Trump is the new ‘one-man wrecking ball’

RUSSIA invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, after it had already annexed that sovereign democratic state's Crimea region 10 years earlier. “Neutral" Finland and Sweden demonstrated their dismay and fears about this for Europe by joining Nato.

Europe and the Biden administration imposed sanctions on Russia, and the international criminal court accused President Vladimir Putin of war crimes.

And along comes Donald Trump, president of the most powerful Western state, this week to align himself with Putin, and his administration insults and threatens European democracies.

Trump has in recent days repeated almost every Putin accusation against Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky. “You should never have started it," he told Ukraine. He called Zelensky incompetent and a dictator who is only supported by 4% of his citizens.

Ukraine might become Russian, or maybe not, he says. What Ukraine must not become is part of Nato and Zelensky needs to move quickly or he won't have a country anymore, he added.

Putin too said contrary to all facts and rationality in an interview with Trump confidant Tucker Carlson last year that Ukraine had started the war.

Victory for Putin hailed

Trump's team of senior envoys met with their Russian counterparts in Saudi Arabia this week to negotiate a peace plan for Ukraine. The country under discussion, Europe, and Britain were not invited. Trump is likely to meet with Putin personally about Ukraine next week. The initial talks were hailed as a victory for Putin by Russian media.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, led emergency summits on Monday and Wednesday with 15 other heads of state in Europe and the Baltic region to discuss the US turnaround. Macron, the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the Polish and Baltic government leaders expressed their express distaste for the Trump administration's actions and statements.

It is not a complex operation to disprove Trump's statements. The reasons Putin initially gave for his military invasion of Ukraine were that the Zelensky government were Nazis (Zelensky is Jewish) and that Russia had to denazify the country; that Ukraine isn't really a nation of its own but is part of Russia; and that Russia had to liberate and protect Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine.

Today Putin merely maintains that Ukraine is working with Nato to threaten Russia's security.

Putin's plan three years ago was to take over Ukraine within a few days. The fact that Ukraine has since fought unexpectedly bravely and quite successfully against the vastly superior Russian forces makes it explicit that this country's people see themselves as a sovereign, separate nation – and as Europeans.

There have been many debates these last three years about whether Nato's creeping presence ever closer to Russia was enough provocation for it to occupy its neighbour, but no one can ever deny that no form of military threat ever emanated from Ukraine itself. It is also absurd to argue that Nato, a defensive alliance, would have had plans to invade Russia.

Zelensky was elected president on April 21, 2019, with 73% of the vote. Since the Russian invasion began, he has addressed various Western parliaments and received standing ovations everywhere.

The only opinion poll about his popularity was recently conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, and the finding was that 57% of his citizens trust him. Trump says it's 4% but doesn't say where he got this from.

Due to the war, martial law was declared in the country and therefore the election was postponed – as happened in Britain and elsewhere during the last world war. Millions of citizens have temporarily fled to neighbouring states and elsewhere, and tens of thousands of voters live in areas occupied by Russia.

As Starmer and other European leaders said this week, this makes a peaceful, fair, and successful election impossible. Scholz described Trump's accusation that Zelensky was a dictator as “dangerous".

Ukraine completely undermined

The result of Trump's statements this week is that Ukraine and Zelensky's negotiating position in the intended peace process has been completely undermined. Ukraine's possible Nato membership could have been a strong negotiating card.

The first cracks in the new rift between America and Europe (and Starmer's Britain increasingly sees itself as part of this bloc) began last weekend during the annual international security conference in Munich. US vice-president JD Vance declared to the conference that Europe's biggest problem wasn't Russia or China, but themselves. There's a new sheriff in town, Donald Trump, he declared.

Vance accused European countries, among other things, of not respecting freedom of speech and suppressing alternative viewpoints. His statement comes in the same week that Trump banned the international news agency Associated Press from the White House because it continues to use the name Gulf of Mexico in reports rather than Gulf of America, as Trump has renamed it.

Trump and some of his ministers threaten to revoke certain television channels' licences, and his right-hand man, Elon Musk, demands that the producers of the popular current affairs program on CBS, 60 Minutes, should be sent to prison for a “long time".

At least part of the background here is the support that Musk and other prominent MAGA leaders have given to the extreme right, neo-Nazi party in Germany, Alternative for Germany (AfD), in recent months. The mainstream parties in Germany refuse to have anything to do with AfD. The Trump inner circle also supports Nigel Farage's Reform UK party which is to the right of the Tories.

The former British prime minister and longtime good friend of Trump, Boris Johnson, wrote on Twitter/X this week: “Of course Ukraine didn't start the war. You might as well say that America attacked Japan at Pearl Harbor. Of course a country undergoing a violent invasion should not be staging elections. There was no general election in the UK from 1935 to 1945.

“Of course Zelenskyy's ratings are not 4%. They are actually about the same as Trump's. Trump's statements are not intended to be historically accurate but to shock Europeans into action. In particular the US can see $300bn of frozen Russian assets – mainly in Belgium. That is cash that could and should be used to pay Ukraine and compensate the US for its support.

“Why is Europe preventing the unfreezing of Putin's cash? The US believes Belgium, France and other countries are blocking. It's absurd. We need to get serious and fast."

The current prime minister, Starmer, declared the day before yesterday: “We have to recognise the new era we are in, not cling hopelessly to the comforts of the past. It is time for us to take responsibility for our security, for our continent."

This is the leader of the country that has had a “special relationship" with the US for seven decades.

Non-existent strategic thinking

Some analysts believe Trump is trying to appease Putin to sour his relationship with China. This assumes long-term strategic thinking that is nowhere visible in the Trump administration.

But even if this were true, Ukraine will clearly pay the price. It now seems inevitable that an agreement between Trump and Putin will allow Russia to keep the territory it occupies in Ukraine and incorporate it into Russia. The struggle for Europe now is to keep the “normalised" Putin from further foreign adventures.

Trump's bromance with Putin makes it all the more ironic that Washington cites the South African government's friendship with Russia as one of the reasons for sanctions.

South Africa's ties with Europe have always been stronger than those with America. Britain and the Netherlands were our colonial rulers and during the three decades before 1994, the anti-apartheid movements especially in these countries, but also in countries like Sweden and Ireland, contributed much to the pressure on the apartheid regimes.

If the government's approach to foreign affairs had been more strategic and agile and less about ideology and struggle nostalgia, a new rapprochement with Europe (and Britain) could have held great value for South Africa.

European states don't have the Trump administration's obsession with South Africa's policy of affirmative action and black empowerment. Europe doesn't try to be the only bull in the international kraal and accepts that we must maintain a healthy relationship with our largest trading partner, China.

At least four EU member states officially support South Africa's case against Israel at the international court of justice: Ireland, Belgium, Slovenia and Spain, while most others maintain official neutrality on it. This case is widely cited as the main reason why the Trump administration now wants to isolate South Africa.

Disrupting the international order

The Trump administration will boycott and undermine South Africa's presidency of the G20 in 2025, but the European countries fully support us.

Trump is busy isolating America more than at any time in the country's existence and in the process he is fundamentally disrupting the international order.

South Africa's government of national unity needs to definitely throw everything into the fight to curry favour with the Trump administration in the interest of our economy. But Pretoria must also watch the rearrangement of geopolitics closely and ensure that we benefit from it rather than being hurt by it.

♦ VWB ♦

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