATO members, after it conquered Ukraine. It also was likely that a devastated Russian military would allow the United States to direct its defences against China, a far more serious threat to its national security.
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