Some news outlets are reporting that President Trump is considering inviting Volodomyr Zelenskyy to his upcoming summit-meeting in Alaska with Vladimir Putin.
Mr. Trump would do well to remember the advice for conductors attributed to Richard Strauss:
“Never look at the trombones. It only encourages them.”
3 Comments
To be fair Malcolm, I think Zelensky does have a political need to be a little like de Gaulle, pounding the table and acting like a prima donna even though he has a fairly weak hand. At the end of the day no sensible observer doubts that if there’s any denouement to all this, it’s going to be a rather messy and brutal peace deal that heavily favors Russia (e.g. the loss of Ukrainian oblasts and Crimea).
If I may pontificate a little further on the matter, it seems to me the linchpin of a settlement will be this: can Ukraine receive a security guarantee – not NATO membership, but something akin to it – that gives the country a reasonable degree of peace. In other words, that the war will be ended and not commence because of legitimate (as well as squalid) Russian concerns. Goodness, I hope so.
Jason,
In my opinion — and I mean no offense here; this is just my opinion — Zelenskyy (who didn’t even speak Ukrainian) is a jumped-up television clown who became a world-class grifter of immense personal wealth, and who has supported truly reprehensible measures against the ethnic Russians who predominate in the eastern areas Russia has rightly retaken. He is widely despised in Ukraine. I see no reason to include him in these talks.
That said, I should make clear that I consider the swaggering, hubristic policy of the United States since the fall of the Soviet Union — and in particular our vile machinations leading up to the Maidan revolution — to be a very dark stain upon our national honor, as well as a titanic strategic blunder. We could have formed a very useful partnership with the Russians after the USSR went tits-up, a partnership that would have helped us now in our rivalry with China — and the Russians would have been eager and grateful to have done so. Instead we bullied and provoked them for decades, and this catastrophe is the result. Many are to blame for this shameful statecraft, but most of all I’d single out the Clintons, Barack Obama, many of the Bush-era spooks, Victoria Nuland, and Joe Biden. People like these are why we have tumbrels and lamp-posts.