There are explanations, yes, but there are no excuses. "Trolling" is something done by airheads with too much time on their hands, not, one would hope, by a President of the United States.
I believe the last analysis (Susan Glassner's) is correct. Ukraine IS a pawn in a global power contest, spheres of influence around the three global superpowers DO exist, and Taiwan IS in China's sphere of influence.
We may not like it, but those are facts, dictated by geography and circumstance.
You cannot change geography, but you can mitigate spheres of influence and raise the cost of aggression.
Anyone who can read a map can understand why Trump (and those around him) view consolidating US control of waters and airspace from Panama to the arctic circle (Greenland) could be strategically game-changing. Yet not a peep from the foreign policy experts in Washington.
Russia and China have for years been extending their dominion to the arctic for the same strategic reasons, while the US has done very little to counter their presence there.
China has extended its military forward-basing into the South China Sea, where it can not only launch planes and ships, but also exert control over critical shipping lanes used in inter-continental trade, and through their Belt-and-Road initiative they have established functional naval bases in South and Central America and have positioned themselves to control both ends of the Panama Canal.
Is it that hard to see what's going on here?
This is not about whether or not Trump "likes" Putin; this is not junior high school. This is a geopolitical negotiation, not about who gets Donbas. As Kissinger used to day, geopolitics is a rough game; it has nothing to do with justice, fairness, right and wrong. It is a contest of positioning, containment and dominance - pure power struggle. It is the mafia, not the Senate.
And since when do you gain the edge in a negotiation by calling your interlocutor nasty names? That was Joe Biden's approach; he didn't even talk to Putin on the phone for three years. We get it: Putin is a rat bastard. But so are Xi, Kim Jong Il, Maduro and others. Yet they exist.
It is a common tactic in finance negotiations to reduce the number of players at the table to two. The players who bring money are the ones who get to call the shots. In this case, Zellenskyy, the unelected President of a country that cannot defend its borders without massive foreign aid, doesn't get to be a player. Trump is merely making that clear.
Trump took the same approach in the Abraham Accords, for which he gets little credit. While the experts in Washington insist that no progress is possible in the middle east without a "two-state solution," Trump pushed the noisy and useless Hamas and Palestinian Authority to the sidelines and brought the monied players to the table to make a deal against a common enemy, Iran.
What does each party in this conflict need to stop a war that is costing all of them in business terms? Putin needs a way to save face if he signs a deal, Zellenskyy needs a way to stay out of exile or Russian jail and ensure there remains a sovereign Ukrain and the US needs to extract itself from an unnecessary and expensive war with a nuclear power to focus its resources on a much more serious threat in the Pacific and improve its strategic position against future aggression.
It is true that Putin is not a reliable treaty partner. Neither is the CCP, but that hasn't stopped the US from doing business with them. We needn't blunder into the same mistakes we made with China but we do need to accept the fact that a hostile Russia exists, will exist, has its own security interests and needs to be effectively contained. Ukraine is not the key to this; leverage over the Russian economy, its relationship with China and its ability to launch hypersonic missiles into the US is.
Lots of Russian and Ukrainian blood has been shed over this war for three years. One of Trump's objectives is that not one drop of American blood should be shed over Ukraine, and I agree with that.
Thank you for this comment which performs the valuable service of presenting a very different viewpoint, and presenting it well.
I have no problem with the U.S. purchasing Greenland or with countering Chinese influence in Panama. Not in the name of "sphere of influence" but in the name of serving U.S. interests.
We can do these thing without making concessions to Russia or China. Russia, in particular, has nothing to say about how we handle our own business. We don't need to grant or accept a Russian sphere of influence to protect our own interests.
Great powers may assert a sphere on influence of their own, but they don't grant other powers, especially hostile ones, a sphere of influence. We didn't grant Hitler's Germany a sphere of influence in Europe, nor did we grant imperial Japan one in Asia. Good thing, too.
Moreover, even if Trump is trying to settle the Ukraine-Russia war under a sphere of influence theory, this doesn't really explain why he's lying about Ukraine and Zelensky, which was the question I posed in my post. Trump could impose a pro-Russia settlement without making his ridiculous statements. To explain why he's making them, I think we need at least one of the other possibilities I discussed.
I agree that we are in a contest of positioning, containment and dominance against Russia and China. That's why we should, within reason, contain these rival powers and prevent them from asserting dominance, whether on a sphere of influence theory or some other pretext.
I agree, of course, that we shouldn't shed American blood in Ukraine for that purpose (or any other). But we haven't and we don't have to.
If Biden had been more aggressive in supplying Ukraine with weapons that inflict more pain on Russia, the war would likely look very different. If Trump would do this, as he said in the campaign he would threaten to do to get a fair agreement, the negotiations might well look very different.
If the Ukrainians want to fight, and if the only alternative is a favorable deal for Russia, why not help them keep killing Russians while we keep harming Russia's economy? To me that serves the interests of containment and domination better than letting Putin have a win and paving the way for future attacks on Ukraine and possibly elsewhere.
As for geography, it's obviously a very important factor in the global struggle for dominance, etc. But geography doesn't dictate Russian hegemony over Eastern Europe. At times, Russia has been that hegomon. At other times, it hasn't. The geography was the same throughout.(Even when Poland ceased to exist at he end of the 18th century and for more than 100 years thereafter, Russia was only one of three powers to get a slice, along with Germany and Austria).
Now I'll turn to your point about negotiations. Whatever might be true of business deals, successful mediations typically don't leave out one of the two parties with a direct interest in the outcome.
In international negotiations, the history of leaving players out is not pretty. Woodrow Wilson left lots of relevant parties out of the post World War I negotiations -- the ones that redrew the European map. It didn't work out well.
Neville Chamberlain left Czechoslovakia out of the Munich negotiations. We all know how that ended up.
You say Ukraine, notwithstanding its brave resistance and all the blood it has shed, doesn't deserve a seat at the table with Trump and Putin because Ukraine can't defend its borders without massive foreign aid. But Putin wasn't able to gain the upper hand in the war without lots of help from China and other enemies of the U.S.
In any case, it seems to me that your argument begs the question. If the U.S. were willing to provide aid at a certain level, Ukraine could likely defend its borders. So it's only by assuming that we shouldn't provide such aid -- which to me is a key question here -- that you reach the conclusion that Ukraine shouldn't have a seat at the table. (Trump, by virtue of U.S. aid, may have the power to dictate to Ukraine, but that doesn't mean he should.)
Trump himself said during the campaign that he would reach a compromise settlement by threatening Ukraine with a cut off of U.S. aid AND by threatening Russia with an ungodly amount of aid to Ukraine. As far as I can tell, he's following through only on the first prong.
Finally, what does Zelensky need from a settlement. You say he needs a sovereign Ukraine. I say he needs a substantial sovereign Ukraine AND guarantees that it will remain sovereign and substantial in the face of a Russia that's trying to expand its sphere of influence at Ukraine's expense.
I don't see how that purpose is served by excluding Ukraine from the table. And I think it's counterproductive to demonize Zelensky and Ukraine because doing so is likely to convince Zelensky he can't get what he needs as long as an apologist for Putin is U.S. president.
Here is another one. Trump is a loose cannon and something of a loon whose words have no connection to any real strategy and who often says the first thing that enters his mouth.
There are explanations, yes, but there are no excuses. "Trolling" is something done by airheads with too much time on their hands, not, one would hope, by a President of the United States.
Reagan trolled the Soviets with cruel jokes and his famous hot mic remark, "The bombing begins in 10 minutes." All of which put them off balance.
Reagan was joking, as you say, and everyone understood that the bombing remark was a joke.
Trump isn't joking about Zelensky.
I kind of like Barry Goldwater's remark about "lobbing one into the men's room at the Kremlin." He was probably at least half serious.
I believe the last analysis (Susan Glassner's) is correct. Ukraine IS a pawn in a global power contest, spheres of influence around the three global superpowers DO exist, and Taiwan IS in China's sphere of influence.
We may not like it, but those are facts, dictated by geography and circumstance.
You cannot change geography, but you can mitigate spheres of influence and raise the cost of aggression.
Anyone who can read a map can understand why Trump (and those around him) view consolidating US control of waters and airspace from Panama to the arctic circle (Greenland) could be strategically game-changing. Yet not a peep from the foreign policy experts in Washington.
Russia and China have for years been extending their dominion to the arctic for the same strategic reasons, while the US has done very little to counter their presence there.
China has extended its military forward-basing into the South China Sea, where it can not only launch planes and ships, but also exert control over critical shipping lanes used in inter-continental trade, and through their Belt-and-Road initiative they have established functional naval bases in South and Central America and have positioned themselves to control both ends of the Panama Canal.
Is it that hard to see what's going on here?
This is not about whether or not Trump "likes" Putin; this is not junior high school. This is a geopolitical negotiation, not about who gets Donbas. As Kissinger used to day, geopolitics is a rough game; it has nothing to do with justice, fairness, right and wrong. It is a contest of positioning, containment and dominance - pure power struggle. It is the mafia, not the Senate.
And since when do you gain the edge in a negotiation by calling your interlocutor nasty names? That was Joe Biden's approach; he didn't even talk to Putin on the phone for three years. We get it: Putin is a rat bastard. But so are Xi, Kim Jong Il, Maduro and others. Yet they exist.
It is a common tactic in finance negotiations to reduce the number of players at the table to two. The players who bring money are the ones who get to call the shots. In this case, Zellenskyy, the unelected President of a country that cannot defend its borders without massive foreign aid, doesn't get to be a player. Trump is merely making that clear.
Trump took the same approach in the Abraham Accords, for which he gets little credit. While the experts in Washington insist that no progress is possible in the middle east without a "two-state solution," Trump pushed the noisy and useless Hamas and Palestinian Authority to the sidelines and brought the monied players to the table to make a deal against a common enemy, Iran.
What does each party in this conflict need to stop a war that is costing all of them in business terms? Putin needs a way to save face if he signs a deal, Zellenskyy needs a way to stay out of exile or Russian jail and ensure there remains a sovereign Ukrain and the US needs to extract itself from an unnecessary and expensive war with a nuclear power to focus its resources on a much more serious threat in the Pacific and improve its strategic position against future aggression.
It is true that Putin is not a reliable treaty partner. Neither is the CCP, but that hasn't stopped the US from doing business with them. We needn't blunder into the same mistakes we made with China but we do need to accept the fact that a hostile Russia exists, will exist, has its own security interests and needs to be effectively contained. Ukraine is not the key to this; leverage over the Russian economy, its relationship with China and its ability to launch hypersonic missiles into the US is.
Lots of Russian and Ukrainian blood has been shed over this war for three years. One of Trump's objectives is that not one drop of American blood should be shed over Ukraine, and I agree with that.
Thank you for this comment which performs the valuable service of presenting a very different viewpoint, and presenting it well.
I have no problem with the U.S. purchasing Greenland or with countering Chinese influence in Panama. Not in the name of "sphere of influence" but in the name of serving U.S. interests.
We can do these thing without making concessions to Russia or China. Russia, in particular, has nothing to say about how we handle our own business. We don't need to grant or accept a Russian sphere of influence to protect our own interests.
Great powers may assert a sphere on influence of their own, but they don't grant other powers, especially hostile ones, a sphere of influence. We didn't grant Hitler's Germany a sphere of influence in Europe, nor did we grant imperial Japan one in Asia. Good thing, too.
Moreover, even if Trump is trying to settle the Ukraine-Russia war under a sphere of influence theory, this doesn't really explain why he's lying about Ukraine and Zelensky, which was the question I posed in my post. Trump could impose a pro-Russia settlement without making his ridiculous statements. To explain why he's making them, I think we need at least one of the other possibilities I discussed.
I agree that we are in a contest of positioning, containment and dominance against Russia and China. That's why we should, within reason, contain these rival powers and prevent them from asserting dominance, whether on a sphere of influence theory or some other pretext.
I agree, of course, that we shouldn't shed American blood in Ukraine for that purpose (or any other). But we haven't and we don't have to.
If Biden had been more aggressive in supplying Ukraine with weapons that inflict more pain on Russia, the war would likely look very different. If Trump would do this, as he said in the campaign he would threaten to do to get a fair agreement, the negotiations might well look very different.
If the Ukrainians want to fight, and if the only alternative is a favorable deal for Russia, why not help them keep killing Russians while we keep harming Russia's economy? To me that serves the interests of containment and domination better than letting Putin have a win and paving the way for future attacks on Ukraine and possibly elsewhere.
As for geography, it's obviously a very important factor in the global struggle for dominance, etc. But geography doesn't dictate Russian hegemony over Eastern Europe. At times, Russia has been that hegomon. At other times, it hasn't. The geography was the same throughout.(Even when Poland ceased to exist at he end of the 18th century and for more than 100 years thereafter, Russia was only one of three powers to get a slice, along with Germany and Austria).
Now I'll turn to your point about negotiations. Whatever might be true of business deals, successful mediations typically don't leave out one of the two parties with a direct interest in the outcome.
In international negotiations, the history of leaving players out is not pretty. Woodrow Wilson left lots of relevant parties out of the post World War I negotiations -- the ones that redrew the European map. It didn't work out well.
Neville Chamberlain left Czechoslovakia out of the Munich negotiations. We all know how that ended up.
You say Ukraine, notwithstanding its brave resistance and all the blood it has shed, doesn't deserve a seat at the table with Trump and Putin because Ukraine can't defend its borders without massive foreign aid. But Putin wasn't able to gain the upper hand in the war without lots of help from China and other enemies of the U.S.
In any case, it seems to me that your argument begs the question. If the U.S. were willing to provide aid at a certain level, Ukraine could likely defend its borders. So it's only by assuming that we shouldn't provide such aid -- which to me is a key question here -- that you reach the conclusion that Ukraine shouldn't have a seat at the table. (Trump, by virtue of U.S. aid, may have the power to dictate to Ukraine, but that doesn't mean he should.)
Trump himself said during the campaign that he would reach a compromise settlement by threatening Ukraine with a cut off of U.S. aid AND by threatening Russia with an ungodly amount of aid to Ukraine. As far as I can tell, he's following through only on the first prong.
Finally, what does Zelensky need from a settlement. You say he needs a sovereign Ukraine. I say he needs a substantial sovereign Ukraine AND guarantees that it will remain sovereign and substantial in the face of a Russia that's trying to expand its sphere of influence at Ukraine's expense.
I don't see how that purpose is served by excluding Ukraine from the table. And I think it's counterproductive to demonize Zelensky and Ukraine because doing so is likely to convince Zelensky he can't get what he needs as long as an apologist for Putin is U.S. president.
It's number 3. Personal resentments, whether justified or not, always come first with Trump.
Here is another one. Trump is a loose cannon and something of a loon whose words have no connection to any real strategy and who often says the first thing that enters his mouth.