Much has been said, written and posted about the disastrous press conference involving Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky. I wonder how many watched the whole Q&A, which went on for almost an hour, rather than the explosive last part, which constituted about 11 minutes.
To properly assess the complete exchange and what it signifies, one must consider context. Watching only the last few minutes doesn’t give us that.
More importantly, responding to how Trump is rethinking and reframing America’s place as an ally and in the world requires more than a scornful gut reaction to the most unconventional and disruptive president in memory.
To be sure, there is also the broader fear that Trump is up-ending cherished norms, institutions and assumptions that we have become reliant on.
Trump is certainly an unsettling agent of change in American domestic and external policy. But he is also ruthlessly exposing the increasingly fragile structural foundations for peace and stability that many allies have ignored or dismissed.
Regarding the narrower and more immediate issue of the press conference, JD Vance appears the provocateur. However, Zelensky did poorly in fulfilling his duties as President.
Few will disagree that he is an admirable and courageous person. But in this case, the higher obligation is to pursue the ethics of responsibility imposed on all leaders, especially during wartime. Challenging Trump and Vance might have been understandable from an individual human point of view but doing so directly in front of the camera was catastrophic.
It leaves Ukraine in a poorer position and scrambling to accept whatever is imposed on it. As leader of an embattled country, Zelensky is heavily dependent on continued American support.
He was at the White House to thrash out and agree to an economic and ceasefire position with Trump, fast-track a significant presence of US firms and citizens on Ukrainian land, and convince Trump to agree to British and French peacekeeping troops on Ukrainian soil as part of any agreement with Vladimir Putin.
In the earlier part of the press conference, Trump revealed he was open to the presence of foreign troops in defiance of Putin’s insistence that it was unacceptable. This is short of Zelensky’s maximalist position of obtaining an iron-clad American security guarantee, but Ukraine has little influence and leverage over an American President who does not view Russia in the same threatening terms as his predecessors.
Informing Zelensky’s mission ought to have been the iron law of numbers. Since January 2022, America has given around $110bn worth of military aid to Ukraine. Next highest is Germany at about $22bn, the UK with about $19bn, Denmark around $13bn, and the Netherlands around $6bn. Total bilateral aid, which includes non-military assistance from America, amounts to about $200bn with the next most generous country being Germany at around $30bn.
There are many more “I Stand with Ukraine” signs in Europe than America but the numbers reveal the truth. The point is that Zelensky’s highest ethical responsibility regarding the visit should have been to keep the Trump administration onside.
Last week’s dramatic developments have caused immense anxiety among American allies even though Ukraine is not a formal treaty ally. In his bombastic, confrontational and unsentimental way, Trump is revealing some brutal realities that have been covered over by soothing rhetoric for too long.
Europeans damn America for wanting to weaken its NATO commitments. Yet, the EU’s GDP is 10 times larger than Russia’s. Germany alone has a GDP 2½ times bigger but continues to spend only about 1.5 per cent of GDP on defence. Europe condemns a wavering America while it indulgently pursues the peace dividend. This is not a sound structural basis for the security of the continent.
In the brutal world defined by hard power, is it really only America rather than Europe endangering the peace regardless of what Trump does?
Indeed, one reason Israel is so heavily favoured by Trump is that it has consistently looked after its own security and earned the President’s respect and admiration. Poland and the Baltic States have also been commended. The sliver of optimism is that this administration knows the numbers are different in Asia. Japan, South Korea, The Philippines and Australia could all become like these high-defence-spending states and still be incapable of providing a check against China.
I have heard this reality mentioned several times by people who matter in the White House. The administration accepts America is truly indispensable in Asia. But the more Asian allies shirk their hard-power responsibilities, the more their national preferences will be disregarded by the US – not to mention our adversaries. Passivity is the underlying danger to loss of national standing and agency. Which is why the self-imposed naivety and helplessness of Australia in the face of unannounced live-fire exercises by Chinese vessels in international waters last week is an ominous sign.