Dem
47
GOP
53
Generally speaking, it's easy to conduct diplomatic negotiations when only one side of a dispute is at the table. It gets much harder when both sides are present. Yesterday, however, Donald "Art of the Deal" Trump decided to show how wrong the conventional wisdom is. Speaking only to Vladimir Putin, Trump nonetheless struck out.
Oh, Trump certainly claimed victory, as he always does. After the 2-hour Trump-Putin phone call ended, the President decreed: "It's a big thing—an immediate ceasefire on energy and infrastructure." He also predicted: "The next thing would be a full ceasefire and a deal. I think it will go pretty quickly." And he bragged: "If I wasn't here, he would never do it." He followed that up with a posting to his one-man social media site:
My phone conversation today with President Putin of Russia was a very good and productive one. We agreed to an immediate Ceasefire on all Energy and Infrastructure, with an understanding that we will be working quickly to have a Complete Ceasefire and, ultimately, an END to this very horrible War between Russia and Ukraine. This War would have never started if I were President! Many elements of a Contract for Peace were discussed, including the fact that thousands of soldiers are being killed, and both President Putin and President Zelenskyy would like to see it end. That process is now in full force and effect, and we will, hopefully, for the sake of Humanity, get the job done!
Undoubtedly, after he finished hunting and pecking that out, Trump went to clear space on the mantel for his Nobel Peace Prize.
Back in the real world, the facts are these. First, Putin rejected the proposal that Ukraine agreed to. Second, Putin agreed to a ceasefire that is limited to a relatively small part of the warfront, and even then only applies to just energy infrastructure, not energy and infrastructure as Trump claimed. Third, after agreeing to the ceasefire, the Russians knocked out a Ukrainian power plant. Perhaps our dictionary is out-of-date, but that sounds an awful lot like energy infrastructure to us.
We are hardly the only ones who were unimpressed by Trumpian diplomacy. For example, the conservative-though-not-Trump-friendly National Review had a piece headlined "Vladimir Putin Rejects Trump's Cease-Fire" (subscription needed) in which writer Noah Rothman opined:
The White House never misses an opportunity to retail the Russian version of events, no matter how fantastical, despite the lack of anything resembling reciprocity from the Kremlin. Indeed, even after Putin made a theatrical show of regarding Trump with the contempt he would show a subordinate, there is as yet no indication that the limit to the President's patience with Russia has been reached.
It's reasonable to wonder at this point if such a limit exists. The President is conspicuously sensitive to slights from allies, but he seems to have an endless capacity to absorb humiliation as long as it's being meted out by our adversaries. At the present rate, the damage Trump is doing to his reputation as a figure to be feared by America's adversaries may be irreversible. Still, if the President can reclaim some of the dignity America has lost in this process, he should. There's no reason the President must continue this farce.
The folks at Foreign Policy, which is much more middle-of-the-road, took an even more pessimistic view. Starting with the belief that when Putin says "Jump!" (well, "прыгать"), Trump says "How high?" that outlet had a piece headlined "It's Time for Ukraine to Accept an Ugly Peace."
Oh, and as long as we're on the subjects of foreign policy, and of Foreign Policy, the publication also had a piece yesterday, from someone who knows what they are talking about, that confirmed our assumption, even though we have no idea what we're talking about: The ceasefire in Gaza is almost certainly dead for a very long time, and if it comes back to life, it won't likely be due to American diplomacy.
The bottom line is this: Today is the 60th day of Trump presidency v2.0. Not only are we 59 days beyond the date by which he promised he would end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, but he appears to have already failed utterly on the foreign policy front. That's an even worse start than John F. Kennedy, who took 90 days before suffering the Bay of Pigs disaster. And given Trump's interest in quick wins, and his lack of interest in doing the slow, painstaking work of diplomacy, we do not see how he reverses his failures. We suppose it's possible that the grown-ups in the room, like Steve Witkoff, manage to pull something off. But we are not optimistic. (Z)