If Trump’s America is a hostile, ignorant and incompetent broker, does it make sense for Ukraine to take part in the ongoing charade known as ceasefire negotiations?
That’s the question Ukrainians are increasingly asking themselves — and with good reason.
Trump and his colleagues clearly favor Russia and happily parrot the Russian narrative about the war. Just as disturbing, the Americans don’t know the basic facts about Ukraine and Russia, even as they insist that they are infallible. And they’re clearly incapable of rising above what Boston University emeritus professor Walter Clemens, in a private communication, aptly called “amateur hour.”
How can the combination of untrammeled Putinophilia, arrogant ignorance and downright incompetence possibly serve Ukraine’s interests? (Or, for that matter, America’s or the world’s?)
Trump’s willingness to bend over backwards for Russia’s illegitimately elected President Vladimir Putin, and unwillingness to treat Ukraine’s legitimately elected President Volodymyr Zelensky as more than a pawn, has been amply documented. If people still have doubts, they should read Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff’s fawning remarks about Russia’s accused war criminal in his recent interview with Tucker Carlson.
Equally alarming is the manifest ignorance about Ukraine and Russia displayed by Trump, Witkoff and other administration insiders. Small wonder that they’ve swallowed the Kremlin’s propaganda hook, line and sinker. Since the U.S. policymakers know so little about the world, how could they possibly appreciate that they’re being crudely and visibly manipulated by their Russian puppet master?
But what really takes the cake is their insistence that they know everything and that their critics — many of whom are bona fide experts with highly respected track records — know absolutely nothing.
Sad to say, such arrogant ignorance has even spilled over into the groves of academia. A recent article by a University of Texas professor with no expertise in Ukrainian or Russian affairs begins with this astounding assertion: “I rarely agree with President Trump, but his latest controversial statements about Ukraine are mostly true. They seem preposterous only because western audiences have been fed a steady diet of disinformation about Ukraine for more than a decade.”
There you have it: Trump (who has probably never cracked open a book about Ukraine or Russia) is right, while two of the history craft’s most distinguished practitioners — the University of Toronto’s Timothy Snyder and Harvard University’s Serhii Plokhii — are disseminators of disinformation.
The Trump administration’s incompetence has recently assumed front stage in “Signalgate,” the scandal that revealed the breathtakingly cavalier attitude of its top policymakers toward possibly classified chats regarding missile strikes on Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Unsurprisingly, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called their exercise of power “dumb.”
The upshot of these three factors is Washington’s latest version of a minerals deal that even one critic of Ukraine felt compelled to call an “imposed indentured servitude.” Notably, the White House has proposed ...
