Real Clear
Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalyst addresses relevant political and social issues of our times in a straightforward and honest manner. Taking on anti-logic factions that are growing in society. News and opinions that you can rely on for integrity and depth!
Real Clear
Interpreting Trump on Ukraine/Russia
Amid the ongoing Ukraine-Russia crisis, this episode explores the complexities of Trump's diplomacy with Putin, the sidelining of Zelensky, and the potential for peace negotiations. We analyze the impacts of Trump's tactics and the broader implications for international relations.
• Analysis of Trump’s relationship with Putin
• Examination of Zelensky's sidelining in negotiations
• Discussion of negotiation tactics and their implications
• Psychological perspectives on Trump's leadership style
• Speculation about future ceasefire negotiations
• Audience engagement on interpreting Trump's statements
Welcome back everybody. It is Wednesday, february 19th 2025. I wanted to come and talk to you about the emerging situation with the Ukraine-Russia settlement and the peace talks that are currently ongoing, mainly with the United States and Russia, to the chagrin of Zelensky and Ukraine. I'm going to be talking about various positions on this and, as I try to equip you with a thinking mind, not telling you what to think or how to emote about things there's far too much like that going on in the world it's best to maintain an analytic stance. If you look to Politico, a more left-leaning outlet, you get one perspective. If you shift over to something like the Epoch Times, more right-leaning, you get another. Let me give you my rundown to begin with.
Speaker 1:As best I can tell, president Trump is trying to appeal to Vladimir Putin's narcissism and, of course, the two men have had a kind of what people call a bromance for years, where they tend to lob accolades toward one another and become quite smitten, we might say. President Trump claims that this is a negotiation tactic and it is a good idea to be friendly with your enemies so as to make compromises where you need to be, and his critics say that this is a negotiation tactic and it is a good idea to be friendly with your enemies so as to make compromises where you need to be, and his critics say that this is a tilt toward dictatorship, that he has a sort of affinity for people who are the head of totalitarian regimes. The situation on the ground right now is that President Trump is dealing directly with Russia and Putin and is basically sidelining Zelensky and Ukraine and making them come to the table on terms that work for the United States and for Russia. To do this is to isolate Russia and to negotiate on behalf of and with Ukraine and the EU against Russia, and that will yield the most just result. The criticism of that position is that Russia is being driven further into the hands of China relationship and is creating a sort of split hemispheric force against the United States and the EU. Furthermore, nothing like that has worked. Over the past three years that the Ukraine war has been going on, there has been about a million and a half men who have died in the field of battle.
Speaker 1:You've heard President Trump always talking about the flat land and how bullets have nowhere to stop except in a human body, and he addresses that in his typical way, which is an extremely practical brass tacks description of, like topography in an area. He doesn't get too abstract, he talks about nuts and bolts, and it's a compelling illustration. Ukraine has lost a tremendous amount of its people and Russia. He's not in a moment of easy settlement, and by that he has to claim that if he simply maintains a kind of co-ownership or ownership over small tracts of Ukrainian territory and that is the reason that such an enormous amount of Russian men have been killed he's going to have a tough time selling that to the Russian people. Now, of course, he is the narcissism of Vladimir Putin and presenting a kind of diplomatic presence in the world that suggests that Putin would be acting in a statesman-like fashion. Putin has long since desired to be viewed that way. Of course he's a loathsome creature who kills his political opponents, but I think this is what he would like to think of himself as a sort of noble Russian statesman, an advocate for Russian nationalism and so forth. Now I may be giving Trump there too much credit in that perspective that he's somehow appealing in a negotiation way to Putin's narcissism and Trump, in Trump-like fashion, makes statements that can be taken in a very bizarre direction, and I hope he doesn't mean them to go there, but he might.
Speaker 1:He said in Europe, as quoted by Politico you've been there for three years. You should have ended it. Three years you should have never been there. You should have never started it. You should have made a deal in terms of you should have never started. It is being taken as an accusation that Ukraine started the war. You have to interpret Trumpian language, I think, within knowing how Trump thinks when he says you should have never started it. What he means is you should have found a way to avoid this by negotiations and dealmaking.
Speaker 1:Now, I have always said about Donald Trump that he puts his foot in his mouth more times than you can count. This would be an example. If he's asked to clarify this, then I hope he does the job, because if he actually thinks that Ukraine started the war with Russia, then we've got a big problem. You can get yourself in quite a boondoggle taking the President of the United States, apparently over the last three cycles, too literally. In fact, boris Johnson shares my opinion. The former prime minister of the United Kingdom urges Europe's leaders not to take Trump's statements too literally. He thinks that Trump is trying to shock Europeans into action. I actually think that I'm correct in the way I analyzed his phrase. I actually think that I'm correct in the way I analyzed his phrase.
Speaker 1:Trump is also getting into social media boondoggles with Zelensky and he says things like, quote Think of it a modestly successful comedian, vladimir Zelensky, talked to the United States of America into spending $350 billion to go into a war that couldn't be won, that never had to start, but a war that he, without the US and Trump, will never be able to settle. He wrote on social media on February 19th. I'm quoting from the Epoch Times here. These comments were made one day after US delegations met with the Russian officials in Saudi Arabia to discuss a peace settlement, and Ukraine was notably missing. Trump also references Zelensky and Ukraine suspending elections through martial law during periods of war, which they have done for, I think, two cycles now and are continuing to do so indefinitely. It makes some sense that you would not have elections to disrupt an administration that is running the nation's defense, but I think anybody ensconced in a democratic republic would say okay, if that's stalled indefinitely. That's quite interesting and perhaps concerning.
Speaker 1:Now I think, in addition to esteemed colleagues of mine, most heads of states have a psychopathic element to them. It's not a criticism at all. It's actually potentially a built-in feature of the role, because no individual could be so grandiose to believe that they can actually occupy the presidency, because no one really can. So you have to be riding on the illusion of your own greatness, so to speak, to be able to even take the job. That being said, what I'm aiming at here is that for Trump to sideline Zelensky and Ukraine. That's something that I think a normally empathic individual probably couldn't do. If I was in the role of president, I would be treating with Ukraine and viewing them as downtrodden and beleaguered which they of course are and my heartstrings would be pulled out towards them.
Speaker 1:I don't think Trump suffers from those elements of the human condition, let's say, that might make him particularly suited for the moment. This is the psychological argument for Trump as a president is that he doesn't tend to fall to the same, potentially neurotic, sympathetic positions that most people would. Instead, he has a sort of actuarial, hard-lined aim, and here I could be giving too much credit to what some view as just a negative pathology. But there are, but there are historians right now who would point out that the United States and NATO have unnecessarily crept the NATO boundaries toward Russia unnecessarily, which provoked a kind of dictatorial aggression from Russia. I'd have to cover those positions in more depth to be credible on them. But there are rather but there are rather serious historians who view what the United States has been doing with NATO as unnecessarily not unjust, but unnecessary. Furthermore, I think Trump knows that he doesn't need Ukraine. There is no actual purpose for including Ukraine in a resolution at this stage.
Speaker 1:I've heard some people who are on the hardline NATO side claim that well, ukraine has a very well-versed army at this time and we want them on the side of NATO in the future. My answer to that is yes, I see, but what are the chances that if a conflict broke out between NATO countries and Russia, that Ukraine would join Russia, not NATO? I'd say closer to zero than 100%. So I don't buy that at all. In order to buttress NATO forces in the future during armed conflicts against Russia, you don't have to actually make NATO include Ukraine Broadly.
Speaker 1:The left-leaning position here is that Trump is sympathetic towards dictators and also goes into situations rather cold and discerning in his calculus without too much of a soft spot for perceived victims. Of course, ukraine is a victim here, but he's not going to let that emotional sentiment affect his need to end the war or produce a ceasefire. I think there's probably a combination of the two war or produce a ceasefire. I think there's probably a combination of the two. I think that Trump does like to have a kind of bravado between strongmen, but I have not seen that matriculate into diplomatic outcomes that are bad for the world or for the United States. We have to remember that in his first administration there were no wars, there were no new wars, and that's been the first in a 30-year span. Let's see how this plays out.
Speaker 1:I think that probably Trump is going to do what he does I guess, best or worst, depending on your perspective. He's going to say some pretty crass and blunt things and he's trying to do something quite paradoxical, which is hit the situation with a surgical hammer, if you can put something oxymoronic like that. Now, I don't know how much Trump actually cares for the strongman connection with people like Vladimir Putin, but what I do think is that Trump does not like people like Vladimir Zelensky. Why do I say that? He does not enjoy when people present themselves to him or to the United States like they are victims needing American support. He's very calculated in his foreign political maneuvers and I think he views the Ukraine war as a waste of American money and he's first coming at it from that perspective. This is a man who is first and foremost trying to reduce the deficit. This is a man who is first and foremost trying to reduce the deficit and that's why he went to secure Ukrainian loans with mineral rights from Ukraine, which Volensky said on Meet the Press that he was willing to do.
Speaker 1:Classical Democrats and Republicans alike, who generally have the same position here, the Reagan-esque and Romney-esque type of diplomatic relations would say that America should be this all-encompassing force for good and irrespective of how we pay for it and however long a righteous war needs to unfold, my sense is that the American people are not very enthused about that kind of predisposition. Remember, this is a country that spent an untold number of dollars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which many people in America, which the majority of people in America, view as wasteful spending and misguided. We're still in the context of the aftermath of the folly of President Bush and his entrance into the Middle East for nation rebuilding. By the way, that does shed an odd light onto President Trump's idea of somehow restructuring Gaza with US control, one would think. If he is anti-territorial revival and he doesn't want to have the United States expanding itself too much, and he doesn't want to have the United States expanding itself too much and he doesn't want to repeat the errors of the past in the way that Bush did, why would he suggest such an idea that the US would own Gaza? That would seem to me to invite the same kind of ire towards the United States to rile up Islamic radicalism and increase attacks on Americans who might be stationed in such a place.
Speaker 1:Of course he might look at such a thing as an American foothold in the Mediterranean and see that as some kind of wise expenditure, but I haven't heard any detailed explanation as to why that would be the case. I've simply heard it's going to be the new Riviera of the Middle East, the way that Beirut used to be. Okay, that's a vague idea of condo building, but I don't know what that has to do really with American positionality in the Middle East. Here's the rub. What I think is likely going to unfold is that within the next two weeks we're going to have the beginning of a ceasefire deal and I think within four weeks we're going to have an actual ceasefire Now, in the future, the tricky part is going to be that Russia is going to violate this ceasefire. Okay, that's the thing to keep in mind. The ceasefire will be an entente, but it's not going to be adhered to strictly. If Putin has not gotten the kind of resources that he thinks he needs in order to make his case for victory to the Russian people and to his stakeholders behind the scenes in the Kremlin, then he's going to violate that ceasefire incrementally, over time, and he's got as long as he can maintain a grip on power to make those violations. It will really be something to see how Trump reacts. That's the end of my analysis for today.
Speaker 1:I'd like to hear from you in terms of how you interpret Trump's statements. Do you do so literally, or do you take more of an interpretive approach, as I did today? Or do you see things more towards the left side, like Politico does and the EU leaders do? Or do you align more, like the Epoch Times and also Boris Johnson, where you try to interpret his broader motivations, his underlying aims? Comment on the post at real clear podcastcom and, by the way, tell other people about this. I rely on you to make this worth my while so I can make it worth your while. Thanks, folks, talk to you soon.
