Quote:
Originally Posted by jfman
He made it quite clear the plan was to talk to both sides and force a settlement. That might appear alien to anyone bogged down in Cold War rhetoric but to anyone with eyes in October it was obvious Trump was going to end the Biden era pretence that Ukraine were any more than a short term ally for the period American and Ukrainian interests aligned.
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You have a particular lens through which you understand American military adventurism and it is distorting your view of what’s happening here.
American and Ukrainian interests were perhaps a happy alignment, but the interests here are fundamentally different than pursuing Islamists or Communists in far-flung corners of the world. The defence and stability of Europe, from which sprang the only two wars ever to get so big and bloody as to be dubbed ‘world war’, has the bedrock of US foreign and defence policy since 1945.
Whatever the strengths or weaknesses of the Biden plan, the aim was perfectly aligned with long-term, bilaterally-supported policy of keeping Russia stable and contained in the East, and Europe safe and untroubled with thoughts of massive rearmament in the west. Many of us squealed long and loud about the injustice of giving Ukraine only what it needed to hold on, rather than what it needed to inflict a devastating defeat on Russia (which the US could have done, and would have resulted in a shorter conflict with fewer casualties), but the reasoning behind it is at least understandable in terms of long-term strategy.
Trump is emphatically not acting in the spirit of every US administration since 1945 (barring his own, and in 2017-2021 he didn’t go nearly as far as he is now, though he seemed to want to). He is treating Europe, and this conflict, as a cost-centre on his spreadsheet. He has no grand strategic vision and he has no depth of understanding of why the US is so financially committed to NATO and why settling the Ukraine conflict on terms that favour Russia is a strategic mis-step that will inevitably lead to further conflict down the line.
This, ultimately, is why you’re misunderstanding what you’re seeing - because you’re incapable of seeing Trump is
not behaving like any US president since at least 1945. He is not motivated by any of the statescraft that typically motivates someone who gets as far as the presidency. Sure, you can go on construing this as simply the US losing interest in another foreign conflict as it has many times before, but if you do so you will miss the major strategic changes that are underway across Europe, precisely because this is all happening
in Europe, the one part of the world that every major power on earth has long agreed is the last place you want massive military proliferation. When you understand that even Germany is poised to change its debt rules to allow it to re-arm, you know something has changed, and not for the better.
This is not special pleading - Europe is different and American policy has long recognised that. Until now.