The lessons Trump is teaching with his handling of the Russian invasion of Ukraine

The passage of time shows us that you can learn very useful lessons in all moments of your life, both good and bad.

Trump offers Putin a clumsy excuse to regain the former Russian territory of Alaska
A very revealing few hours about principles, patriotism and sovereignty

An excellent negotiator?

Donald Trump's approach to the Russian invasion of Ukraine is also teaching us some lessons, and some of them in spite of the US president. The first is that Trump has not turned out to be the excellent negotiator that some promised. He has not been one either in the practical field or in the field of principles.

On a practical level, Trump has put most of the pressure on the invaded country and relieved it on the invaders, accusing Zelensky of being a "dictator", blaming Ukraine for being invaded and voting with Russia and North Korea at the UN against a resolution that reaffirmed Ukraine's territorial integrity and called on Russia to withdraw its forces from the country. Trump's alignment with the Kremlin has been embarrassing, provoking criticism even within Republican ranks and prompting many Trump supporters to endlessly repeat slogans that until now had only been spread by pro-Russian activists. We could say that Trump would be a great negotiator if he were a Russian ambassador, but he is the president of the United States and what he has done is give Putin a big breath of fresh air.

A kick to national sovereignty

On the principled level, Trump has disappointed many of us who welcome his "anti-woke" domestic policy measures but reject his rapprochement with Putin's dictatorship in the realm of international politics. As I have already pointed out, he has even been criticized for this by his own party and by media outlets that had supported him. The clearest example has been the front page of the New York Post last week reminding Trump that Putin is the dictator.

The current US president has also kicked national sovereignty in the foot by starting negotiations on Ukraine with Russia (the invading country) without taking into account the invaded country, treating Ukraine with the same contempt with which he speaks of the sovereignty of allied countries such as Canada and Denmark (on the issue of Greenland). In this way, what Trump has done is feed the same discourse that Putin used to justify this invasion, a discourse according to which a great military power can ignore international law and present itself as the owner of the destiny of third countries without consulting them. It is precisely the same thing that some "anti-globalists" so criticized, with the difference that now they applaud it.

Throwing principles overboard

The worst thing about this is that what has happened does not only affect him personally. Trump has been cruel to an invaded country and has emboldened the invader, gifting Putin a strategic success when he had no need to do so, taking into account the colossal losses that Russia is suffering in Ukraine, where Putin has not achieved any of the objectives he set for himself with this invasion (conquering Ukraine, leaving it defenseless and installing a puppet government). In addition to giving Putin that political victory, Trump has thrown overboard the entire legacy of decades of US struggle for the cause of freedom, a legacy that had already been greatly damaged during Joe Biden's term in office due to his liberticidal policies founded on woke ideology.

Of course, I can't imagine Ronald Reagan saying the things that Trump has said in recent days, things that have delighted Vladimir Putin's fans. Let's remember that Reagan stood out for a firm policy against communism, which bore fruit in 1989 with the fall of the Marxist dictatorships in Eastern Europe, culminating in 1991 with the dismantling of the USSR. If Reagan had acted like Trump, half of Europe would still be under the communist yoke today, because the worst thing you can do with a tyrant is try to appease him and do him favors, which is what Trump has done with Putin.

Repeating the slogans of pro-Russian propagandists

It must be said that we can draw lessons from what we are seeing not only in the field of international politics. In several Western countries, politicians who sympathise with Trump have shown themselves incapable of contradicting him when he has said things as infamous as those I have pointed out above. What's more, many conservatives have joined Trump's rapprochement with Putin, adopting slogans that until now we had only seen from pro-Russian propagandists, such as pressuring Ukraine to surrender, blaming the countries that support Ukraine for the war (and not the invading country, which is Putin's Russia), calling those of us who support Ukraine "warmongers" (for the mere fact of asking those under attack to support them in facing military aggression) and ratifying the idea that the US has the right to decide for the Ukrainian people, an idea defended by the same people who criticize "globalism" for trampling on national sovereignty.

Principios que se convierten en papel mojado

In the same way that Trump has called into question his anti-woke discourse by joining something so typical of the discourse of that ideological current as is post-truth (as Agustín Rosety pointed out a few days ago in a magnificent article), many staunch Trump followers have made it clear to us that the most basic principles, such as national sovereignty, are no longer immovable for them, by accepting that the president of the United States negotiate the future of an invaded country and its territorial integrity with the invader, without taking into account those affected and even blaming the invaded for the invasion. It is the height of infamy.

Now we just have to find out what other principles will be turned into waste paper as soon as Trump questions them, taking into account the inability of some to contradict him, even when he says things as questionable as those I have pointed out in these lines. It must be said that this sad panorama is not exclusively Trump's fault: many conservatives have shot themselves in the foot because they wanted to, because for them it seemed more important not to lose the opportunity to flatter Trump (rightly or wrongly) than to take advantage of the opportunity to show that they have their own discourse, regardless of what the US president says at any given time.

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Photo: White House.