The Trump Turn

A new page in the playbook for Ukraine?

I need to make one correction to my analysis yesterday. This concerns my comment that President Trump would be losing control over the conflict in Ukraine. After pondering this for a day, I have come to something of a different conclusion. However, before we go there, we need to acknowledge that his prior policy line in Ukraine has been a failure.

This is because President Trump did not acknowledge the deeply entrenched nature of the conflict, which goes back at least to the annexation of Crimea by Catherine the Great in 1783, after she won the Russo-Turkish War. Then we can move on to Holodomor, which many historians view as a man-made famine, effectively a genocide by Josif Stalin, starving millions of Ukrainians. Nazi-German troops marched into Russia in Operation Barbarossa through Poland and Ukraine (and Finland) in June 1941. These latter two events are defining in the current conflict.

Dr. Nicolai Petro, a Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island and probably the leading expert on Ukraine, noted in a Neutrality Studies interview that:

Petro emphasizes that these far-right nationalist factions are not merely fringe elements but are well-armed and deeply entrenched within Ukraine’s power structures. They have, time and again, demonstrated their ability to derail political decisions through intimidation and violence. He points to the Minsk Agreements as a prime example—both President Petro Poroshenko and President Volodymyr Zelensky initially pursued peace negotiations, only to backtrack under pressure from nationalist groups that refused to accept any compromise with Russia.

President Trump failed to understand, at first at least, that A) President Zelenskyy cannot seek peace because it would most likely get him killed (he is in an impossible position) and B) the de-Nazification aim of the SMO (Special Military Operation) launched by President Putin is real and based on reality in Ukraine. For some reason, the fascist factions were never obliterated in Ukraine, like they were in other European countries. The removal of their power is a prerequisite for ending the conflict in Ukraine. This is the main message of Dr. Petro.

It has now been over 24 hours without a comment from President Trump concerning the Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s ‘nuclear triad.’ This was a U.S. ally attacking the nuclear arsenal of the world’s largest nuclear power (with a tiny margin, but still). Shouldn’t the U.S. president be commending/condemning such atrocities?

This would be the case in a normal scenario. But this is not a normal scenario. I am thinking that this is a new page in the playbook of President Trump, which implies that retaliatory actions by Russia will not be condemned either, unless they target U.S. assets (which they definitely will not). Let me explain.