One Quote Explains Washington’s Shift on Ukraine

The Volte-Face Heard Around the World

So Donald Trump tweeted after his address to the UN:

“I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a positive position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form.”

It was the volte-face heard around the world, or at least across the Atlantic.

What he said in his 56 minute address to the UN was a little less bold and lot more rambling.That NATO might need to shoot down Russian aircraft that enter member airspace is pretty much the same toothless talking point the rest of Europe has been making since Russia began probing NATO’s resolve with drones. Even as the swells gathered in New York, large, unidentified drones operating near the airports in Copenhagen and Oslo caused border closures in two NATO countries and triggering frantic investigations on three Russia-linked ships operating offshore as it happened. What separates Trump’s blather from the Euro-variety is that his just might achieve some blather tipping point that causes Europe to police its own airspace without US permission.

The president’s comment on the Russo-Ukrainian War in particular didn’t mean much either. It sounded like a personal gripe that you might make against a tennis-partner.

"Of the seven wars that I stopped, I thought it would be the easiest because of my relationship with President Putin.”

And therein lies the key to understanding Trump's shift on Ukraine: It’s personal for a president who is both mercurial and a slave to his last impulse. Putin’s de facto mockery of Trump’s cease fires, red-lines and theatrical summits have finally hurt the man’s feelings. Granted, it seems like a silly way to run a superpower to me, but it isn’t without its advantages on the ground. I don’t know how that meeting with Zelenskyy went, but Trump came out tweeting. Given how absolutely full of it the top echelon of this train-wreck is, Putin may have written the tweet off. But it scared the pants off the Russian public - from greasy Oligarch to the Ivan on the street - as Russian stocks and the ruble plunged across the board yesterday. And that scares the pants off Putin.

A little more charitably, change in stance may not be entirely emotional. Perhaps Trump has broken the habit of a lifetime to listen to what his advisors - and the 4717 - are saying; that Putin’s advantage in this war of attrition is eroding, and with it, his time on the throne. And let’s not rule out the role of mammon. There is that bonkers rich mineral deal Kyiv signed with Washington – and no one is going to see dollar one until the shooting stops.

But rhetoric and tweets, however bold and bombastic, shouldn’t be taken for a strategic endgame. That still remains very tricky. With NATO air-cover and European boots fortifying free Ukraine, getting the Donbas region back will be hard, but certainly possible. Crimea, however, is a different story. The part of the Crimean peninsula that connects it to the Ukrainian mainland is rendered as solid ground on maps, but that’s misleading. Anyone who’s been to Venice, Louisiana to indulge in its epic big game fishing knows the feeling of ground that looks solid from a distance but in reality is simply marshy gumbo that are passible only by causeways. It’s very hard to invade - either way - across a swamp. As it stands, there are only two roads that could carry troop transports from Crimea to the mainland or vise-versa. Both of which have been in a blow up/rebuild cycle since the beginning of the war. In short, Russians are now Crimea now, and there is no good way to get the Russian’s out unless they chose to go. It’s not even clear that the locals even want that.

Even this, in Trump Think, may be personal. Putin has committed the ultimate sin by simply not winning. As the president will remind anyone who will listen he only backs winners.