Hello and happy Saturday. The Ukrainian cause and broader European security suffered major setbacks in the last 10 days: Vice President J.D. Vance criticized our allies at the Munich Security Conference, a U.S. delegation traveled to Saudi Arabia for negotiations with Russia on ending the war, and President Donald Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator” and claimed he “should have never started” the war.
As we noted in The Morning Dispatch on Tuesday, “On September 30, 1938, the leaders of the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Germany met in Munich to strike a deal that legitimized the Nazi conquest of Sudetenland in an effort to keep the rest of Czechoslovakia intact. Less than six months later, Germany broke the pact and continued its push into Czechoslovakia before setting its sights on Poland and France. As Russia’s war in Ukraine enters its fourth year, the war-torn country’s European backers fear another Munich moment may be at hand.”
Vance addressed the Munich Security Conference on February 14, telling a room full of European leaders that the Trump administration “believe[s] that it’s important in the coming years for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defense.” He went on to say that the greatest threat to the continent was not Russia or China, but European leaders’ approach to immigration and free speech.
On Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio led a delegation to Saudi Arabia to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to discuss ending the Ukraine war and reestablishing diplomatic ties between the two nations—a meeting that the New York Times described as a “head-spinning shift in relations.” Ukraine was not invited.
That same day, reporters asked President Trump about Ukraine’s absence at the talks. “Today I heard, ‘Oh, well we weren’t invited,’” Trump responded. “Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should’ve ended it in three years. You should have never started it.” Trump would go on to call Zelensky a “Dictator without Elections,” failing to note that Ukraine’s constitution calls for suspending elections when the country is under martial law.
In Boiling Frogs (🔒), Nick Catoggio wondered whether Trump realizes that completely selling out Ukraine will damage his legacy.
Trump and his allies have been remarkably successful at muddying the moral waters around domestic matters like presidential elections, separation of powers, and, soon, the authority of judicial rulings.
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But the MAGA movement hasn’t done as well at persuading Americans that the bad guys abroad aren’t actually bad. The degree of difficulty is too high: No amount of sophistry can obscure the wickedness Russia has practiced in Ukraine, even to otherwise docile Republicans in Congress and Trump toadies in right-wing media.
But Jonah Goldberg is skeptical that Trump is putting that much thought into it. “It’s Trumpism on a global stage: grab whatever argument works in the moment, even if it contradicts everything or anything you’ve said up till that point, in order to get what you want,” he wrote in the Wednesday G-File (🔒). “Trump wants Putin at G7 summits. He wants to visit Moscow. He wants Putin’s strongman musk to rub off on him in photo ops. There’s no grand strategy behind it.”
Either way, the past week bodes poorly for Ukraine as the third anniversary of its war against Russia approaches. As Kevin wrote in Wanderland (🔒): “Moscow is being rewarded for its brutality and aggression, while Ukraine is being punished for its petty and mulish insistence on surviving as a nation and a people. Vis-à-vis Moscow, the Trump administration is not even a paper tiger: A paper tiger might at least give you a papercut.”
Thank you for reading and have a great weekend.
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