Trump wants Russia to win. Simple enough. He favors dictatorship over democracy and is switching sides in the conflict.
Trump favors a policy of spheres of influence. He believes Russia should dominate Europe, China should dominate Asia, and the US should dominate the Western Hemisphere. Hence he is giving Putin Europe as his plaything.
Trump is trying to win Russia away from its alliance with China. By siding with Russia, he seeks to engineer a split and ally with Russia against China.
Trump is a Russian agent. He is deliberately trying to weaken US power to benefit his paymasters in the Kremlin.
I suppose we can't rule out any of the above. Certainly I think some of these viewpoints exist among Trump's advisors. In particular, the tech bro crowd, including JD Vance, do seem to unambiguously favor Russia over Ukraine and want to see Russia win.
But after watching Trump's crazy flip-flops, I am beginning to think we should consider that his motives are considerably less strategic, shorter-sighted, and more self-centered.
Look at the record. First, Trump said he saw no reason to support Ukraine at all and called Zelensky a dictator. Lindsey Graham approached Trump and suggested that we would benefit from alliance with Ukraine because of its rare earth minerals. Trump then demanded a highly one-sided agreement offering nothing in return, while the Ukrainians offered a largely meaningless deal. As Zelensky headed to the White House to sign the deal, Trump denied having called him a dictator. My thought at the time -- he's lying, obviously, but if pretending to believe his lie is the price of his support for Ukraine, so be it.
Then came the blow-up on national television, and Republicans all lined up to applaud Trump for standing up to a foreign leader. My thought at the time -- this was staged for a domestic audience, to tell Republicans that the new party line is to drop support for Ukraine and they had better get in line. And so it seemed as Trump cut off weapons and intelligence sharing.
Then Russia subjected Ukraine to its worst one-day bombardment yet and Trump called for "sanctions," an empty threat since we have essentially no trade left with Russia. The only sanction that can matter is aid to Ukraine. My thought at the time -- if there is anyone left who is sane and has Trump's ear (Lindsey Graham, maybe?) maybe they can suggest resuming at least defensive intelligence sharing. And, indeed, the Trump Administration appears to have recognized that depriving Ukraine of its ability to protect itself from bombardment is not a good look and hastened to give assurances that it had halted only offensive and not defensive intelligence sharing. Was that true? Who knows. My thought at the time -- if Trump could reverse under public pressure on tariffs, spending cuts, and federal layoffs, might he susceptible to pressure on this, too?
And then Trump resumed assistance to Ukraine after it agreed to support a 30-day truce. My thought -- how for how long?
So what are Trump's motives? None of the above really make much sense. So let me offer another possibility. I think Trump wants to be the hero of the day by ending the war, get a big, showy peace signing ceremony, and maybe even win the Nobel Peace Prize. In all fairness to Trump, many other Presidents have had similar motives in the past. The difference, which John Bolton has pointed out (alas, can't find link!) is that Trump sees foreign policy solely in terms of personal relationships. He assumed that the easiest way to a peace agreement was to ask his friend Pooty what he wanted and put pressure on those nasty Ukrainians to agree to it. The problem -- Pooty doesn't want peace just to do his friend Donny a favor. He wants to win.
How Trump will handle that is anybody's guess.
No comments:
Post a Comment