America’s Ukraine policy, after President Donald Trump assumed power on January 20, upends traditional thinking on NATO, East-West relations, and Russia. Trump’s long telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, even before engaging Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, rattled NATO allies. Since then, matters have veered from the dramatic to the bizarre.
President Trump began berating the Ukrainian leader by grossly mis-stating his popularity, calling him a dictator, distorting both the nature and extent of the US aid, and claiming it is $500 billion when it is $119 billion. He then sought recompense from Ukraine by claiming its mineral resources.
The US treasury secretary presented a minerals agreement to Kyiv seeking unquestioned sign-in. Zelenskyy refused, calling it indefinite enslavement of his nation. This further riled up Trump into wrongly calling Ukraine the war’s initiator. Then the US, unprecedentedly, voted against a UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russia’s Ukraine invasion. P
resident Trump ignored that this critical repositioning was on the third anniversary of the Ukraine war. Abandoning NATO allies, the US stood with North Korea, Russia and Sudan. India and China chose to abstain, observing their traditional equidistance policy between Russia and the West.
Amongst the 32-member NATO, there was already concern about Trump’s isolationist Make America Great Again (MAGA) orientation. Even in his first term, he upset allies, demanding they increase defence spending individually to 2% of the GDP or face US withdrawal. But Trump 2.0 is more aggressively maverick.
Hence, it has literally adopted the Russian president’s talking points. The root cause of the Ukraine war, according to this logic, is the western powers provoking Putin by the eastward expansion of NATO. The aggressor is painted as the victim.
To play the devil’s advocate, Putin may have a point. Apparently, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had been assured by Western interlocutors that if the Warsaw Pact nations in Eastern Europe got peacefully liberated, then they would not join an expanded NATO. But the twin policies to stabilise and democratise newly liberated Eastern Bloc nations via a NATO membership and the desire for peaceful and productive relations with Russia were difficult to balance.
US President Bill Clinton, speaking in Belgium on January 10, 1994, articulated both these themes. The pace of admission was kept slow to allow democratic consolidation in Russia. In May 1997, NATO and Russian leaders signed in Paris the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security, ruling out adversarial relations.
Two months later, NATO announced the admission of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. In the US, domestic public opinion supported this, especially in the electorally crucial Midwest with many citizens of East European descent.
Still, some, like George Kennan, the Cold War specialist in the Soviet Union, opposed the expansion, warning of it feeding Russian paranoia. President Putin had already been selected by President Boris Yeltsin to be Deputy Chief of the Presidential Administration in March 1997 and rose to ultimate power as NATO expanded.
The western assumption that a democratically stable Russia would learn to coexist with NATO fell apart as Putin drove Russia towards autocratic rule, with visions of restoring Soviet-era power, and possibly even territorial control. French President Emmanuel Macron, in Washington on February 24, recounted in President Trump’s presence that two weeks before the 2022 Russian assault on Ukraine, he met Putin but got no indication of the Russian designs.
President Trump, contrariwise, seems to believe that Putin can be tackled by appeasement and dialogue with his west-caused paranoia ameliorated. European NATO members reject this naive assessment and have begun rallying to prepare their own defence, minus the US. President Macron, employing what the New York Times calls “flattery and gentle resistance,” drew Trump a little towards working with Europe in handling Putin.
Next, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer gets to Washington on February 27, after ramping up the British defence budget to 2.5% of the GDP by 2027. He also committed British forces for peacekeeping in Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire.
On March 6, a European Union (EU) summit is scheduled to discuss the new approach combining gentle dissuasion of Trump from Putin-hugging with self-reliant European security.
After all, two EU members, France and the UK, possess nuclear deterrence. But they still concede that post-ceasefire, for credible deterrence and security, a “US backstop” is necessary.
Fortunately, the US-Ukraine metals agreement stands finalised. Media dub it a US “protection racket,” where future security guarantees, as yet unstated, are contingent on prior financial and economic commitments. To do it so blatantly is unprecedented in US history.
The Economist Weekly observes that, in fact, Trump is ignoring Russian vulnerabilities while goading Ukraine to bend. For instance, while in April 2022 Russia occupied 19.6% of Ukrainian land, it is 19.2% today. Also, some intelligence estimates indicate that Russia’s 7,300 tanks in storage are half depleted.
The issue reminds one of the elephant and the blind men in the fable. Each analyst may be partly right. Trump may be foolishly pandering to Putin, who may retain his megalomaniac dreams of Soviet power. Alternatively, Trump may be clearing the ground with iconoclastic policies for a new global order. History teaches that such leaders often invite catastrophe.
KC Singh is former secretary, Ministry of External Affairs
