Now we’re the bad guys?

The U.S. and Russia have to work things out, but Trump is imperiling Ukraine's future.

President Donald Trump has picked a fight with the good guys, and given true tyrants a pass while holding a personal grudge against Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. His actions are imperiling Ukraine’s future. I wanted to paint a different picture here, that the U.S. and Russia have some things to work out before Ukraine can end the war of attrition it’s fighting against Russia—and Russia has never lost a war of attrition. But Trump’s idiotic war of words is making it nearly impossible to offer a rational path forward.

Nevertheless, I will try, like Don Quixote tilting against windmills. It’s not going to be easy, convincing someone like Trump not to do, let me just say it: evil.

Let me, for the sake of putting this thought out there, ignore Trump for a bit. Grant me that indulgence. While it’s troubling that Ukraine has no seat at the table in the first formal negotiations between Russia and the United States since Russia’s invasion, it’s may be for the best. And for everyone wailing that this smacks of the Munich Pact in 1938, that’s not entirely true, either.

U.S. Department of State, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

First things first. It is important for Ukraine to have a say in its own fate. Carving up and remaking nations is something that was sport for the western powers in the years when the crowned heads of Europe ruled and colonized, while armies and generals fought for empire and glory and spoils.

After WWII, such decisions were made supposedly in the interests of peace and “balance of power.” Carving up (“nation building” and “exporting democracy”) came back into vogue around the time of the Bush administrations, with eight years of Clinton’s hands-off approach sandwiched between. The more things change, the more they recycle in new forms with new labels.

We’re now back to empire-building, with Vladimir Putin acting as Czar in all but title. With the exception of the Balkans, which is a thousand year blood feud, and South Sudan, which is a colonial vestige, all of the “nation building” in the last 16 years has come from Russia and the United States. The U.S. is now out of Afghanistan and mostly out of Iraq. Russia keeps military control of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which it “freed” from Georgia; and obviously there’s Crimea, which Russia picked up without a shot in 2014, and the Donbas, which Russia called the Donestsk and Luhansk People’s Republics before annexing them to itself.

The former empires in Europe have silenced themselves in the most effective way possible: by smothering themselves with the pillow of unity. The E.U. (and even Brexit has not changed this) has tamed the nationalist instincts of European powers, though as history shows, such forced collaborations usually have a backlash of nationalist fervor, which many see coming.

We heard “Putin must be stopped!” while the U.S., under the Biden administration placed a much greater value on keeping the war from expanding out of Ukraine’s territory than actually having Ukraine win. By drips and drabs, the U.S. shelled out ammunition and money, with limitations on their use, just enough to keep Ukraine from being consumed by the Russian hordes. But not enough for Ukraine to take back its territory, which is their primary war goal.

If you want to defend that policy, fine, but do to it you have to concede that Ukraine never had the possibility of taking back its territory, even with maximum U.S. weapons and training support. Then our actions were simply to fight a delaying tactic to give—who?—time to do something about Russia. It was magical thinking, that somehow Putin would fall out of power, or the Russians would suffer such a tremendous loss that they’d stop throwing more bodies into the grinder. Anyone who knows Russia’s war history knows neither of those things was likely.

Time was always on Russia’s side. And today, Russia’s military is more effective at fighting than it was in 2023. They have more drones, more hypersonic missiles, including the reported Mach 10 Oreshnik, and a seemingly limitless supply of soldiers, if not artillery shells.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s infrastructure, under withering and continuous attacks from Russian missiles, has suffered more than $170 billion in damage, about the amount of actual U.S. aid. Things are not improving for Ukraine, but they are not getting worse for Russia, despite economic sanctions.

The winner in all of this appears to be NATO, which has gained several important members: Finland on April 4, 2023, and Sweden on March 7, 2024. The Finns are no friends of Russia. The Swedes have a capable military. The Poles, Germans, and the Baltic nations are all ready to face down Russia, but depend on the nuclear-armed America to be their bulwark against madness. The French and British are more restrained but are committed to a unified European response. It’s the U.S.A. that sets the tone, however.

Under Biden, the tone was to keep Russia contained, and to “win” (defined as “not lose”) the war, fighting to the last Ukrainian soldier. It was a white hat version of what Iran does with its proxies against Israel, they fight to the last Palestinian, but never put their own people in danger. Biden’s stance might have been good politics—Americans would not support putting our troops in harm’s way in Ukraine. But Americans do support a quick end to the war, and Trump has promised one.

If using American or NATO troops in direct conflict with Russia is off the table, and fear of Russian threats of expansion, or use of nuclear weapons, keeps us from giving Ukraine any kind of decisive advantage, from Day One of the invasion, then the outcome was sort of preordained to end this way, with a negotiated cease-fire, and Russia keeping the annexed territory it basically controlled through separatists since the Minsk II agreement was signed in 2015.

But the U.S. stopped talking to Russia at the end of 2021, so there was no basis to change the status quo. Therefore, it’s important—vital—to restart communications between Russia and the U.S. in order to set the tone for negotiations. And remember, the U.S. sets the tone.

Regarding what’s next: the European countries have all hedged at the thought of putting their forces in Ukraine as the trip-wire. The French would do it if the British participated. The Brits would do it if the Americans supported it (which, right now, we don’t) along with them. Poland said it needed its military to defend its own borders from Russia. Germany said it was premature to discuss such things. Only the U.S. is willing to sit down and talk about Ukraine with Russia.

If the conversation was between mature adults talking about real things, that would be a good start. But unfortunately, Trump had to step into it, demanding elections in Ukraine, when there have been no real elections in Russia since Putin made himself president-for-life (and even before that). The U.S. held its talks with the totalitarian Russians in totalitarian Saudi Arabia. But Trump called Zelensky a “dictator without elections” as if Ukraine is somehow supposed to have elections during a war for its own survival, while actual dictatorships get a hall pass.

You know what other country has not had elections since it’s been at war? Israel. I suppose critics of Benjamin Netanyahu could call him a “dictator without elections.” Israelis know Bibi has a time limit, and so does Zelensky with his own people. But Trump’s problem with Zelensky is personal, not rational.

It’s possible the price of ending the war with a good outcome for Ukraine might be Zelensky, who refused to investigate Hunter Biden in exchange for congressionally approved aid in 2019, leading to Trump’s first impeachment. Imagine a president so vain that he’d sacrifice an entire people to get his personal revenge.

But Trump is always very aware of the sentiment of Americans—the Americans who side with him. If Trump supporters felt that he was being too much of a Russia cheerleader, he might change his tune, but I don’t see it happening. Russia sycophants like Tucker Carlson appear to cheer abandoning Ukraine. Let me tell you what that might lead to.

First, U.S. and Russian relations might improve. Europe might follow. But Europeans will not trust Russia, leading to an uneven European arms race, and the end of E.U. suppression of each country’s nationalist tendencies. If Trump wants Europe to “pay its share” to get U.S. support, he might get his wish, but not in the way he wants. Germany might get jacked in its arm up, along with other European nations, but then the U.S. won’t have the standing we had during the heyday of NATO power. And if the U.S. needs Europe one day, they won’t be there for us. We’d be left with our “big, beautiful ocean” as our only ally.

We know that Russia won’t be there for us. Russia would side with China against us when it matters. Russia would side with barbarians, dictators and fiends like Syria’s former president Assad, who is currently living in Moscow. So the end of Trump’s strategy to end the war in Ukraine harms two parties: Ukraine, and the U.S. That’s the “deal” we’ll get if we go Trump’s way.

Adults need to sit down in the room with Russia, then involve Ukraine. Let the Ukrainians decide if they want to keep Zelensky around, but he did save their country when nobody else would (including President Joe Biden).

I fear it’s far too late to continue the war between Ukraine and Russia, with some chance of Ukraine accomplishing its war goals of restoring all its former territory. That can only happen if stronger powers decide to fight the Russians, and it won’t happen. It’s magical thinking to believe we can keep the current course and produce victory against Russia.

But it’s not magical thinking to negotiate with Russia for the purpose of containing them later, and keeping them from trying again what they wanted to do in February, 2022. It’s also not magical thinking to take the position that one man—Zelensky—must be sacrificed for Ukraine to survive. No, that’s not at all an illogical position. But it is putting on the black hat, and being the bad guy. It is evil.

President Trump, for once, don’t go in for the kill shot. Don’t do something evil. It’s a very slippery slope for America’s “golden age” once you don the black hat of being the bad guy. That hat gets comfortable fast.

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