It’s been the news highlight ever since it happened, and although I’ve read tons of articles about it, there’s no way to read them all. In fact, as I write this, I haven’t even read all the comments here.
But naturally, I have some thoughts that I want to add to yesterday’s two posts on the subject. But first I want to point out what Victor Davis Hanson has written. That’s the link to his “X” comment, but just in case you can’t read it there easily, I’m copying and pasting it here in its entirety. Hanson is no hothead, and he’s an expert on the history of war:
Ten bad takeaways from the Zelenskyy blow-up
1. Zelenskyy does not grasp—or deliberately ignores—the bitter truth: those with whom he feels most affinity (Western globalists, the American Left, the Europeans) have little power in 2025 to help him. And those with whom he obviously does not like or seeks to embarrass (cf. his Scranton, Penn. campaign-like visit in September 2024) alone have the power to save him. For his own sake, I hope he is not being “briefed” by the Obama-Clinton-Biden gang to confront Trump, given their interests are not really Ukraine’s as they feign.
2. Zelenskyy acts as if his agendas and ours are identical. So, he keeps insisting that he is fighting for us despite our two-ocean-distance that he mocks. We do have many shared interests with Ukraine, but not all by any means: Trump wants to “reset” with Russia and triangulate it against China. He seeks to avoid a 1962 DEFCON 2-like crisis over a proxy showdown in proximity to a nuclear rival. And he sincerely wants to end the deadlocked Stalingrad slaughterhouse for everyone’s sake.
3. The Europeans (and Canada) are now talking loudly of a new muscular antithesis, independent of the U.S. Promises, promises—given that would require Europeans to prune back their social welfare state, frack, use nuclear, stop the green obsessions, and spend 3-5 percent of their GDP on defense. The U.S. does not just pay 16 percent of NATO’s budget but also puts up with asymmetrical tariffs that result in a European Union trade surplus of $160 billion, plays the world cop patrolling sea-lanes and deterring terrorists and rogues states that otherwise might interrupt Europe’s commercial networks abroad, as well as de facto including Europe under a nuclear umbrella of 6,500 nukes.
4. Zelenskyy must know that all of the once deal-stopping issues to peace have been de facto settled: Ukraine is now better armed than most NATO nations, but will not be in NATO; and no president has or will ever supply Ukraine with the armed wherewithal to take back the Donbass and Crimea. So, the only two issues are a) how far will Putin be willing to withdraw to his 2022 borders and b) how will he be deterred? The first is answered by a commercial sector/tripwire, joint Ukrainian-US-Europe resource development corridor in Eastern Ukraine, coupled with a Korea-like DMZ; the second by the fact that Putin unlike his 2008 and 2014 invasions has now lost a million dead and wounded to a Ukraine that will remain thusly armed.
5. What are Zelenskyy’s alternatives without much U.S. help—wait for a return of the Democrats to the White House in four years? Hope for a rearmed Europe? Pray for a Democratic House and a 3rd Vindman-like engineered Trump impeachment? Or swallow his pride, return to the White House, sign the rare-earth minerals deal, invite in the Euros (are they seriously willing to patrol a DMZ?), and hope Trump can warn Putin, as he did successfully between 2017-21, not to dare try it again?
6. If there is a cease fire, a commercial deal, a Euro ground presence, and influx of Western companies into Ukraine, would there be elections? And if so, would Zelenskyy and his party win? And if not, would there be a successor transparent government that would reveal exactly where all the Western financial aid money went?
7. Zelenskyy might see a model in Netanyahu. The Biden Administration was far harder on him than Trump is on Ukraine: suspending arms shipments, demanding cease-fires, prodding for a wartime, bipartisan cabinet, hammering Israel on collateral damage—none of which Westerners have demanded of Zelenskyy. Yet Netanyahu managed a hostile Biden, kept Israel close to its patron, and when visiting was gracious to his host. Netanyahu certainly would never before the global media have interrupted, and berated a host and patron president in the White House.
8. If Ukraine has alienated the U.S. what then is its strategic victory plan? Wait around for more Euros? Hold off an increasingly invigorated Russian military? Cede more territory? What, then, exactly are Zelenskyy’s cards he seems to think are a winning hand?
9. If one views carefully all the 50-minute tape, most of it was going quite well—until Zelenskyy started correcting Vance firstly, and Trump secondly. By Ukraine-splaining to his hosts, and by his gestures, tone, and interruptions, he made it clear that he assumed that Trump was just more of the same compliant, clueless moneybags Biden waxen effigy. And that was naïve for such a supposedly worldly leader.
10. March 2025 is not March 2022, after the heroic saving of Kyiv—but three years and 1.5 million dead and wounded later. Zelenskyy is no longer the international heartthrob with the glamorous entourage. He has postponed elections, outlawed opposition media and parties, suspended habeas corpus and walked out of negotiations when he had an even hand in Spring 2022 and apparently even now when he does not in Spring 2025.
Before I had read any of that, I had already come to many of the same conclusions. In particular, I’d been thinking about numbers 1 and 3, and that’s the angle I want to emphasize here, because I think it’s the most important one of all. It involves far more than Zelensky and his actions and perceptions; it involves America’s relation to Europe post-WWII, and current changes in that relationship as envisioned by Trump.
Trump has been talking for a long time about having other NATO nations pay their fair share – and by “a long time” I mean since long before he ran for president in 2015 (I recall hearing him say it in old interview clips from when he was a youngish man). We’ve been footing the bill for an increasingly ungrateful Europe since the end of WWII, and a lot of Americans are tired of it. Europe – especially Western European leaders and their globalist supporters – looks down on Trump and his unwashed Americans, not just the MAGA folks but Americans in general. These Europeans much preferred Obama (all the way through to “Obama’s third term”) for obvious reasons. It was shortsighted of Zelensky to campaign for Harris, but not really surprising in that he correctly assumed that Trump’s election would spell trouble for him and a Harris victory would keep the money and arms flowing. The same, in a way, for western Europe, which isn’t in a hot war with Russia but which has nevertheless become somewhat dependent on American military aid while at the same time often acting critical of and superior to the US.
And so one of the main things Zelensky was doing yesterday was attempting to pivot to Europe. I believe that he even said it explicitly (although I’m having trouble finding the quote right now; perhaps you can help) – that Europe has been of more help to Ukraine than the US has. As for Trump and Vance, one of the noteworthy things about this administration so far has been Vance’s Munich speech, in which he gave Europe a tongue-lashing for, among other things, being insufficiently protective of free speech and shutting down popular parties they don’t like. Those parties tend to be MAGA-like parties, more or less, which have been rising in popularity in Europe and which threaten the current leaders whether those leaders are on the left or the right. You might say they threaten the Western European uniparty.
So no wonder the Europeans are horrified at Trump and Vance; they were already horrified about them anyway, and sympathetic to Zelensky’s position. They also would like to continue to take America’s help and look down on that help, as well as giving America advice.
And what of Zelensky and Ukraine now? I can’t predict the future, although I’m quite worried about the fate of Ukraine. I will mention, however, that this is what Zelensky is saying today, as well as what some of Europe’s “elites” are saying, and that I don’t yet hear the fat lady singing:
A Europe already rattled by Trump’s overtures to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin quickly rallied around Zelensky, with the European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, saying in a statement that it’s “clear that the free world needs a new leader.”
On Saturday, Zelensky appeared conciliatory when he posted on social media after arriving in London to meet UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
“It’s crucial for us to have President Trump’s support,” Zelensky said in a series of posts on X on Saturday morning. “He wants to end the war, but no one wants peace more than we do.” …
“We are very grateful to the United States for all the support. I’m thankful to President Trump, Congress for their bipartisan support, and American people. Ukrainians have always appreciated this support, especially during these three years of full-scale invasion,” Zelensky reiterated in his posts on social media.
But he reiterated his demands for security guarantees before he signs any minerals agreement.
As I said, this doesn’t seem to be over.