Donald Trump is like one of those Roman emperors who everyone hated at the time but historians later admit was prophetic. His advice on Ukraine is to paint Chinese flags on F-22s and bomb Russia. That’s classic Trump: mad, bad, ironic and insightful, because while we want to help, we also don’t want to get hurt. So could we let Beijing take the rap?
The case against Trump is that his bizarre outbursts emboldened Moscow, by flattering Putin and diminishing Nato. He was even accused of threatening to withhold military aid from Zelensky to force him to dish any dirt he might have on the Biden family’s business dealings, earning himself a congressional impeachment. So universal was the perception that Trump was in bed with Putin that, on holiday in Moscow, I spotted a t-shirt that read “Donald Trump: Making Russia Great Again”.
Nevertheless, Putin took Crimea in 2014, under Obama, and invaded Ukraine in 2022, under Biden, so it’s reasonable to guess that this invasion wouldn’t have happened under Trump because it didn’t.
Trump says this is because he told Putin he was ready to drop a bomb on Moscow (“he sort of believed me like 5 per cent or 10 per cent – that’s all you need”), which is embarrassing if a lie and terrifying if true, but it does fit with the substantive record of his administration.
Obama resisted sending lethal aid to Ukraine; Trump did so. From 2017-19, the Trump administration carried out 52 policy actions against Russia, ranging from sanctions to military action against Putin’s client Bashar al-Assad. When Assad used chemical weapons under Obama, America did not reply with force. When he tried the same trick under Trump, Trump hit a Syrian airbase with 59 tomahawk missiles. Separately, US commandos engaged directly with Syrian soldiers and Russian mercenaries. The details were classified but the President bragged about it at a fundraiser.
Trump called out the bad; he mocked the pretensions of the good. At the 2018 Nato summit, he demanded that his allies spend more on the military and pointed out that they were buying energy from the very country, Russia, that they expected America to protect them from. The West wasn’t just sanctimonious, it was cheap and greedy, and its decadence was sapping its deterrence.
In that policy area, Trump, despite being labelled an isolationist, stood in a long line of Republicans who asserted the best way to avoid a fight is to signal to your opponent that if they lay one finger on you, you’ll break their nose.
By contrast, does anyone doubt that Biden’s incompetent withdrawal from Afghanistan encouraged Russia to try its luck? Weakness escalates tensions; politicians typically try to extricate themselves from the resulting crises through over-reaction – to bomb North Vietnam or surge troops in Iraq – and now there is talk of imposing a no-fly zone over Ukraine. If we don’t do it, says Zelensky, we are complicit in the murder of citizens. His anger is righteous. But the same Westerners who tell us Putin is insane and desperate can’t then advise us to risk nuclear war with him. When a house is on fire, we try to put it out: we don’t show our solidarity by burning down the whole street.
Another common notion is that the Ukrainians are defending the universal principle of “democracy”, when what they’re really fighting for is their homes. That’s a noble cause and we’re right to back them, but Trump regarded such ideological abstractions as artificial, expensive and best avoided. All nations are in competition, he would argue, regardless of political system, and their goals are shaped by history and geography. Russia wants, and will always want, a buffer zone to the West. Trump had no problem with that, in theory, and it was a mistake to needle Moscow with the threat of Nato extension.
Yet for America to be great, its overtures towards friendly nations, including Ukraine, must be respected, and its sense of right and wrong flattered. Given the obvious blow to Pax Americana that the invasion has inflicted, it’s hard to imagine that a second-term Trump would have tolerated it.
We’ll never know. But we have learnt that the president of the day is the real deterrent, and Biden couldn’t deter a troop of delinquent Girl Scouts.
Late-stage Covid
Last week I tested positive for Covid, and the funny thing about getting it at this late stage is that nobody else cares.
Six months ago, if I told people I had the coronavirus, I could expect a candlelit vigil and Clive Myrie shouting questions through my letterbox. Today, concern is so low that people are surprised I’m concerned. I’ve spent two years railing against Covid rules but now I’ve got it myself, I’m minded to obey them (to protect others) – and yet friends who once hid in terror of infection are of the view that I’ve been laying it on thick to get a week off work.
A friend came to visit. He insisted he enter the house. He agreed, if I felt strongly about it, that I could open a window “to let the Covid out”, but as soon as I did so, he moved away and sat closer to me. He was thinking of his health: “If I sit in a draft,” he said, “I’m liable to catch a cold.”
