Donald Trump and his Ukrainian bête noire

Over 15 months have gone by since Donald Trump and J. D. Vance bushwacked Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, where the two subjected him to a verbal mugging because he was unwilling to let Vladimir Putin have more of Ukraine in exchange for a US-brokered peace deal that might have earned the man responsible for it a Nobel Peace Prize. Given the unpleasant circumstances in which he suddenly found himself in, Zelenskyy handled himself very well, which is more than can be said about the duo who berated him for his alleged ingratitude; the obnoxious behaviour of Trump and Vance did absolutely nothing to improve their international reputation.

Since then, events have gone Zelenskyy’s way. Instead of caving in under Russian pressure, as the US president evidently hoped would happen, Ukraine has taken the initiative on the battlefield. It has managed this even though the United States, which under Joe Biden had sent it billions of dollars in financial aid and supplied it with large amounts of defensive weaponry, withdrew much of its support and in effect forced the Europeans to provide the money and arms Ukraine desperately needed. In itself this was not enough to change the course of the war, but it did give the Ukrainians an opportunity to make the most of their notable technological ingenuity and courage.

To the evident bewilderment of Putin and his generals, Ukraine has managed to revolutionise warfare which, until further notice, is likely to be dominated by cut-price drones. For months now, they have been slaughtering Russian soldiers in their tens of thousands at such a rate that they cannot be replaced quickly enough by new recruits. Until very recently, Putin could take it for granted that his country’s traditional way of war, which is based on having an endless supply of hapless young men who could be thrown into the “meat grinder,” coupled with a willingness to endure a casualty rate that no present-day Western democracy could tolerate for a single moment, would end up prevailing. Hard as it must be for Putin to understand, this is no longer the case.

In military terms, Ukraine has emerged as the most powerful country in Europe. To conserve its ability to dissuade would-be aggressors, NATO now needs Ukraine far more than Ukraine needs NATO. For Trump and Vance, this must be a sobering thought. In that set-to in the Oval Office, they could comfortably assume that Ukraine and, for that matter, all Western European  countries, including France and the United Kingdom with their slimmed-down military forces, were completely dependent on US largesse. This would have remained the case had it not been for the tactical and technical innovations that have enabled the Ukrainians to start regaining territory from the Russian invaders.

While all this was going on, Trump blundered into a quagmire of his own making in the Middle East. Like Putin when he decided to carve up Ukraine, Trump fully expected that the special military operation he had in mind would take only a few days though – unlike his Russian counterpart – he was obliged to take into account the number of casualties it would entail. This no doubt is why he still remains reluctant to “put boots on the ground” even though by now he must suspect that his unwillingness to do so means that his operation is bound to fail.

Despite the crushing military superiority over the Islamic Republic of the US Armed Forces and those of Israel, by ruling out the physical occupation of at least some parts of Iran, such as the coastal area near the Straits of Hormuz as well as inland regions near Isfahan where that enriched uranium he wants to get his hands on lies buried deep underground, Trump has let the Revolutionary Guard off the hook so they can tell the world they are winning the war against both the “Great Satan” and the “Little Satan.”

Of course, this could change very quickly. Trump certainly does not want to be seen as a “loser.” Presumably he would like to go down in history as a Churchillian figure who rallied the West in its hour of need against the ruthless foreign tyrants and their traitorous “progressive” allies back home who were determined to bring it down. That will be why last year he did his level best to humiliate Zelenskyy; in his view, the Ukrainian president was usurping a role he wanted for himself and so needed to be taken down a peg.

If that was what Trump had in mind, he did not succeed. Over the last few months, Zelenskyy’s prestige has increased to such an extent that many Arab states have asked him to help them fend off the drones and ballistic missiles the Iranians keep firing at them; while the US can sell them defensive missiles, they cost many times more than the often equally effective Ukrainian devices and software Zelenskyy has on offer.

Hard as it is for Trump to stomach, Zelenskyy has greatly distinguished himself as a war leader. In this department, he outshines all his contemporary rivals. As for Trump, unless he is very lucky, he could find his name permanently attached to a deal with the Iranians that will bring to mind the 1938 Munich agreement between the UK and Nazi Germany, with him in the unappealing position then occupied by Neville Chamberlain. Any agreement that leaves Iran with the wherewithal to put together a nuclear weapon, whether this year or in the not too distant future, would be an absolute disaster for the rest of the world. So too would one that leaves its proxies intact in Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen.

When Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu decided to attack the Islamic Republic, they evidently hoped to bring about regime change, but as the difficulties began to mount Trump, who is more interested in his own poll ratings than in anything else, started wavering. However, while from his point of view it would be unfortunate if an effort to put an end to an extremely dangerous apocalyptic dictatorship cost the Republican Party a large number of votes in the midterms, it would be even worse for him – and for a great many others, beginning with the overwhelming majority of the Iranians – were he to come to the conclusion that it would be in his interest to appease the bloodthirsty Jihadists that have them, and, it would seem, the world economy, at their mercy.