Trump’s critics give him too much credit. He’s neither evil nor calculating. He’s an impulsive power monger who’s obsessed with two things: not getting ripped off and closing deals. He got elected in large part because he convinced enough voters that it was high time America stopped getting ripped off, and given that he’s an expert in the field of ripping off, people bought it.
Now his two brutal traits have come together to trigger a looming geopolitical crisis with Russia, Ukraine and the West.
He sees Ukraine as taking $100 billion from America and giving nothing in return except a devastating war that never ends. He sees Europe in much the same way— weak countries that don’t pay their way and depend on America to police the world.
Because his giant ego revolves around making deals, Trump sees the clear aggressor, Russia’s Putin, as someone who can give him the deal he wants—an end to the war. It doesn’t matter if Ukraine and Europe get the shaft. In Trump’s world, the victory is all about ending the war.
But what price glory? When a huge Trump supporter like Mark Levin turns on you, you know something’s off. The Fox News host is not alone. Many conservatives, including prominent thinkers like Douglas Murray, have expressed alarm at the moral inversion of turning against Ukraine.
In any case, Trump’s irresponsible embrace of the Russian tyrant is leading his country into a moral abyss and an abandonment of what has made America great.
That America was described heroically by President Ronald Reagan in France on June 6, 1984:
“The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity,” Reagan said. “It was the deep knowledge that there is a profound, moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. The strength of America’s allies is vital to the United States, and the American security guarantee is essential to the continued freedom of Europe’s democracies.”
That kind of grand historical reflection does not mix well with Trump’s craving for quick results. Because he can’t see beyond his restless need to make a deal, he ends up treating evil dictators like allies and aspiring democracies like annoyances.
Ironically, there is a place for Trump’s instinctive worldview, but only if handled responsibly and judiciously, which is hardly his thing.
“The global position of the US after 1945, and then after 1989, is over and never coming back,” Andrew Sullivan writes on his Substack. “And so a retrenchment of the US position was inevitable at some point: a more judicious approach to interventionism, a greater balance with the allies, a pivot toward Asia and away from Europe and the Middle East: responsible, realist re-positioning.”
Sullivan concedes Trump is right that “the Ukraine conflict is at a stalemate; the human toll is vast, unimaginable, and mounting every day; there’s no chance of repelling Russia from its current occupation.”
But Trump is too impatient to drive the hard bargain Sullivan says would “ensure a stable, new border and an independent Ukraine, with security guarantees against any future invasions from Russia.” Instead, Trump is barreling towards a deal where “the Russians get American sanctions lifted, re-entry to the G-7, vast new oil revenues, and a chance to take all of Ukraine next time.”
So far, we have no idea if Trump is asking Putin for any concessions. As Abe Greenwald writes in Commentary, “Are there any Russian-held areas that Putin is being asked to give up? And at the very least, can we demand the release of the thousands of Ukrainian prisoners of war taken illegally by Russia? How about freeing the estimated 20,000 Ukrainian children who have been kidnapped and reprogrammed as Russian soldiers? Or can we get a promise that Putin will release some of the Russian political prisoners who’ve been sentenced to decades in jail for speaking out against the invasion? We’ve heard nothing.”
In a pessimistic scenario, it’s possible to draw a line from Trump’s coddling of Putin to a corrosion of the very foundations of the West.
“By the West,” Sullivan writes, “I mean the idea that the democracies that beat the Nazis and outlasted the Soviets were and are instinctively America’s friends…that the world is divided between autocracy and democracy, and that although we need to deal with tyrants realistically, and accept limits on our power in this new multipolar world, we are still emphatically the leader of ‘the free world.’”
Trump can’t quite grasp big ideas like the “free world.” He’s more comfortable with a transactional world where “nothing is free” and if you want anything from America, it’s gonna cost you.
“Make America Great Again” was always conditional on the meaning of great. Trump never told us it didn’t include maintaining America’s global leadership as a champion of freedom.
Of course, it’s always possible that a lucky and improvising Trump will somehow find a fair and enduring deal to end a horrible war. We should all hope for that.
But if our impulsive dealmaker-in-chief continues on his current track to elevate evil countries like Russia to make them great again, more and more of his voters will indeed feel they got ripped off.
