It took less than three hours with Vladimir Putin for Donald Trump to show the world why he’s earned the sobriquet TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out).
Before leaving Washington last Friday, the American president told Fox News, “I won’t be happy if I walk away without some form of a ceasefire” in the three-and-a-half-year-old Russia-Ukraine war. Lacking that, he vowed, “there will be very severe consequences.” Once face-to-face with the Russian leader, though, he chickened out.
A ceasefire is no longer necessary, Trump declared afterwards, adding he and Putin “determined” that the best course would be to “go directly to Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often does not hold up.”
Trump has spoken repeatedly of the urgency of stopping the killing, yet at the first opportunity he teamed up with Putin to prolong the war while the two sides can’t even agree to speak. If he wants to end the bloodshed, he must first stop the shooting. Negotiations without a ceasefire would mean an open-ended conflict, warned Richard Haass, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations.
What about Trump’s threat of sanctions if there was no immediate ceasefire? “I think I don’t have to think about that,” he told his old pal Sean Hannity of Fox News, in a post-summit interview. He embraced Putin’s strategy of fighting until there is a comprehensive peace deal in Moscow’s favor. The Russian reportedly feels he has the greater resources to drag out the fighting and wear down Ukraine and its allies until they grow too weary to continue.
Putin's upper hand over Trump
Putin has several factors in his favor. He knows Trump admires him and dislikes Volodymyr Zelensky; that there is a growing isolationism in Trump’s MAGA movement, led by his vice president, that wants to abandon Ukraine altogether; and that Trump is more interested in the “deal” than the substance. For this American president, it seems to be peace at any price.
Trump knows public opinion is turning against him on this issue. A new Pew Research survey showed nearly three in five of all Americans are not confident Trump can make wise decisions about this war. A third of the respondents said Trump is favoring Russia too much; only six percent feel he prefers Ukraine.
Putin played Trump masterfully, generous with the crude flattery, something the European leaders offered Monday at the White House. He said he believed the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that he agreed this war would not have started if Trump had been president. That reinforces Trump’s assertion that this is Biden’s war, and he delights in making his predecessor look like a failure.
The White House has accelerated its campaign to get a Nobel Peace Prize for Trump. His reversal in Anchorage suggests a more appropriate award might by Hero of the Russian Federation. It comes with a gold medal, his favorite.
Trump’s about face in Alaska was no surprise. He revealed it in advance when he spoke of the need for Ukraine to surrender some or all captured territory, wavered on who started the war, and promised Putin there would be no NATO membership for Kiev. It was nothing less than preemptive surrender.
Zelensky and European leaders thought Trump agreed with their demands for a ceasefire. After he switched sides on Friday, they flew to Washington for an unprecedented White House meeting to press their case.
Trump apparently was the only one at the table willing to take Putin’s word that he would honor any agreement with Ukraine, something he has repeatedly violated in the past.
During the meeting, Trump phoned Putin to brief him on the discussions. A Russian spokesperson called their conversation “frank,” which is diplo-speak for lack of agreement.
The Europeans are insisting on security guarantees comparable to NATO’s Article V – an attack on one is an attack on all – but Trump appears reluctant, saying only “we will give very good protection.” Putin is adamant that no NATO troops set foot in Ukraine, which he considers a rightful part of Russia.
A victory for Putin
The Alaska summit can be scored Putin 1, Trump 0, but the good news is he didn’t offer to sell Alaska back to Russia, at least so far as we know.
Trump boasted the meeting was a “10” out of 10, but such claims are his default position, declaring success in everything he does and shirking responsibility for anything else.
There’s no indication what Trump – or Ukraine – got out of the meeting except as a headline grabbing diversion from the Epstein scandal smacking the president from the Right and Left.
This summit, however, was a great triumph for Russia. Trump looked like a fan boy applauding as the grinning former KGB colonel walked down the red carpet and then rode with him in the presidential limousine, the Beast. Trump later gushed about their “fantastic” relationship.
Putin was treated as an equal on US soil, managed to sidestep any potential American sanctions, and announced no battlefield concessions, The Wall Street Journal observed. Trump, on the other hand, who once boasted of ending the war in 24 hours, couldn’t even get a temporary ceasefire.
“Putin’s journey from pariah to peer was complete,” Bloomberg.com pointed out.
He got an escort of F-35 fighters and a B-2 flyover. Russian techs aboard Putin’s plane were very likely probing for all the data they could glean on the world’s most advanced stealth aircraft in the air and on the ground at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage.
Trump told Hannity he and Putin agreed on “most” points but neither side offered any details. In his statements afterward, Putin stuck to his longstanding maximalist demands with “no apparent Trump pushback,” reported diplomatic correspondent Laura Rozen.
Putin wants the United States to recognize Russian sovereignty in captured parts of Ukraine plus some territory still held by the Kiev government that it gains in any peace deal, Axios reported. Trump has reportedly agreed, according to The New York Times.
“Once again, the Russian President played the US president like a chump,” observed former US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder.
Trump has offered to join the negotiations between Zelensky and Putin, but the Russian president won’t commit to meeting face to face with the Ukrainian president. If they ever do sit down, it won’t take much to know which side Trump will take.
The writer is a Washington-based journalist, consultant, lobbyist, and former legislative director at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.