There is a reason that Vance will not go to Ukraine. He is an online person. Last year at the Munich Security Conference, he refused to meet Zelens’kyi, on the justification that he knew everything he needed to know already. Then he spent time on the internet in his hotel room and posted about certain adolescent concerns.
Perhaps sensing the awkwardness of his position, Vance then shifted to yelling at Zelens’kyi that he needed to thank President Trump. Zelens’kyi obsessively thanks American and other foreign leaders for their support of Ukraine. He did so during this visit to the United States as well. What Vance seemed to mean is that Zelens’kyi needed to express his thanks then and there, whenever Vance wanted, indeed right at the moment when Vance was yelling at him, and because Vance was yelling at him. Vance was demanding that Zelens’kyi thank Trump for aid that the Biden administration gave to Ukraine, and which the Trump people were threatening to take away — and indeed at that point had almost certainly already decided to take away. The Trump policy to Ukraine, as of yesterday, was something like the following: meet with Russia without Ukraine; concede to every significant Russian demand in advance of any Russian concession and without asking Ukrainians; claim that Russia and Ukraine were jointly responsible for the war; refer to Zelens’kyi as a dictator without condemning Putin; vastly overstate the extend of previous American aid; claim Ukrainian resources as compensation for that aid. In this setting, the compulsive demand for ceaseless gratitude on demand is not only unreasonable: it shifts into the abuser’s need to be portrayed by the victim as the great benefactor.
No doubt Ukrainians should express their thanks to Americans. As they do. But it is illogical, to say the least, for Americans not to thank Ukrainians, or to treat their courageous president as an object of contempt. The coercive ritual of gratitude hides from Americans the basic reality of what has happened these last three years.
During this war, Ukraine has delivered to the United States strategic gains that the United States could not have achieved on its own. Ukrainian resistance gave hope to people defending democracies around the world. Ukrainian soldiers were defending the basic principle of international law, which is that states are sovereign and that borders should not be changed by aggression. Ukraine in effect fulfilled the entire NATO mission, absorbing a full-scale Russian attack essentially on its own. It has deterred Chinese aggression over Taiwan, by showing how difficult offensive operations can be. It has slowed the spread of nuclear weapons, by proving that a conventional power can resist a nuclear power in a conventional war. Throughout the war, Russia has threatened to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine, and the Ukrainians have resisted the nuclear bluff. Should they be allowed to be defeated, nuclear weapons will spread around the world, both to those who wish to bluff with them, and those who will need them to resist the bluff.
The expansion of Russian power in Ukraine would mean more killing, more rape, more torture, more kidnaping of children inside Ukraine. But it would also mean that all of the strategic gains become strategic losses. Russia, rather than being prevented by Ukraine from fighting other wars, is encouraged to start new ones. China, rather than seeing an effective coalition to halt aggression, is emboldened to start wars. American endorsement of wars of aggression leads to global chaos. And everyone who can builds nuclear weapons. That is an actual scenario for a third world war, authored by the people who scripted yesterday’s attempted mugging in the White House.
The economies of American’s present allies are at least twenty times larger than the Russian economy. And Russian trade was never very important to the United States. Why would one fight trade wars with the prosperous friends in exchange for access to an essentially irrelevant market? The answer might be that the alliance with Russia is preferred for reasons that have nothing to do with American interests.
There was a logic to what happened yesterday, but it was the logic of throwing away all reason, yielding to all impulse, betraying all decency, and embracing the worst in oneself on order to bring out the worst in the world. Perhaps Musk, Trump, and Vance will personally feel better amidst American decline, Russian violence, and global chaos. Perhaps they will find it profitable. This is not much consolation for the rest of us.
— Timothy Snyder, The War Trump Chooses