THE PUTIN APPEASEMENT PLAN

The 28-point Trump peace plan for Ukraine, as leaked to the public last Friday, would have been better named The Putin Appeasement Plan. The so-called peace plan, as leaked, might as well have been authored by the Kremlin (and perhaps was).

In fact, at the start of talks between US and Ukrainian officials this week in Geneva, Secretary of State Marco Rubio ended up having to deny that the Russian government had anything to do with drafting the plan.

Summed up briefly, the plan’s talking points—which were clearly unacceptable to Ukraine, and would be to any country that had been the victim of such massive foreign aggression, and that had fought as long, as bravely, and as hard as Ukraine has—included measures that would basically have tied the hands of both Kyiv and the leaders of Europe, while opening the way for further expansionist aggression by the Putin regime. Indeed, if it is true that the document—reportedly leaked to the press by an official of the Ukrainian government—was  formulated solely on the suggestions and demands of President Donald Trump and his Secretary of State (“Little”) Marco Rubio, then these two top-ranking US officials should, from here on out, be considered Russian agents.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed satisfaction with advances made in the Geneva talks on November 23^rd and 24^th and the Trump administration and Ukrainian delegation released a joint statement expressing optimism when the preliminary talks ended.

According to that statement, “Both sides agreed the consultations were highly productive. The discussions showed meaningful progress toward aligning positions and identifying clear next steps. They reaffirmed that any future agreement must fully uphold Ukraine’s sovereignty and deliver a sustainable and just peace…
Ukraine and the United States agreed to continue intensive work on joint proposals in the coming days. They will also remain in close contact with their European partners as the process advances.
Final decisions under this framework will be made by the Presidents of Ukraine and the United States.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky

It was obvious to everyone, apparently, except Trump that the original 28-point plan wasn’t going to fly. At least not with Zelensky…or the EU…or, it would seem, either of the two main US political parties.

First, from what we know about the original document—the terms of which continue to be re-discussed, not only Ukrainian land illegally annexed and militarily usurped by Russia, but also parts of Ukraine’s territory that Russia has yet to be able to successfully wrest from the hands of its rightful owner would be summarily handed over to Putin.

Second, if some sort of peace deal were reached (by some miracle), Ukraine and the world would simply have to take Moscow’s word with regard to not only the future security of Ukraine, but also of the rest of Eastern Europe. Ukraine is a key piece in the European security puzzle, and, according to Trump’s plan (which was never consulted with the EU), neither Europe nor NATO would be able to post troops in Ukrainian territory as a guarantee against future Russian aggression.

Third, not only would Ukraine be forbidden from having European troops on its soil, but it would also be required to reduce the size of its armed forces, and of its cache and variety of weapons, with long-range arms capable of striking back against Russian aggression being specifically prohibited.  

Fourth, the resulting treaty would have ensured that Ukraine could never become part of NATO—a stipulation that flies in the face of the best interests of both Ukraine and the rest of Europe.  

Fifth, Ukraine would have received no US military aid, meaning that its only supply of additional war materiel would have to come exclusively from Europe.

Trump had originally given Ukraine an ultimatum to accept the US deal by Thanksgiving (that’s this coming Thursday). Trump told White House reporters that President Zelensky could either accept the US deal, or continue to “fight his little heart out”.

Following the leaking of the so-called plan, the Trump administration came under withering attack from Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike.

Former Senate Majority Leader and senior Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said:  “Putin has spent the entire year trying to play President Trump for a fool. If administration officials are more concerned with appeasing Putin than securing real peace, then the President ought to find new advisers.” He went on to say that, “Rewarding Russian butchery would be disastrous to America’s interests…And a capitulation like Biden’s abandonment of Afghanistan would be catastrophic to a legacy of peace through strength.”

The chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS), warned that, “This so-called ‘peace plan’ has real problems, and I am highly skeptical it will achieve peace. Ukraine should not be forced to give up its lands to one of the world’s most flagrant war criminals…Vladimir Putin.” Wicker added that, “Any assurances provided to Putin “should not reward his malign behavior…in particular, any suggestion that we can pursue arms control with a serial liar and killer like Putin should be treated with great skepticism.”

Republican Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska accused the Trump administration of trying to force Ukrainian capitulation. Specifically, he said, “They’re pushing a surrender plan on Ukraine…It looks like Russia wrote it.” He opined that, “In the war between Ukraine and Russia, the first to surrender was America…This will be President Trump’s legacy if he forces this surrender plan on Ukraine.”

Reiterating Bacon’s sentiment, Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD) said, “They want to utilize it (the 28-point plan) as a starting point…It looked more like it was written in Russian to begin with.”

On the other side of the aisle, ranking Senate Foreign Relations Committee member, Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), said, “This is a Russian proposal … There is so much in that plan that is totally unacceptable.” She went on to say that, instead of acquiescing, the US should “put pressure on Putin, provide long-range weapons, impose secondary sanctions…and force Putin to the table for real negotiations…We should not be representing Russia’s interests in this agreement.”

So one-sided "Little" Marco had to publcly
deny it was penned by the Kremlin.

Maine Independent Senator Angus King succinctly said that, “It rewards aggression. This is pure and simple. There’s no ethical, legal, moral, political justification for Russia claiming eastern Ukraine.” King added that, in talking to Secretary Rubio, he had concluded that this was “not the administration’s plan,” but more like a “wish list of the Russians.” 

These opinions were echoed by the  Royal Institute of International Affairs, a London-based think-tank better known as Chatham House, whose  stated mission is "to help governments and societies build a sustainably secure, prosperous, and just world." Criticizing the Trump plan, Chatham House foreign relations experts posited that it read “more like a demand for capitulation than a peace deal.” They highlight that many of Russia’s long-standing war aims were fully baked into the proposal, including territorial concessions, limits on Ukraine’s military, and constraining its sovereignty by, among other things, dictating when elections would happen there.

Chatham House also warned that Trump’s plan would weaken Ukraine’s long-term deterrent capabilities by restricting its military and future NATO prospects. The think-tank’s experts pointed out that, bottom line, without strong, legally binding security guarantees (comparable to NATO’s Article 5), Ukraine’s future protection remains uncertain.

Virginia Democrat, Senator Mark Warner, made the point, on Fox News (of all places), that the draft plan was “total capitulation (and) a historically bad deal, rivaling Neville Chamberlain giving in to Hitler before World War II.” He argued that many of its terms—territorial concessions, military reductions, barring Ukraine from NATO—“are likely to make Xi Jinping happy, just like they make Vladimir Putin happy.”

His reference to the appeasement of Hitler at the start of World War II was spot on, but not original. From early on in Trump’s presidential career, observers have repeatedly mentioned Trump’s almost slavish appeasement of Putin, comparing it to Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler. Among other places, the danger of appeasing the Russian dictator was made clear here, in A Yankee At Large,  back in early 2022.  https://yankeeatlarge.blogspot.com/2022/03/appeasement-history-repeats-itself-in.html

That danger remains, despite reported advances in the Geneva talks, particularly because Trump has repeatedly proven himself  not to be a trustworthy negotiator—when the chess game doesn’t go his way, he simply kicks over the chess board, and can never be counted on to keep his word. The comparison with Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler with the terms of Trump’s original “peace plan” was stunning, since there are major parallels between the two men’s actions.  

In the late 1930s, rather than confronting Hitler militarily, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain made concessions to the German strongman, most famously in the Munich Agreement (1938). This pact between Britain and Germany allowed Hitler to annex the Sudetenland (a region of what was then Czechoslovakia) in exchange for a promise of what was called "peace in our time" (basically a vow from Hitler that he could annex Czech territory if he would go no further).

Chamberlain’s motivation was that his country had been deeply scarred by World War I, giving rise to strong pacifist sentiment, fear of another devastating war, and a hope that reasonable negotiation could avert conflict. But the British PM was completely misjudging Hitler—much as Trump has Putin since 2016.  There was simply no way that Hitler’s territorial ambitions could be quelled by limited concessions, or that he would not risk a broader war if given some of what he wanted. Many international affairs analysts also believe this to be true of Putin, who, they indicate, is bent on returning Russia to the power it wielded under Stalin and the Soviet Union, or to even before that, when it was still the czarist Russian Empire.

By giving in to Hitler’s demands, Britain (and France) signaled to him that aggressive expansion would be rewarded. This emboldened Hitler to push further. This policy weakened the deterrent effect of collective security. Rather than a unified front standing up to German expansion, appeasement led to fragmentation and uncertainty.

In the end, Chamberlain’s gamble failed. With each concession, Hitler gained new strength, and the following year, Germany invaded Poland, leading directly to WWII.

To understand the comparison, you need only look at what Trump’s 28-point plan included: namely, a freeze on the front lines roughly where they are now, meaning Russia would forestall further military advances but retain control over significant occupied territory; reduction of the size of Ukraine’s military; the relinquishing of Ukraine’s NATO aspirations; the lifting or easing of sanctions currently enforced against Russia, and only the weakest of security guarantees for Ukraine against renewed Russian aggression.

Zelensky needs full EU support

Critics argue that the spirit and original letter of Trump’s proposal rewards Russia for its war of aggression on Ukraine, and punishes (rather than standing up for) Ukraine for so nobly and fearlessly defending itself against a superior military aggressor.

After seeing the terms of a truly terrible plan, any improvement negotiated will tend to look better. But that doesn’t guarantee that a clearly Russian-prone US administration will eventually agree to throw out the 28-point plan entirely and forge a deal that will be frankly advantageous to both Ukraine and Europe as a whole, which are clearly the aggrieved parties in Putin’s unprovoked aggression and expansionism.  According to the US Council of Foreign Relations,  “This plan comes at the worst time for Ukraine and its partners,” adding that, “at minimum, Russia will try to put the blame on Ukraine for preventing peace in the eyes of Trump.” The CFR points out that, “Territorial concessions…the international recognition of this territory as Russian …would surrender Ukraine’s most formidable defenses.”  The CFR adds that, “The entire agreement is structured to work via incentives and carrots with Moscow, instead of sticks and punishment.”  

This US-based Atlantic Council suggests that Trump’s influence on any final peace deal should be tempered by congressional discretion. The non-partisan suggests that, if a deal is made, it should go through formal US legal and institutional processes (e.g., Senate ratification) to demonstrate seriousness and to create a durable commitment.

The European Council on Foreign Affairs is specific and adamant about the shape any peace deal with Russia should take. The ECFA makes it clear that  “Borders cannot be changed by force? … All gone in the 28 points … which seem to stem from a different assertion: the strong do what they want and the weak suffer what they must.” The foreign relations group believes that forcing Ukraine to accept the loss of territories to Russian aggression “would create a material threat to Ukraine’s independent existence.” According to the ECFA,  “It would strip Kyiv of its defensive ‘fortress belt’ in the Donbas…and send a powerful signal of impunity” to Russia.

The ECFA concludes that a weak deal like the one proposed by the US, “would, of course, be immoral…But more than that, it would also be a mistake. It would embolden (Russia), teaching Moscow all the wrong lessons. The council adds that such a deal “would trade a bad war now for a worse one within a few years.”

To date, Trump has stubbornly and egotistically sought to keep America’s European NATO partners entirely marginalized from the Ukraine peace negotiations. It is easy to speculate that he has done this because the EU, from the start, would have resisted Trump’s consistent tendency to act as an agent for Putin in the framing of any peace plan.

But the outrageously one-sided 28-point draft plan has so weakened the administration’s credibility both at home and abroad that the EU has been emboldened to insist on a more active role in the negotiations. Clearly, Europe must have a major role in setting the stage for ending the war, and Europeans should be actively providing Zelensky with their backing in insisting that Putin not be rewarded for international aggression and for waging an illegal and illegitimate war.  

Because, in the end, how this war ends isn’t a question of Ukraine’s security going forward, but of the future security of both Eastern and Western Europe. And that is far too important an issue to be left solely in the hands of a man as erratic, self-interested, arrogant and willfully ignorant as Donald Trump.

 

THE VIEW FROM TRUMPWORLD

 

For many educated Americans with even a passing knowledge of US foreign relations, President Donald Trump’s latest machinations on the world  stage are very likely baffling.  If we are baffled, however, it is because we are failing to understand that Trump doesn’t see the world from the point of view of a world-class leader, but rather, from that of a mobster.

A lot of us were shocked and infuriated during his first term when he dissed our Western allies, while embracing every murderous dictator he had ever longed to meet. It was clear that these were “his people”, and that it mattered little to him what the people of the United States had sacrificed in the past to help democracy and freedom ring throughout every Western nation, following the worst war in the history of the world.

We watched him disrespect the memories of men and women sacrificed from our fathers’ and grandfathers’ generations, and belittle the pain, hardship and suffering endured by those like my father (and yours), who put their lives on hold to fight fascism and the expansive imperialism of a madman in Europe, and survived. He belittled that cause and our elders, calling them “losers and suckers” and asking rhetorically “what was in it for them.” Those brave people, the ones who understood the value of defending the free world, and who continued to support that cause, when the Soviet Union crushed the freedom of Eastern Europeans following World War II, back when US presidents understood that Russian tyrants were our enemies.

We witnessed too, his denigration of the noble institution of NATO, which he dismissed as being over and of no importance to the US—that great alliance which has been the mortar holding together Western peace and democracy for the past seventy-five years. An all-for-one-and-one-for-all pact in which the US earned its leading role with the blood we spilled on European soil in two world wars. A role which has been almost totally responsible for launching the US to world leadership status on the global stage.

Trump shocked patriotic and democratic Americans in those first four years by speaking in disparaging and arrogant terms to those previously highly respected Western allies, while at the same time referring in the most glowing of terms to murdering despots like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un (with whom he said he had “fallen in love”), and like China’s Chairman Xi (whom he admired for becoming leader for life and suggested perhaps the US should follow suit with him). He preferred Russian talking points to US intelligence, revealed things to Putin that the Kremlin never should have known, and mishandled a treasure trove of classified documents putting American lives in danger.

And then he threw the country into chaos by, for the first time in history, refusing to participate in the peaceful transfer of power, after losing an election, and created further chaos by inciting an insurrection designed to halt certification of the election he had lost, apparently bent on remaining in office as an ad hoc authoritarian ruler.

The majority of Americans breathed a sigh of relief when he was finally gone, and talked about how our democracy had dodged a bullet. It had been a close call but democracy was intact and we could all sleep easy.

But then, something utterly insane happened. Slightly more than half of voters who actually voted in the 2024 election put this despot back into office, not caring that he was a convicted felon, a court certified rapist, a man indicted on charges of election tampering, inciting an insurrection, and gross mishandling of America’s secrets. None of that mattered because people were worried about eggs being more expensive than when he was in office, and about whether they would be able to keep affording fuel for their gas-guzzling SUVs and giant pick-up trucks.

Trump ran on that. But anyone who was even half-awake during his first term was at least vaguely cognizant of the fact that, if Trump’s lips are moving, he’s lying. That is, except when he talks about using the power of State to destroy his personal enemies, or when he talks of dismantling any part of American democracy that keeps him from doing exactly what he pleases with no consequences. Those are promises—vendettas—that he is serious about keeping.

How all of that is affecting democracy at home is becoming more shockingly evident by the day. Adding insult to injury for every small-d democrat in the nation,  Trump is already, after only a month in office, describing himself in monarchic terms on Truth Social, where, referring to himself,  he wrote LONG LIVE THE KING!  That message was repeated under the White House’s official X handle captioning a Time-style fake cover with an illustration of Trump wearing a crown. In the same flurry of narcissistic, self-congratulatory messages, Trump also quoted—without saying he was quoting him—Napoleon Bonaparte saying,   “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” Napoleon was, of course, also a narcissist, an emperor and a despot.

The consequences of Trump’s dictatorial actions on the home front will even shortly begin to become evident to his most fanatical followers when they start to understand that what he does will negatively affect them as well where the rubber meets the road. Especially when the high prices they were so worried about and that were a decisive factor in his re-election, are not going down. On the contrary, thanks to the president’s reduction in taxes on the rich and soaring tariffs on international trade, prices can only be expected to rise.

But they’ll also start to feel the pain of their decision to return him to office when their Social Security and health care benefits are affected, when the cost of their medication rises, when their farming subsidies are cut, when their flights are canceled because of a hamstrung Federal Aviation Agency, and when every government office they must deal with is rendered totally ineffective because it has been stripped to its bare bones.

Returning to the foreign relations front, just because common everyday people have no idea of the importance of America’s status on the global stage doesn’t mean that it is unimportant, since our leadership in that arena is what defines US power and its ability to continue to shape democracies abroad and to influence the world through its allies. Trump clearly doesn’t care about that. He thinks of the US as a big business to be run as ruthlessly as he and Elon Musk have always run their own. His attempt to turn US relations with Ukraine into a protection racket in which he conditions aid—already earmarked by Congress—on President Zelensky’s signing over half of the country’s wealth of natural resources to him, should make every American feel ashamed. Every American but him, of course, because if there’s something we can be assured of, it’s that Donald Trump has no shame. And it’s not a first by any means because he already sought to blackmail Zelensky during the earlier Trump administration, by withholding vital defense aid unless the Ukrainian president dug up dirt on the son of his political rival, Joe Biden.

Worse still, he is now blaming the victim for causing the crime. (If you’ve been paying attention to his take on sexual assaults and molestations he and his cronies are accused of, you’ll understand that this stance is nothing new for him). Let’s be clear: The reality, the unvarnished facts, are that Russia, an imperialist power, run by a dictator, and a natural enemy of the United States, invaded Ukraine, a sovereign, democratic nation, unprovoked, and based on the sole self-justification that Ukraine was seeking closer ties to the West, and that it had cast off a puppet government put in place by the Kremlin. Any other interpretation is political spin and an out-and-out lie.

Yet, Trump now insists that Ukraine “never should have started” the war of Russian aggression against it. And that, instead of fighting tooth and nail against that invasion, it should have rolled over and “made the deal” that Putin offered. Which for any sovereign nation, was no deal at all, but rather capitulation to Russian dominance.

Ukraine is not, of course, the only place where the US stands to lose ground in the world due to the ham-handed fashion in which the new US thugocracy is mishandling international relations. Eastern European leaders are already on alert, since, with the US (actually Donald Trump, not the US as such) taking the side of Vladimir Putin and accepting Russian propaganda talking points as truth, if Ukraine falls, there is no way an emboldened Putin will stop there, or until all of Eastern Europe is once again under Russian dominance.

Meanwhile, Western European leaders have been left scrambling and are holding emergency meetings to decide how to approach this new reality. After reestablishing firm US-European and NATO ties during the four years that Joe Biden sought to pick up the pieces of American diplomacy shattered under Trump’s earlier four years, they find themselves back at square one after the unthinkable happened and Americans brought a convicted felon back to office again. Clearly, they have to be thinking that, no matter what happens next, the US is no longer a reliable ally. As such, they are now discussing ways in which Europe can disengage from US dominance and start fending for itself in the face of new threats of Russian expansionism.

But I am concentrating on the Ukraine situation because it is a case in point for how Donald Trump views the world. And as I said at the beginning of this essay, his viewpoint is not that of a world leader, but of a mobster.

Let me explain: Trump sees the world not as the sophisticated strategic game that it is, in which strong alliances are vital to the mutual defense of democratic nations. First of all, Trump is not a believer in democracy—not that he is above using the democratic process to gain access to power. It’s just that once in power, he no longer plays by democratic rules. So for Trump, organizations like NATO, the UN, the Organization of American States, and any agency within the government he heads designed to halt corruption or to place checks and balances on the powers that be, are meaningless.

On the contrary, Trump is incapable of complex thinking. Things for him are quite simple. As simple as they are for any mob boss—it’s no coincidence that Trump has more than once expressed his admiration for 20^th-century bootleg mob boss Al Capone (clearly and conveniently ignoring the fact that “Scarface” died in prison on a federal rap). Capone embodied everything Trump admires: raw power backed by violence, accumulation of a vast fortune through any means necessary, lawlessness, and accountability to no one but himself.

Trump, then, doesn’t identify with his predecessors. He doesn’t see himself as the elected leader of a free and democratic nation, guided by an ironclad Constitution and controlled in his actions by the checks and balances of a carefully created three-branch system. He sees himself simply as the head of the greatest military power on earth, and as such, as the Boss, the capo dei capi, the Boss of all bosses.

It follows, then, that he has little or no respect for any of the “minor bosses”—the European leaders, for instance, who, throughout post-war history, have been our friends and allies. If he is the Boss, then they are beholden to him, and, in his simple mind, are worthy only of his contempt and his vengeance if they fail to toe his line.

That means that he sees the world as being divided, much like the mob, into “families”, each with its own turf and its capo dei capi, and it is only for the other Bosses that he reserves his respect. For Trump, there are three “families”. America, Russia and China. Their bosses, Putin and Xi, are, if not his friends, then at least his colleagues, his equals, and he respects their “businesses”, like they respect his, even if, as in the case of China, he exacts certain payments for allowing their businesses to overlap. Business, after all, is business. But they keep their territories clearly marked and try their best to keep out of each other’s way, at the expense of the minor bosses, whom they see as their underlings. Because a turf war between the three families would be “bad for business”.

This is why I’m using Ukraine as my example. Because in Trumpworld, Ukraine doesn’t count. And the only sovereignty it has is because the Boss on its turf allows it to have it. And it can only have it if the Boss is happy with its performance. For Trump, Ukraine, and, very likely, all of Eastern Europe, belongs to the Russia Boss. Asia belongs to the China Boss. And the West belongs to the US Boss. The Middle East is something of a no-man’s-land, but the three are careful not to step on each other’s toes there either—hence Trump’s abandoning of Syria to its Russian regime oppressors during his first term. The fact that it all backfired under Biden is Putin’s problem, but it wasn’t the America Boss standing in the Russia Boss’s way, and the people of Syria be damned. Same goes for the Ukrainians in the simple black and white rules of mobster ethics.

You might say, then, that Trump, a mobster dolt looking to set up a thugocracy, with nobody really doing much to stop him, thinks he’s playing checkers on the world game board. Xi and Putin, meanwhile are playing chess, and Putin has just put Trump in a check move that leaves America’s king in danger of capture.

 

BOTTOM LINE: UNSUITABILITY TO SERVE

Any reasonable person watching the press conference held yesterday by presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Helsinki after what can only loosely be referred to as a “summit meeting” has to have come to one of three conclusions: that the US president is an intellectual midget incapable of understanding the simplest of concepts (such as who is “friend” and who is “foe”), that he is certifiably insane (a psychopath, for instance, is defined as having “a personality disorder characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egotistical traits”...um, if the shoe fits), or that he is a traitor to his country.

Following the disgraceful display of capitulation demonstrated by Trump before a gloating Vladimir Putin, former CIA Director John Brennan was quick to tweet "Donald Trump's press conference performance in Helsinki rises to and exceeds the threshold of 'high crimes and misdemeanors. It was nothing short of treasonous."

“High crimes and misdemeanors” is, of course, the constitutional definition of grounds for impeachment. Treason, as Director Brennan pointed out, is something else. As demonstrated by all of the pundits who were outraged by Trump’s performance but who balked a little at Brennan’s characterization of it as treason.

The word seems to scare a lot of people. But let’s look at it from Brennan’s clearly ethical and patriotic viewpoint. The simple dictionary definition of treason is “the crime of betraying one’s country.” In other words, putting one’s own interests or, worse still, the interests of a third party or country above those of one’s nation. That might not matter a great deal, in a peacetime situation at least, if you’re just John Doe. But if you’re Donald John Trump, and the president of the United States, it’s a very big deal indeed.

The US Constitution has its own definition of treason: “ "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort..."  

So where does that leave Trump? Andrew Wright, former assistant White House counsel and associate professor at the Savannah Law School, was quoted yesterday as saying that since the US and Russia are not at war, he didn't believe that Trump's conduct at the summit alone amounted to treason.

"It's quite clear he's selling out important American national-security interests by not standing up to Russian aggression," Wright told the on-line publication Business Insider. "That's why you see some people using the term 'traitor.' It's not a term I prefer to use ... It's the kind of thing I'd like to see after more investigative processes and legal findings."

But Jens David Ohlin, a vice dean and professor of law at Cornell Law School, countered that, even without a formal declaration, there is a case to be made that Russia and the US are indeed at war.

"One argument would be that Russia has engaged in a covert cyber intervention against US interests, including election meddling, that rises to the level of hostilities," he said.

"However, an even better argument would be that Russia and the United States are on the opposite sides of various armed confrontations in Syria." He was referring, of course, to Russia's backing of the regime of dictator Bashar al-Assad while the US is providing a certain amount of support to rebel groups seeking to overthrow that regime, a situation that has brought US-coalition and Russian air support into dangerously close contact on more than one occasion.

No matter whether Russia and the US can be considered to be engaged in hostilities against one another, Putin’s Russia must at least be considered a hostile power, in terms of the strategic interests of the United States—whose democracy and system of government, mounting evidence shows, it has been actively seeking to undermine—and to the interests of its closest allies in Europe, where Putin is seen as a clear and present danger. And so the second part of the constitutional definition (offering aid and comfort to America’s enemies) would appear to fit.

The fact that Trump refused to even have his closest aides in the room with him and Putin when they met (and this was the US president’s stipulation, not Putin’s, although Putin must have been overjoyed by the suggestion) is telling. And it speaks to the body language of the two men when they later emerged to face the press, with Trump looking and sounding as if he had just been bitch-slapped and Putin smirking and posturing like the bouncer at a high-end disco.

And there can be no doubt that every thinking human being in the United States and in the NATO nations must have been utterly astonished, when Trump cavalierly dismissed the findings of ongoing probes and the indictment of a dozen military intelligence agents of Russia for explicit and reiterated intervention in the US election process and said that he believed Putin’s “strong and powerful denial” that he was involved.

Okay, we know Putin wasn’t sitting in bed at night with his laptop hacking the elections, but if Russian state intelligence was involved, Putin was giving the orders. This was like his repeated denials that Russia was involved in the fighting in Ukraine—following, it should be added, Russian annexation of Crimea. Those involved in the bloody fighting in ethnic Russian areas of Ukraine were, he insisted, volunteer guerrilla fighters. But they were wearing Russian uniforms without insignias and were armed to the teeth with Russian hardware. And official Russian troops and tanks were assembled all along the border with Ukraine. Obviously, Putin wasn’t there leading the charge with ivory-handled pistols in the style of George Patton, but let’s not kid ourselves: His finger was on the trigger.  

Stunned Americans are today asking, why. Why would a US president deny his nation’s own intelligence (more than a dozen intelligence agencies that say Russia is involved in cyber-warfare against the US)? Why would he show such utter and humiliating weakness toward the autocratic leader of an anti-democratic and anti-American expansionist regime? Why would he refuse to even bring up the subject of the twelve indictments against Russian cyber-spies, let alone demand their extradition? And why would he preface the summit with this nefarious autocrat by doing Putin’s work for him and trashing America’s closest allies, sowing discord in NATO and destroying international confidence in the US as the leader of the free world?

But those are the wrong questions. The question should be, how long will the American people put up with a president who is capable of doing these things? It is no longer a matter of whether Donald Trump is serving his own interests above those of the country he is constitutionally bound to serve. It doesn’t matter whether the Russians have something personal on Trump that, if revealed, would spell personal disaster for him, or that he simply can’t admit the role of Russian espionage in helping him win the election in 2016 and that if he is going to be able to justify as legitimate his controversial win over Hillary Clinton, he must place his own narcissism above the interests of the country—and if that’s the case...see item three in the first paragraph of this essay. What matters is that the president has proven himself unequivocally incompetent to serve in the high office that was bestowed on him.

Yesterday, we witnessed the president of the United States—an office usually held by individuals thought of as leaders of the free world—grovel before one of the world’s most ruthless autocrats, an authoritarian who has been in power for nearly two decades, and who, since 2014, has made no secret of leading his country on the path to a new age of expansionism, in pursuit of a return to the power and glory of the now defunct Soviet Union.

Trump has made it clear that he values his relationship with Putin above his responsibilities as president of the United States.

That should be a clear enough response to any questions in anyone’s mind about what happened this week.   

NATO BEYOND THE TRASH TALK AND NON-CONTEXTUAL STATISTICS

Something like a Trump foreign policy seems to finally be taking shape. If it can be characterized by anything concrete, it would be by how the US president savages America’s erstwhile allies and befriends its enemies. There is no better example of this than the president’s apparent inability to find any fault whatsoever with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, who is the antithesis of upstanding democratic leadership and of respect for the rule of law—especially international law. Meanwhile, President Trump has laser-focused blistering criticism on the current leaders—both female leaders, it might be added, which, if we were talking about anyone but Donald Trump, might simply be taken as a coincidence—of two of the most prominent of US allies, Britain and Germany. And he further trashed the entire NATO alliance in his first comments at a breakfast in Brussels, before the latest North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit had even begun.

Indeed, this week, far from striking a more conciliatory tone with America’s European allies, whom, for all intents and purposes, he has been serial-insulting ever since his presidential campaign in 2016, Trump waded into the summit in his typical bull-in-a-china-shop style and did his best to further fray the already increasingly thread-bare fabric of a 70-year-old alliance that has been largely responsible for maintaining a semblance of global peace since World War II. And he added insult to injury by quipping that he would probably have an easier meeting with Putin than with the America’s fellow NATO allies.

Most of Trump’s trash talk about Europe has to do—like the majority of other topics in his life—with money. His complaint is the same as that of other US presidents before him: that most of the United States’ allies aren’t paying their fair share of the cost of maintaining the Western alliance. As per usual, once Trump turns on the stream of insults, there’s always collateral mud-slinging. In this case, he made a tangential reference to his predecessors George W. Bush and Barack Obama when he said that other presidents had complained about the failure of European members of NATO to pull their own weight but that he planned to do something about it.

The threat sounds a lot like a Mafia-style “insurance” pitch. Pay up, because if not, well, it sure would be too bad if something happened and we weren’t there to protect you. As usual, Trump led with his mouth. Like when he said that the UK was in turmoil under its current Prime Minister Theresa May and described resigning Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson (who's a sort of British brother by another mother to Trump in both looks and politics) as "a good friend" who had been "very supportive," adding that he wouldn't mind seeing Johnson while in England. Or when he said that Germany was “a captive to Russia” because of the Russian energy resources that it imports. He reiterated this last charge, saying Germany was, because of these energy imports, “totally controlled” by the Russians while asking to be protected from Russia.

Also as usual, however, Trump got his facts wrong. Germany actually only gets less than a third of its natural gas from Russia via the Nordstream Pipeline that connects the two countries directly. And although Trump isn’t the only Western leader who has shown concern over this and a second planned Russo-German pipeline, Germany has a healthy list of alternative sources with which to cover its overall energy mix.

It is wrong, moreover, to even consider the Nordstream Pipeline as a symbol of German dependence on Russia. In point of fact, Russia is notoriously short of export possibilities in almost every field except energy (and arms), so it could be strongly argued that the Russians are as dependent on German revenues as the Germans are on Russian gas. And if Trump really had any desire to hurt Putin’s Russia, instead of seeing how hostile he can make US relations with Germany, he would be trying to woo German Chancellor Angela Merkel in order to strike a trade deal to sell more LNC (Liquid Natural Gas) to the Germans—killing two birds with one stone by reducing a major ally’s dependence on Russia and at the same time underscoring his largely hollow “America First” policy by generating increased exports to Europe.

In terms of NATO as a whole, it can be argued that the major West European countries should be paying a somewhat greater share of the cost of the NATO alliance, or at least that they should have been paying a bigger proportion since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Originally, the US interest in NATO, and in paying whatever it had to in order to form part of that alliance, was as a platform for its Cold War and arms race against the Soviets. Since the late eighties, prosecution of that purpose has been largely curtailed. But since 2014, Vladimir Putin has made it clear that he plans to return Russia to a place of importance as a global military power. Clearly, the Eastern European nations are taking this threat seriously. Being the closest countries to the Russian Bear, they have already brought their NATO spending up to the Washington-demanded two percent or above, in anticipation of Russian aggression following Putin’s annexation of Crimea and his backing for irregular military action within Ukraine. It is the obvious hope of these Eastern members that if Putin moves on them, NATO, and particularly the US, will be there for them.

Furthermore, the US has used NATO as much as NATO has used the United States, and this is something of which Trump, in his blind ignorance, seems unaware. NATO continues to be a major platform for US global hegemony. If the NATO alliance falters, current Allies will be unlikely to help the US in its multiple military actions around the world. And if Trump decides to go back on the US commitment to NATO—the way he did on the worldwide climate accord—Europe won’t simply lie down and die. It will indeed find solutions for its own defense and security, marginalizing the US from any intervention in topics of European interest, and perhaps also becoming unwilling to continue to host strategic American military bases on European soil. In other words, while Putin is fighting tooth and nail to keep Bashar al-Assad in power in Syria so that he can continue to maintain a major Russian naval base in that country, the US president seems to be actively seeking to destroy the most strategic alliance of which the United States forms part in the entire world.

No matter what the future may hold—a single Trump presidency would surely be a plus—the increasingly hostile relations between Europe and the United States play, without a doubt, into the hands of Vladimir Putin as if he had planned Trump’s dubious foreign policy himself, and the US president is sure to get a warm, fraternal welcome from the Russian autocrat when they meet in Helsinki for a summit of their own next Monday.