What’s behind the trumpery

“Accidents will occur in the best regulated families,” said Messrs Pope, Dickens and Tennyson. And if families can fall out, then so can friends, even those of long standing.

The other day I speculated on the nature of the evident amity between Trump and Putin. The two possibilities I mooted were some leverage Putin may have over Trump or, alternatively, a genuine mutual admiration. One way or the other, the friendship appears to be under strain.

Like all psychopathic narcissists, Trump wants to go down in history as the man who solved every problem of the world. Since no problem is bigger than war, it’s essential for Trump’s self-image that he be seen as the ultimate peacemaker, ideally recognised as such by the Nobel Prize committee.

The aggressive war waged by Russia on the Ukraine takes pride of place among the on-going conflicts. This is a war that can escalate out of control, all the way to a nuclear holocaust.

Hence securing any approximation of peace there would be a huge PR coup – this, irrespective of how far that approximation would be from real, lasting peace. A short ceasefire would work, if only for a month. Even merely stopping attacks on Ukrainian cities would do at a pinch.

Surely Putin will play along, thought Trump. That’s what friends are for, isn’t it?

That was ignoring Putin’s nature, formed as it was by the KGB, outpacing even the SS to the distinction of being history’s most evil organisation. And KGB creatures don’t befriend people. They run them, in every way they can.

Putin’s strategy is fairly obvious. For the past 20 years at least, he has been communicating, by word and deed, his plan to rebuild the Soviet Union to its past awful grandeur.

However, of the past Soviet republics and satellites, only Belarus has been cooperative. Others have been playing hard, or rather impossible, to get. Clearly, they had to be forced to re-join the fold, but those devious apostates were alert to the danger.

Hence they attached themselves to powerful international players: Kazakhstan to China, Azerbaijan to Turkey and – most annoying – the three Baltic republics to NATO. The Ukraine was also leaning the NATO way, even to the point of discussing future membership.

Turkey and especially China seem to be off-limits for Russia’s aggression, an attack on a NATO member is one for the future, what with that notorious Article 5 a burr under Putin’s blanket.

That left the Ukraine a clear winner: Putin correctly decided that, since the country was only a NATO ally, not yet a member, the West would use that as an excuse not to be directly involved.

The original plan was to overrun the Ukraine in three days and “hang Zelensky by the balls”, as Putin promised, speaking in the idiom Trump could relate to. However, after three years of heroic and skilful resistance by the Ukrainian army, helped along by Western supplies, Zelensky still keeps his anatomical fixtures, and the Ukraine is still in possession of 80 per cent of her territory.

As the shooting war goes on, hybrid war is also in full swing. The FSB, SVR and other heirs to the KGB have mounted a two-prong propaganda offensive, putting their professional skills to good use.

One prong is putting the blame for the war on NATO’s eastward expansion, which allegedly threatened Russia’s strategic interests. So it did, at that, considering that Russia’s strategic interest is to conquer or at least subjugate Eastern Europe, for starters.

Portraying NATO expansion as an aggressive threat to Russia was a typical KGB canard, but it was avidly swallowed by Westerners craving a strong, muscular leader. One still hears bleating to that effect from all and sundry, especially among the populist Right.

The other prong was threatening nuclear war, thereby stoking the fears of the more faint-hearted Western leaders. Putin correctly calculated that brandishing the nuclear shiv would slow down Western aid for the Ukraine and limit its scope. Hence the threats to sink Britain with one bomb, turn the US to radioactive dust or to create the America Strait beween Canada and Mexico.

The threat also sowed dissent among Western leaders, who proved to be divided and therefore conquerable. As has been their custom since 1949, when NATO was formed, they looked to America for guidance. But the signals they were receiving were mixed.

The Biden administration talked loudly but carried a small stick. It kept its hand firmly on the control valve regulating aid for the Ukraine. Every care was taken that the Ukrainians should have enough to fight, but not enough to win.

Then in barged Trump, full of MAGAlomaniac braggadocio. He’d end that war within hours of his inauguration, boasted Trump. He had that special rapport with Putin, based on a sense of spiritual kinship and common interests.

From the start, Trump made no secret of seeking any possible end to the war, including the Ukraine’s capitulation. Three days into Trump’s second term, America’s military and economic aid to the Ukraine was paused as a way of forcing Zelensky to surrender. That he flat out refused to do.

Hours became days, then weeks, then months. That Nobel Peace Prize was turning into a mirage: the closer Trump got to it, the farther away it turned out to be. Putin expertly strung him along, running Trump the way KGB teaches officers to run their marks.

Trump was getting desperate and ever so slightly irate. He was magnanimously tossing one concession after another on the table, all to no avail. His friend wouldn’t budge.

Of course, Vlad can keep the conquered Ukrainian territory. Sanctions? What sanctions? They’ll all disappear the moment Vlad shows willing. Readmitting Russia to the G8? Consider it done. Restoring full trade relations? Sorted. Influx of American capital and technology? No problem.

Even more important, Trump again declared a pause in armament supplies to the Ukraine, on the transparently ludicrous excuse of America not having enough left to defend herself. All of these concessions came in the way of an advance on future cooperation – Putin offered not a single one in return.

Trump kept ringing him up and they invariably had affable and friendly chats full of mutual respect bordering on admiration. But the war raged on, with Russian drones and missiles turning Ukrainian cities, including Kiev, into rubble.

That showed to Trump something his warped personality couldn’t accept: lack of respect. All his friend Vlad has to do is meet him halfway. No, scratch that: a tenth of the way would do. Just accept a ceasefire, no matter how short, or at least stop bombing Ukrainian cities for a while.

That would be it, job done. Trump would declare his personal victory, and he’d carry his peacemaker’s halo all the way to Stockholm.

Instead, Putin delivered the ultimate insult. The moment Trump put the phone down after the latest chinwag – and I mean the exact moment – the biggest Russian attack on Ukrainian cities in over three years broke out. Hundreds of drones and missiles punctuated Trump’s “talk to you later, Vladimir”.

Donald couldn’t contain himself any longer. “We get a lot of bull**** thrown at us by Putin…,” Trump told reporters. “He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”

(Don’t be surprised at the language. While so far failing to go down in history as the ultimate peacemaker, Trump can claim the honour of being the first US president to use the four-letter word in public. Iran and Israel, he told TV cameras the other day, “don’t know what the f*** they are doing.”)

“I’m disappointed, frankly, that President Putin hasn’t stopped,” added Trump in the voice of a man whose innermost feelings were hurt.

Since any song belted out by Trump is always a medley, he then changed the tune sung only two days earlier. Trump is now prepared to deplete America’s arsenal by providing more weapons to the Ukraine.

He made that promise in a private phone call to Zelensky, presumably a less abusive one than their personal encounter in the Oval Office. Specifically, Trump spoke about supplying “defensive weapons primarily” that the Ukraine needs to resist the escalating Russian raids.

Specifically, 10 new Patriot anti-missile rockets came up in the conversation. Trump has also reportedly removed the US objection to Germany’s transfer of such systems to the Ukraine.

No one knows what tune will next come up in the medley. Trump may ratchet up sanctions against Russia, including secondary sanctions against countries still trading with the aggressor. Or he may issue another advance to Putin by removing such sanctions altogether.

He may indeed supply defensive weapons to the Ukraine, or even offensive ones. (The demarcation between the two is rather smudged.) Or he may decide not to.

One way or another, Trump’s administration shows few signs of understanding the deadly danger of the continuing fascist aggression in the heart of Europe. Vacillations and oscillations only encourage aggressors who correctly see them as signs of cowardly weakness.

Things may soon come to a head, with the West having either to enter the hostilities directly or to surrender. Either eventuality can be prevented by leaving the aggressor in no doubt that the West presents a united front, a stonewall of unshakeable resolve.

So far I’ve seen no signs of the Trump administration’s intention of providing the keystone for that structure. In its absence, Putin’s aggression will continue to escalate, killing more Ukrainians, razing more Ukrainian cities — and giving the Nobel Prize Committee second thoughts.