One sentence says it all

A couple of months ago, Donald Trump boasted he would end the war in the Ukraine “in one day. I would tell Zelensky, no more [aid]. You got to make a deal.”

Anyone who hopes for the Ukraine’s victory must tremble at the prospect of another Trump presidency. Such a hopeful person, however, should tremble just as much at the prospect of another Biden presidency.

Either candidate will spell bad news for the Ukraine, inasmuch as she depends on US aid. Biden’s policy of drip-feeding armaments and munitions clearly comes from his reluctance to see the Ukraine win. He’ll do the bare minimum to show that America is on the side of the PR angels, but that’s all he’ll do.

Whether this policy comes from cowardice or from a gross misunderstanding of Russia’s threat is open to conjecture. What is clearcut is that the Biden administration doesn’t feel that the Ukraine’s victory is a matter of vital national interest for America. Or else it cares less about America’s vital interests than about its own, which is to stay in power for another four years.

In any case, picking on Biden ill-behoves a sporting man. Throughout his half-century in government, he has never risen above mediocrity, and that’s on a good day. Trump is a more inviting target, mainly because of the exorbitant claims made by him and about him.

To paraphrase Tolstoy, every man is a fraction where the numerator is what he is and the denominator what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction, and in Trump’s case it’s minute.

I can’t recall a single president in my lifetime who has inspired so much fanatical love in some and fervent hatred in others. I feel neither extreme, though when I look at Biden as the alternative I become better-disposed towards Trump. If I could still vote in US elections, the choice would be a no-brainer.

Having said that, Trump displays a concentrated version of many qualities I despise in a man and fear in a leader. The sentence above serves up a perfect illustration.

It’s a cliché to describe Trump as a self-aggrandising narcissist, but he gives other self-aggrandising narcissists a bad name. First, he knows he is omnipotent, and he doesn’t care who else knows it. Hence his boast that he could end in one day a war that has been going for almost two years, or actually 10, if we count from the annexation of the Crimea.

Second, he clearly sees life in purely transactional terms, as a series of ‘deals’. This is sheer vulgarity, which shouldn’t unduly surprise anyone. Trump, after all, is an exceedingly vulgar man, which is largely the nature of his appeal to the broad masses who see his vulgarity as a redeeming counterpoise to his wealth.

But when it comes to geopolitics, Trump’s faith in the power of a deal betrays not only his vulgarity but also his smug ignorance. For a deal presupposes a compromise, a bit of give and take, you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.

That sort of thing works in commerce, where both parties are usually driven by nothing but pecuniary interests. However, when one country commits an unprovoked aggression against the other, making it hang on for dear life while its towns are razed, its infrastructure is wiped out, its civilians are murdered, tortured, looted and raped, the stumbling block has nothing to do with money.

The choice is between the attacked nation’s life or death, and there is no possibility of compromise built into that dichotomy. That’s how Ukrainians see it, and hence that’s how Zelensky has to see it: unlike Russia, the Ukraine is a functional democracy.

Then notice that Trump’s idea of ending the war is twisting Zelensky’s arm: “You got to make a deal” or no more aid. That’s how one talks to the party that started a war, not to one on its receiving end. How about telling Putin he has to make a deal? After all, Trump has always expressed his unreserved admiration for the ghoul in the Kremlin, a feeling that has been gratefully reciprocated.

Trump doesn’t seem to realise – or pretends not to realise – that Putin didn’t pounce on the Ukraine like a rabid dog because he wanted some mythical deal. The only deal he would accept is extinguishing the Ukraine’s sovereignty and turning the country into a part of Russia or at least her satellite.

Even if Zelensky agreed to freezing the war in the present position, Putin wouldn’t even consider such a ‘deal’. He wants to rearrange the post-war world order of which NATO has been the guarantor. Putin has always portrayed the war as one against NATO, not just one against its proxy, the Ukraine.

Neither would such a deal be possible for Zelensky. Delivering a third of his country’s territory to Russia is worse than just accepting defeat. It’s accepting the Russian boot stamping Ukrainian national pride into the dirt. Anyone who thinks any such thing is possible may not know that Ukrainians fought a guerrilla war against the Russians for at least 10 years after the Second World War – against prohibitive odds.

Many Westerners readily agree that nations or races are perfectly justified in feeling resentment against, and seeking restitution for, oppression they suffered centuries ago. Yet some of the same people refuse to accept that Holodomor, the systematic and deliberate starving to death of millions of Ukrainians by the Russians in my parents’ generation, has left no lasting scars.

Take the word of someone who doesn’t just know Ukrainians from hearsay: it has. Even back in the ‘60s, I remember how Ukrainian Soviets resented Russian Soviets – long before Russia became a fascist state and the Ukraine a free one. More to the point, before the Russian fascist state perpetrated the new, current round of unspeakable atrocities against the Ukraine.

Note also the method by which Trump proposes to force Zelensky into a deal: blackmail. If he doesn’t play along, no more aid – fend for yourself, see if I care.

That’s the talk of a self-obsessed bully, not of a statesman. But the Ukraine doesn’t strike me as an easy mark for bullying.

If he gets re-elected, Trump should think twice before trying to withdraw all American aid for the Ukraine. That could end up meaning withdrawing America from her present position as the Leader of the Free World. If Europe takes up the defence slack left by the US (which I think it should do one way or the other), America’s claim to that status and the benefits it confers would be weakened.

If you surf the Internet for comments made by the MAGA lot, you’ll see a ubiquitous leitmotif: what matters is what Trump does, not what he says. That would barely be true even about you or me. But anyone who says that about the leader of a major nation doesn’t understand that every word uttered by such a man constitutes a deed.

So yes, in the early stages of Putin’s aggression against the Ukraine, Trump did supply a few Javelins to the Ukraine, had a few Wagnerians killed in Syria and acquiesced (not without some kicking and screaming) to the first batch of sanctions against Russia.

But that was before the full-blown war started in February, 2022. It’s anyone’s guess whether Trump would have sustained the aid for the past two years, even at the miserly level delivered by Biden. My guess is that he would have thrown the Ukraine to the wolves, but, that indeed being a guess, I wouldn’t insist on it too passionately.

His words are the only thing we have to go by. And when they form a sentence like the one above, they really tell us all we need to know.