Susan B. Glasser, New Yorker - Donald Trump finally called “bullshit” on Vladimir Putin this week, though nobody seems to quite know what it means. One explanation, and perhaps the best one, is that Trump, belatedly, recognized what has long been apparent to the rest of us: that Putin has been playing him, pretending to talk peace while escalating Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine. On Monday, Trump announced that he was “not happy with President Putin at all” and overruled his own Pentagon to re-start arms shipments to Ukraine. A day later, during a Cabinet meeting at the White House, Trump said bluntly, “We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin,” observing that when the two talk—as they have frequently in recent months—he’s “very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”
Soon enough, the Wall Street Journal editorial board was praising Trump’s “pivot on Mr. Putin.” One could practically hear the sighs of relief in European capitals. In Kyiv, Ukrainian officials welcomed the news, even if they were understandably wary. On Capitol Hill, Republicans seized the moment to announce that they now expected to call a vote as soon as this month on bipartisan legislation—co-sponsored by more than eighty senators—that would allow Trump to impose a crippling tariff of up to five hundred per cent on countries that purchase Russian oil, gas, or uranium...
The risk here is in the wishful thinking that Trump has done something other than recognize the embarrassing reality that Putin is not prepared to end the war he himself started just because Trump asks him oh-so-nicely to do so. It sure did take Trump a while to admit the obvious, that the peace deal he promised to deliver within twenty-four hours of returning to office does not exist—a hundred and seventy days later. But does that also mean that Trump has become an overnight convert to Ukraine’s cause? Will he now, as certain fervent corners of the old-style Republican right hope, increase sanctions on Russia, send billions more in weapons to Kyiv, and lock arms with America’s European allies?
This is the play that many foreign-policy hands expected Trump might run back in January—it would be a smart bid for leverage in forcing Putin to the negotiating table, they figured, and would have the added benefit of shattering the conventional wisdom that Trump was willing to sell out to Moscow. But not only did that not happen; Trump leaned hard in the other direction, fawning over Putin, voting with Russia at the U.N. Security Council, berating Ukraine’s President in the Oval Office. So which is Trump’s real policy? For a frequent flip-flopper like him, can anyone ever tell which flip or flop is for real? More
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