It’s like one of those slapstick comedies from the early days of silent films: the “Keystone Cops” movies, perhaps, or Buster Keaton’s various efforts. Lots of people rushing around, constant reversals of fortune, and many pratfalls.
Last Wednesday - August 14 - on very short notice, the presidents and/or prime ministers of all the other major countries in the Nato alliance got together online to prepare Donald Trump for his “summit” meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday.
He had to be coached about his newly-adopted positions defending Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity because everybody knows that Trump tends to echo the views of the last person who talked to him, especially in subjects he doesn’t know about (which is most subjects).
So, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte, and sundry other European Nato notables drilled Trump on what to say and what not. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky also got a few words in.
Most importantly, they all said: “Trump must insist that Russia accept a ceasefire before peace negotiations started. Otherwise Putin could drag the negotiations out forever while continuing to conquer more Ukrainian territory.” Trump was already quite cross about Moscow’s foot-dragging on a ceasefire, so he seemed to take their advice seriously.
Indeed, just before he stepped aboard Air Force One to fly to Alaska on Friday he told reporters: “I want to see a ceasefire rapidly...I am not going to be happy if it’s not today...I want the killing to stop.” But he was flying there to meet Putin – who would then become the last person he talked to on the subject.
It’s entirely possible that Putin doesn’t have anything on Trump that’s strong enough to blackmail him with. He has never been caught in bed “with a dead girl or a live boy” (as Washington wags say), and lesser sexual and financial peccadilloes just slide off him like water off a duck’s back.
So, why did “Teflon Don” applaud Putin getting off the plane in Anchorage, offer him a ride in the presidential limo, generally carry on like a bedazzled fanboy? He admires other dictators too, maybe because their absolute power intoxicates him (remember his courtship of North Korean’s Kim Jong-un?), but his friendship with Putin is special. Nobody knows why.
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It was probably inevitable that Trump would do a U-turn as soon as he was in Putin’s presence. All his promises of “severe consequences” (secondary tariffs on countries importing Russian oil) if Putin would not agree to a cease fire went out the window. The fifty day deadline, the eight day deadline, the tomorrow deadline – all forgotten in a moment.
Flying home from Alaska, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a peace agreement.”
Who’s “all”? Trump, property tycoon Steve Witkoff and former Florida senator Marco Rubio (total six years of foreign affairs experience) vs Putin, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, and foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov (total 133 years of foreign affairs experience).
To be fair, Trump probably didn’t understand that this meant the Russians could go on fighting and bombing Ukraine until there was a peace settlement agreeable to Moscow – which will only be reached if and
when Russian’s maximal demands, amounting in practice to the subjugation of all Ukraine, have been accepted. He is not a detail man.
Trump then summoned Zelensky to Washington to hear the bad news, and he arrived on Monday. But so will almost all the European Nato leaders who prepped him last Wednesday. They are coming uninvited (although everybody will pretend otherwise) for a last ditch effort to turn Trump around again. It might even work again.
Even if it works this time, it’s impossible to be always the last person Trump speaks to, and the effort to be that person soon degenerates into slapstick and pratfalls. The European Nato heads of government (and Canada’s) will soon have to build a new Nato that does the old one’s job of deterring Russia, but without the United States.
They will, of course, carry on the pretence of the old Nato as long as possible, because although they have the money and the numbers to perform that task without American help, there will be many shortfalls and gaps in the new alliance during a lengthy transition (three to five years).
It will take a lot of hypocrisy and a massive campaign of perpetual flattery for the old Nato countries to keep Trump on side for that long while simultaneously keeping Ukraine out of Russia’s hands. However, that is the task they have now set themselves, although some have yet to come fully to terms with the new strategic realities.
Dyer is a London-based independent journalist. His new book is titled Intervention Earth: Life-Saving Ideas from the World’s Climate Engineers. Last year’s book, The Shortest History of War, is also still available.
