So far in his second term, Donald
Trump has focused chiefly on destroying democracy here at home. Except with
respect to tariffs, the larger world generally—and Europe specifically—has been
spared his depraved intercessions. That ends this week, when he meets Vladimir
Putin in Alaska, and much like Hyman Roth and Michael Corleone in The Godfather,
Part II, they start slicing
up their little pieces of the Ukraine birthday cake.
When sober analysts of foreign
policy start offering their sober foreign policy analyses, they typically have
certain analytical and historical frameworks in mind—concepts like realpolitik
and idealpolitik, or whether America’s approach to a given situation should
be more Morgenthauesque
or Niebuhrian. I
still remember an old David
Brooks column from 2007 when he was dazzled that Barack Obama not only knew
who Reinhold Niebuhr was but could actually discuss his theories with subtlety.
Pundits (yes, including me), having bothered to learn about all these notions,
want desperately to employ them when the time comes.
With Trump, alas, we need to learn
to flush all that hifalutin argle-bargle down the gold-plated toilet. He looks
at the world the way a middling primate looks at the various trees of the
jungle: fruit good, poison bad. And here, with respect to the Ukraine
situation, are our president’s three simian instincts:
1. Europe bad. They’re a bunch of
commies and sissies and haven’t done anything good for the world in centuries
(as Randy Newman once
sang in jest, “Asia’s crowded/Europe’s too old”). And most of all, of
course, they’re ripping us off, which gets down to how Trump really sees the
world—it’s divided into shysters and shystees. He says he wants them to pay
their fair share of the mutual defense tab. But deep down, he surely expects
and hopes that they won’t, and he can be justified in freeing America from this
deep-state entanglement.
2. Putin good. Yes, he’s been
bad-mouthing Putin a lot lately; it’s been one of those pass-the-popcorn
moments that’s been fun to watch. But when you get down to it, he’s on Putin’s
side for very simple and obvious reasons. Putin’s tough. He knocks heads. He
knows how to deal with political opponents. Trump’s bro-love for Vlad is made palpably
evident by the very fact that Trump has invited him to the United States
for this two-way (that is, conspicuously not three-way, excluding as it does
Volodymyr Zelenskiy) summit. And not just any old United State: Alaska, the
state that was Russia before it was America. One of Putin’s oligarchs crowed
last week that Alaskans “respectfully remember their Russian past and their
Orthodox present.”
3. Ukraine weak. Yes, they’ve put
up a pretty good fight these last three years. But at the end of the day, it’s
a tiny county with a tiny army that’s eventually going to get overwhelmed. In
addition, while Trump obviously hasn’t read any of the relevant history,
someone who has read it has probably explained to him that Ukraine has been
sliced and diced over the centuries by lots of people—even by Franklin
Roosevelt, who, with Winston Churchill at Yalta, let Stalin take a goodly chunk
of what was then Poland and call it Ukraine, thus making it part of the Soviet
Union (the Ukrainian city of Lviv was, until 1946, the Polish city of Lvov).
But hey: Nothing wrong with that! Because that’s how the world works, bub. The
big dogs run the kennel. Always have, always will.
Whatever the outcome of this
process, the odds are exceedingly strong that, as long as Trump is driving it, the
end result will hew to these three instincts. Putin will get most of what he
wants. Maybe not all. Trump may force him to settle for less of Zaporizhzhia and
Kherson provinces than he wanted, just as a desperate hand-wave to the Nobel
committee. But overall, Zelenskiy will get screwed, because that’s what happens
to little dogs.
And Europe? This, in some ways, is
the most interesting—and disturbing—question of all. Obviously, to see Ukraine sold
down the river would be hideous and would mark a shameful moment in U.S.
history. But you might also keep an eye out for signs that these negotiations
may mark the beginning of the end of the U.S.-Europe 80-year entente.
Over the weekend, the leaders of
the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Finland, and the European
Commission issued a
joint statement stressing that Trump and Putin deciding things bilaterally
was unacceptable. It reads in part: “Ukraine has the freedom of choice over its
own destiny. Meaningful negotiations can only take place in the context of a
ceasefire or reduction of hostilities. The path to peace in Ukraine cannot be
decided without Ukraine. We remain committed to the principle that
international borders must not be changed by force.”
There’s plenty of language in there
sucking up to Trump, which world leaders now know they need to do as if they
were dealing with a petulant five-year-old. But the statement seems quite emphatic.
If Trump and Putin cut a deal here that excludes Zelenskiy—it may not be exactly
clear what Europe would do in response immediately, but the rupture to the
relationship would be profound.
Under U.S. law, Trump can’t leave
NATO—it would take a two-thirds majority of the Senate to accede to withdrawal.
Naturally, as soon as I typed the words “under U.S. law,” I realized how
pointless the words following that phrase might be. There’s hardly such a thing
as U.S. law anymore. There’s Trump, a nonexistent Republican Congress, and a
Supreme Court that is about 23 ticks worse than nonexistent.
We know what Trump wants deep-down.
He’s told us many times. He hates NATO. He loves Putin. He admires Orban and al-Sisi
and Erdogan and Bukele and the rest of the world’s right-wing strong men. Those,
it’s tragic to report, are the true allies of the United States of America, as
long as it’s governed by Trump; and if Nigel Farage somehow becomes prime
minister of the UK (it’s not impossible), we can add England to the list.
And as with his aggressive moves to
remake our country domestically, Trump knows he has now just three years and
change (at least, we hope) to remake the world. He’ll do things he wouldn’t
have dared do the first time around, with people like John Kelly around him. Now,
it’s fruit bad, poison good.
The post Donald Trump Is About to Do to Europe What He’s
Been Doing to America appeared first on New Republic.
