Keepin' It Real

The first four months of the Trump restoration have exceeded everyone's expectations for no other reason than it has shifted the conversation. The bad guys are still battling everything in the courts and Congress, but unlike the first time, Trump seems to have a plan, and he has been aggressive in executing it. As a result, he has been setting the agenda rather than the bad guys. The one place where he is failing is with Ukraine, where it looks like he has painted himself into a corner.

When Trump came to power, the choices with regards to Ukraine were to either abandon the whole thing and get blamed for tanks in Kiev or continue the Biden policy and get blamed for tanks in Kiev. To his credit he tried to shake things up by talking directly to the Russians and bypassing the snakes in the foreign policy community while doing it, in an effort to reset the board. Clearly, the snakes and the bad guys did not see that coming, so they were unprepared for it.

The problem is that the facts on the ground have not changed, so there is no deal Trump can make with the Russians to end the war. Zelensky will never do any peace deal as that means the end of him. The nationalists in Ukraine will never accept a deal, which is why Zelensky cannot do a deal. The Europeans seem convinced that peace in Ukraine means the withdraw of America from Europe, so they are fighting like hell to keep the war going, even as it harms their positions.

Now it seems clear that the Russians have understood from the start that Trump was never willing to break with the Europeans or take on the crazies in Washington who created the Ukraine mess. They were happy to talk with him, but they knew there was nothing he could offer them, as he was simply unwilling or maybe unable to do what is necessary to get a deal done with them. That means peace comes when Ukraine can no longer fight and the Russians dictate terms.

That is probably why Trump is so angry. He probably understood his dilemma, but for some reason thought he could charm his friend Putin into yielding on some things in order to get a deal done. This was a serious error. Russians have been known for centuries as unyielding negotiators. They never trade what they have for something they already have or are about to have. They always deal from their interests, never personal vanity or out of a need to get along.

The best example of this is the Hitler-Stalin pact. Stalin was a Bolshevik, and he detested the fascists, but Russia was not ready to fight the Nazis, so Stalin did a deal to buy time, even if it meant doing a deal with the hated Nazis. Stalin was also willing to make deals with the capitalists, because it served Russian interests. The point here is even at the peak of their ideological fervor, the Russians still did diplomacy like Russians, which means in the interest of Russia.

For some reason Trump and Witkoff seemed to have thought they could talk the Putin government out of being Russian, but now they are finding out that their charm offensives changed nothing. The position of the Russians has not changed with regards to Ukraine and the West. They want Ukraine as a demilitarized, deradicalized neutral state with no connection to NATO. They will get that at the bargaining table, or they will get that on the battlefield.

Trump also suffers from the fact that the rest of the world no longer trusts Washington, no matter who is in the White House. The thing many Americans struggle with when it comes to foreign policy is that the same people who have been lying to us for decades have been lying to the world. The people who ran the Biden admin were not suddenly honest when it came to diplomacy. The American political class lies about everything to everyone, even themselves.

In a way, Trump and his team are the new management of a company that used to be a dominant player in the market but after years of mismanagement is now in trouble, which is why there is new management. They can go to their customers and promise things will change, but the customers are under no illusions that new faces will solve the problems of the company. In fact, the new promises after years of broken promises just raise more suspicions about the company.

That is probably part of Trump's frustration. He is being treated by world leaders as a guy who lies all the time, when he is not the guy who did the lying. It is the other side of being an American. There are good things that are associated with being an American, things like confidence and risk taking. The other side of the coin is the bad things, like dishonestly and unreliability. It is why the only thing worse than being the enemy of America is being the friend of America.

Even though there are hints of realism creeping into official foreign policy discussions, we remain a long way from a realistic foreign policy. Trump and his team are still making the mistake of thinking the world looks at America as the good guy, the white hat trying to make the world a safer place for democracy. In reality, the rest of the world views America as either a thumbless clod or a perfidious troublemaker. The Russians lean heavily toward the latter type.

Ironically, Trump finds himself in the inverse position as his hero Ronald Reagan at the end of the Cold War. Regan would say, "Trust but verify" when dealing with the Soviets, on the grounds that the West kept its word. It was assumed that the communists would cheat, just like they did at the Olympics. Now the roles are reversed, and it is the Russians who assume they will keep their end of the deal, but it is the West that will eventually break the deal.

This is the reality of late empire America. The emerging world order where major regional powers work to keep the peace is the result of the lone superpower failing to hold up its end of the bargain. The alien weirdos who gained control of foreign policy traded American respect and credibility so they could seek revenge on their ancient enemy to the east. The result is America has a lot of work to do in order to restore her reputation and that will require a mighty dose of realism.