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It is often said that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing repeatedly and expecting different outcomes each time. Yet, the sobering legacy and lessons of interwar appeasement evidently fall on deaf and ignorant ears in the corridors and offices of Washington DC today, as the Trump White House shamefully pivots toward facilitating and rewarding the barbaric aggression from the Kremlin.
In a similar piece in October 2022 toward the start of the war in Ukraine, I wrote that the conflict would ultimately be a litmus test for contemporary Western resolve and strategic resilience as a collective force, with the outcome contingent on NATO’s willingness to support Kyiv in financial and material terms for as long as it takes to repel Putin’s illegal invasion.
With the third anniversary of the Russian invasion tomorrow and an unsustainable and imposed resolution to the conflict now on the horizon, the West has unequivocally failed this test. More specifically, the United States has unilaterally betrayed Ukraine and desecrated its population’s courageous sacrifices and in turn thrown wider Europe to the proverbial Russian bear.
Far from being confined to the borders of Ukraine and the Donbass or indeed even continental Europe, the devastating consequences and precedents set by the past months will surely ricochet around the globe for decades to come and embolden autocratic actors from the Taiwan Strait to the Baltic States, the Caucasus to the Senkaku Islands, Tehran to the thirty-eighth parallel.
Contrary to near-unanimous expectations that a full-throated Russian invasion would rapidly seize Kyiv and topple the Ukrainian government and in a testament to the bravery, persistence and sacrifice of the Ukrainian people, the Kremlin’s aims have been forced over the three years to morph from occupying the entire country to then clinging on to its land corridor that stretches from Kherson to Luhansk Oblast, to now imposing a form of peace onto Ukraine that legitimises Russia’s illegal annexations, norm-shattering use of force and crimes against humanity – with such an agreement aided and abetted by Vladimir Putin’s new co-conspirator in the Oval Office.
After the mobility of the initial invasion crystallised into a stalemate, you may have noticed that the conflict in Ukraine zipped in and out of the headlines only sporadically – yet it has been a near fixture in them over the past four weeks as the second Trump administration continually grossly undermined Zelensky and sells out Ukraine’s warriors to Moscow.
This is not a coincidence. Once a swift and decisive early victory eluded it in spring 2022, the Kremlin laid the groundwork for a protracted conflict and shifted its lightning strategy to the long-term tactic that has characterised Russian military strategy throughout history – attrition – and banked on a Trump return to office to stab Ukraine in the back where it most hurts by removing or impossibly conditioning further material aid and twisting Kyiv’s arm into a peace on Russia’s terms.
That is precisely what has now transpired, and in such a short time frame.
Without mincing words, in just a few short weeks Trump has completely betrayed Ukraine and Europe, preferring the company and false cooperation and promises of autocratic actors – for whom he continues to show an alarming drooling obsession and admiration for – over the closest and most effective long-standing cooperative bilateral partnerships and multilateral alliances the United States has ever known across Europe and NATO. All in an apparent pursuit of reciprocated respect and fawning fealty from the likes of Vladimir Putin. We all remember the love letters to Kim Jong-Un in his first term that undermined American and Indo-Pacific security.
From encouraging Russia to ‘do whatever the hell they want’ to any NATO country that doesn’t pay enough by his arbitrary standards as the Republican presidential nominee, reiterating his willingness to withdraw the US from NATO as President-Elect (which would have utterly disastrous consequences for all of Europe but particularly those states bordering Russia), and now as President again shamefully declaring that Volodymyr Zelensky is a ‘dictator without elections’ and that Ukraine started the war with Russia, Trump has consistently parroted Kremlin narratives around the conflict.
There has not been a Ukrainian presidential election since 2019, but Ukrainian martial law – which the country has been under since Russia’s invasion for security purposes – does not permit elections. This is not to mention that any such poll would be exploited and unduly influenced and distorted by Moscow to generate their preferred result and that the logistics of organising such a secure vote; when over a million Ukrainians are fighting on frontlines far from home and a further 11 million Ukrainians have been displaced by the conflict either internally or who have fled abroad it is impossible. As President Zelensky acknowledged last month, ‘if we suspend martial law we will lose the army, and voting without the military is dishonest’. Trump will inevitably have been told all these simple facts, but if there is one thing his stints in politics have shown over the years it’s that he doesn’t let the truth or morality, however inconvenient for him, get in his way.
Indeed, the further irony in Trump lecturing anyone on the sanctity of elections and the democratic process after inciting a murderous insurrection at the United States Capitol to remain in power after losing a fair election is not lost on me either.
Zelensky is not a ‘dictator’ for delaying elections until after such an existential conflict ceases (in November 2024 all political parties in Ukraine’s parliament supported deferring them), and indeed it is commonplace for embattled states. The United Kingdom, for example, did not hold a general election between 1935 and 1945.
Whilst Trump’s first term was certainly characterised by a short-sighted transactional foreign policy that put Trump and his personal interests above national security interests, the first month of his second term has been beyond even many Western security analysts’ worst fears and a total embrace of Russia and acceptance of its butchery in Ukraine. Trump’s rhetoric and behaviour is a reprehensible and unforgivable insult to both the estimated (as of December 2024) 43,000 Ukrainians killed and 370,000 wounded since February 2022 defending their country’s sovereignty and their own individual freedom and democracy, but equally to the 407,000 Americans and millions of Europeans that gave their lives to relegate fascism to the dustbin of history in the Second World War.
Trump has excluded Ukraine and the rest of Europe from US-Russian peace talks in Saudi Arabia, selling out the continent. No peace agreement, on any terms, that aims to end the war in Ukraine is sustainable or legitimate without Ukrainian input and genuine agreement free of coercion – it would otherwise merely amount to a ceasefire that would enable Putin to replenish his forces and try again at another opportune moment. Trump has been trying to impose an unrealistic and exploitative mineral resources agreement on Zelensky, taking advantage of Ukraine’s vulnerability without American assistance, and Trump has even demanded that Ukraine pay the United States reparations amounting to a staggering £400 billion for the aid it has given to Kyiv during the war. For perspective, that sum is a greater proportion of Ukraine’s GDP than was demanded in reparations from Germany at the Treaty of Versailles after the First World War. It is nothing short of a betrayal.
The current Trumpian form of ‘America First’ retrenchment foreign policy (a euphemism for a unilateral abdication of hegemonic responsibility in international affairs), I would argue fundamentally misunderstands the basis of American power. Clearly unbeknownst to Trump or contemporary Republicans, American strength and power aren’t derived from throwing its weight around on its own on the world stage to bully states into getting its way, that is unsustainable and alienating and only accelerates American relative decline. The ubiquitous anti-Americanism and backlash to the Iraq War and George W. Bush from much of the developed world in the mid-2000s shows you that much.
Rather it comes from being the largest and strongest spider in an extensive web of alliances and synergic partnerships with other liberal democratic states, working closely together to combat the global issues that typically transcend national borders, be it the interdependence of the global economy, climate change, the common threat of illiberal dictators, public health, and so on.
The United States – if it wishes to remain a Western hemispheric hegemon with the preeminent leadership role it has occupied since 1945 – must remain deeply engaged in global affairs and more specifically remain a champion, along with its European and other Western allies, for democracy and freedom. Indeed, it cannot be cutting and running from Western-aligned states that come under brutal assault from dictators seeking to dismantle that same stabilising system of rules and norms.
Trump’s rhetoric and demands are ludicrous and a monstrous betrayal that represents the end of America being a reliable and close partner to Europe (at least for the next four years) in standing up to illiberal autocracy and championing the timeless cause of liberty. He befouls the ultimate sacrifice and intrepidity of the Ukrainian people and has set horrifying precedents for other emboldened dictators seeking to revise the global order and long-standing norms on use of force and crimes against humanity. Ronald Reagan, a figure Trump has long cited as a source of inspiration for him, would be rolling in his grave.
Image: President Donald J. Trump and President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation hold a working lunch, Shealah Craighead, 2018//PDM 1.0
In the lead-up to the First World War the politicians of Europe and Britain failed the people they were supposed to represent .
Sadly we’re having a re-run, is this the result of 80 years of peace?