Pirate's Cove

So, big things are happening when it comes to trying to end the war in Ukraine. How did Trump World react?

Inside Trump world’s reaction to the Zelenskyy reset

For Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Monday began with a diplomatic whirlwind. It ended with a great sigh of relief.

Hours of meetings in Washington — Zelenskyy with President Donald Trump, Trump with a coterie of Europe’s most powerful leaders, all of the above together in the Oval Office — culminated in a “breakthrough,” in the words of NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte: Trump expressed a willingness to participate in security guarantees for Ukraine.

On the international stage, that alone amounts to a new dawn not only for the relationship between the U.S. and Ukraine, but also Zelenskyy’s relationship with Trump, and America’s with some of its closest transatlantic allies.

On the home front, it could be a bit more complicated. While there are no specifics yet on what exactly U.S. security guarantees might look like for Ukraine — Zelenskyy suggested those would be ironed out within 10 days — even the vague allusion to them hints that MAGA may be careening toward another foreign policy divide.

Do we want to provide security for Ukraine? I know many on Twitter are not happy. But, most aren’t even bothering to comment. We have to see if it happens first. Also, what would that look like? A small number of US military troops as a buffer? A small base? Air Force bombers and fighters? We don’t know. Would it be worth ending the war? Maybe the most hardcore MAGA will say “no.” I do not see a problem, not when they are not there to actually fight.

In public, there are a few topline takeaways from yesterday. The biggest are the security guarantees, and the reality that Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin are hurtling toward a bilateral meeting; German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that summit could happen within the next two weeks. After that, Trump intends to join Zelenskyy and Putin for a trilateral meeting with the aim of ending Russia’s war on Ukraine, he announced on social media. “[T]he optimism of your president is to be taken seriously,” French President Emmanuel Macron told NBC News. “So if he considers he can get a deal done, this is great news, and we have to do whatever we can to have a great deal.”

The Credentialed Media is shocked that Trump would accomplish this, and Politico offers a bunch of “insider” stuff, like

1. The Trump-Zelenskyy reset is real. From the moment Trump complimented Zelenskyy on his suit — all the way through to Vice President JD Vance’s more easy rapport with the Ukrainian president and the many “thanks” Zelenskyy offered — it was a totally different mood than the disastrous February meeting. “The vibe between the president and Zelenskyy was terrific,” a senior administration official told POLITICO. “What happened in that first Oval meeting is well gone.” This official described the ensuing talks as “really productive.”

It’s (hopefully) getting done because Trump approaches negotiations as a businessman, not a politician, but, he has folks like Marco Rubio to provide advice when also dealing with the foreign leaders who have mostly never worked in business. Even Putin has been in government his whole life. Zelenskyy is the only one who really worked.

5. Those security guarantees could be a sticking point internationally. It remains unclear just how big a commitment the U.S. has on the line here. “We haven’t even started [that discussion] other than a commitment,” the first senior administration official told POLITICO. “The question is, ‘Who participates to what percentage?’ But the president did commit that we would be a part of it. No specifics. And then he said he would also help it get organized. And he alone could sell that to Putin. I don’t think Putin would pay any attention to the others, and I’m not sure the others would do it without him.”

It should primarily be EU nations providing security, with a small contingent of US troops. I’d keep the stupid UN peacekeepers out. They like to rape and steal, and, that would end up with a lot of them being killed.

Meanwhile, as European leaders arrived at the White House, MAGA coalition minder Steve Bannon took to his influential “War Room” podcast to warn about the U.S. security guarantees in Ukraine.

“I’m just lost how the United States offering an Article 5 commitment for a security guarantee to Ukraine is a win for the United States,” Bannon said on his show Monday morning.

So, Bannon is not a fan. He’s the only one mentioned. No tweets from others or even the base MAGAs. I’m not full MAGA, and, I am not an isolationist. I’d have no problem with a small base, maybe a couple hundred troops tops. Let Europe have most. Lets see what happens as far as a deal. And give Trump a damned Nobel Peace Prize already.

John Daniel Davidson has a very interesting article at the Federalist regarding the Trump-Putin meeting and how the war was always going to end this way, with land giveaways, including the background of just how the war started and why security guarantees are necessary, and

Reality is really the big difference between the Biden administration’s approach to the war and Trump’s approach. Biden and his top officials routinely talked about Ukraine in a way that was so unrealistic it bordered on the fantastical. More than once, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken dismissed the possibility of a negotiated peace until Ukraine could “defend itself” and Russia withdrew all its troops from Ukrainian territory. In June 2023 he told CBS News that any peace agreement must uphold the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence. Biden and Blinken repeatedly insisted that nobody can veto NATO membership. But of course that’s not true; Putin vetoed NATO membership for Ukraine when he invaded the country.

And here we come to heart of the difference between Biden and Trump’s view of the war, and of foreign policy broadly speaking. The establishment foreign policy experts that ran things during Biden’s term (and Obama’s) think the world operates according to theories and abstractions rather than solid realities like history and geography. They thought they could simply invoke something like sovereignty, without grappling with the possibility that sovereignty and territorial integrity, given Ukraine’s history and its untenable borders, might be mutually exclusive.

There’s no peace yet, but, Trump lives more in the real world, rather than this Politics World. That’s the difference. Ukraine was never going to boot Russia out. Russia was never going to leave voluntarily. Ukraine would never have security from Russia on its own. The fluffy headed Politician Thought led to Russia taking Crimea and then invading Ukraine in 2022.