Trump is angry because he has been taken for a fool. Putin does not respect him.
Putin feels no great affection or affinity for Donald Trump
Tom Arms | London
For East Europeans the overriding emotional issue is fear. Through the centuries Russia has proven itself to be a bad neighbor.
The Baltic States alone had more than 130,000 people arrested and sent to labor camps in Siberia. Their language and customs were suppressed and their countries were turned into KGB-controlled Big Brother informer societies. These events are well within living memory.
Unsurprisingly, they are taking the lead in calling for the toughest measures to support Ukraine and oppose Russia.
The further west one travels the more fear is replaced by the less tangible concerns such as freedom, democracy and the rule of law v autocracy and might is right. Big states like Russia must not be allowed to go about invading smaller states like Ukraine. If Putin is permitted to succeed then there will be dire consequences for the entire world.
This values-based assessment was the driving force behind President Joe Biden’s policy towards Ukraine and Russia. In addition, he was terrified that too much support for Ukraine could lead to a nuclear holocaust. Russia, does, after all, have the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. Vladimir Putin’s thinly veiled threats to use his deadly arsenal fuelled those fears.
Donald Trump shares Biden’s terrors of nuclear war. In March he said: “This (the Ukraine War) could lead to World War III, very easily… because of nuclear weapons.” When Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky visited Trump, the US president shouted at him: “You are playing with World War III. You are playing with nuclear weapons.”
Read: Trump accuses Ukraine’s Zelenskyy of harming Russia negotiations
What Trump does not share with Biden, nor any of his NATO allies, is a respect for democracy and the rule of law and the need to defend it against autocrats such as Vladimir Putin. No, in Trump’s words, Putin is “a smart guy. I mean he’s got great control over his country.”
According to Trump, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was “genius.” And, of course, “Putin would never have invaded Ukraine if I were president. We respect each other.” Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy to everywhere, said that the Trump-Putin relationship is based on “personal affinity.”
It is the words “respect” and “affinity” That are at the nucleus of Trump’s apparent change of heart towards Putin and Ukraine. They are also the reason that it won’t last.
In several long and cordial telephone conversations, the Russian leader has repeatedly pledged his desire for peace and an end to the war. Each phone call has been quickly followed by massive missile attacks and deaths of Ukrainian women and children.
Trump is angry because he has been taken for a fool. Putin does not respect him. Putin feels no great affection or affinity for Donald Trump. He is using the American leader’s need to be seen as a great man to pursue his own agenda in Ukraine. Yes, he is a “genius,” but not in the way Trump sees him.
So, has Donald Trump finally awakened to the threat that Putin poses? No. He remains oblivious to the danger to democracy and rule of law that is personified by Vladimir Putin. Probably because he has no concern for those values. His only interest is that he—Donald Trump—has lost face.
Yes, he has agreed to send Patriot missiles and other weapons to Ukraine. But they are not a gift. The Europeans are paying America and then gifting the weaponry to Ukraine (“that’s just good business”). And he has refused to say when and how much.
As for the threatened 500 percent secondary tariffs on anyone who buys Russian oil and gas. Well, that is another TACO (Trump always chickens out) threat. The markets know it. The Russian stock exchange rose 2.7 percent with the issuance of the threat, and oil prices dropped.
The wizards of Wall Street know Trump cannot follow through on the secondary tariffs. They would destroy important trade negotiations with India and China and send prices at the American petrol pumps soaring. There would be a MAGA revolt.
Putin is almost certainly laughing at the Trumpian threats. Trump’s past pronouncements on the Russian leader have damaged his credibility and that in the end the US leader will almost certainly return to his policy of doubling down, chickening out and blaming everyone except himself.
Trump is piqued. He has taken Putin’s missiles as a personal attack on him. That is no way to run a 21st century foreign policy. Diplomacy should be based on national interests rather than personal interests. It needs a set of values that transcend party squabbles. The problem is that Donald Trump has no values.
Read: Trump’s policies could drag out the war in Ukraine
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Tom Arms is foreign editor of The Liberal Democrat Voice. He is also a regular contributor to “The New World” (formerly “The New European”) and the author of “The Encyclopedia of the Cold War” and “America Made in Britain.”
