Last Thursday’s press conference by President Donald Trump and visiting United Kingdom prime minister Keir Starmer was quite revelatory, particularly on the subject of Ukraine. Firstly, despite the belief in some circles in England that their prime minister was dull and shifty, a part of which manifested during the questions and answers time, it was clear that he was a more prepared leader than his host. His opening remarks delivered in Received Pronunciation, which Mr Trump swooned over, was brilliant, nuanced, somewhat bold, and probably did not disappoint the European Union (EU). Conversely, the initial remarks of President Trump, while a clear improvement over those of President Joe Biden in the closing months of the latter’s presidency, were rambling, provocative, abusive, and coarse in the extreme. He would easily exceed that congenital coarseness in the course of the subsequent press conference, and the next day’s disgraceful ambush of and jousting with Ukrainian president Volodymr Zelensky.
Two, during the question time, Mr Starmer appeared more less assured than his brilliant opening remarks indicated, and his mastery of the subjects in discussion was tentative and superficial. It is a revelation, an indication that despite all the years spent preparing for leadership of the UK, his ideas and style have not enjoyed the dialectical thoroughness the prime minister’s office demand. Yet, he was a far better performer than his host. He spoke of aid to Ukraine, not loans, to help fight off the Russian invasion, and he was empathetic to the sufferings of Ukrainians, hoping for a deal, as he put it, that would not leave the victim holding the short end of the stick. For personal and perhaps other more nebulous reasons, Mr Trump couldn’t care less. He was determined to reclaim the funds ‘loaned’ Ukraine in the ongoing war, and he condemned Ukrainian president Volodymr Zelensky for embarking on a war that should never have been started. More, and unabashedly, he insisted that the United States would secure a rare earth minerals deal from Ukraine that would help repay the loans he unilaterally spoke about. The predatory deal, however, fell through the next day.
Sadly, the press conference merely reinforced Mr Trump’s realpolitik as well as absolute disdain for Ukraine, a country still at war, and one which his predecessor backed, rightly or wrongly, selfishly or altruistically, with the resources of the US. As far as President Trump is concerned, however, Ukraine can be damned. What matters to him is making America (or US businessmen and contractors) rich, regardless of whose ox is gored. While obsessing over Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, a deal first mooted by Ukraine to tantalise the American president, he promised nothing in return. He would not give any security guarantees to Ukraine, would not help police any peace deal he was determined to fashion even in the absence of Ukraine from the negotiating table, and was prepared to take the issue of Ukraine’s Nato membership off the table. After all, as he put it about two weeks ago, though he tried to walk that statement back, Mr Zelensky was both incompetent and dictatorial. In fact during the said press conference, Mr Starmer tried to remind Mr Trump, and was bold enough to put it in his remarks, that Russian aggression should not be rewarded.
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After the euphoria of the past three years fighting a brutal, bloody and destructive war against a meddlesome Russia, Ukraine found itself abandoned and holding the short end of the stick because Mr Zelensky failed to pander to the whims of the oversensitive and pampered US president. Mr Trump was, before the Friday diplomatic catastrophe, pressuring Ukraine to accept a peace deal whose terms had not been fully disclosed. But enough had been disclosed to let Ukraine know that all it has fought for could end up in smoke. It would not recover most, if not all, the land it lost to Russia; it would not get Nato membership; if care is not taken it could become isolated, deprived of Nato and EU membership; and in many insidious ways it faces the grim prospect of being subjugated either by force or circumstances under Russian influence. To boot, its cities and infrastructure lie in ruins, not to talk of the hundreds of thousands killed or injured. The Trump peace deal is probably the most galling ever, a deal that rewards the aggressor and punishes the victim, a deal which traumatises whole generations for many lifetimes. While peace is admittedly always desirable, Mr Trump has, however, made it both transactional and a zero-sum game.
Mr Trump has done very little to pressure Russia into anything, into even making the smallest of concessions. Indeed, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has become more emboldened to rule out any concession whatsoever to Ukraine. For him, with the help of Mr Trump casting him as the winner of the war, that winner must ineluctably take all. And he is determined to take all. And, as many European nations fear, like Adolf Hitler projecting the policy of Lebensraum, the Russian president will not be satisfied or placated. They fear that for the next four years, and for reasons they cannot quite fathom, Mr Putin will be Mr Trump’s kryptonite. Not only did the US unprecedentedly side with Russia in the United Nations (UN) resolution condemning the invasion of Ukraine, Mr Trump appears bent on demystifying the EU, dividing them by singling out the UK for trade deals while imposing tariffs on the others, and indirectly furthering Russia’s global agenda. Eastern Europe and the Baltic States will now live on pins and needles, unsure of their fate as Mr Trump shatters, or at least shows his utmost disinterest in, the Transatlantic Alliance that had served America well and helped the world stave off another world war.
Ukraine may appear to be the only country at the receiving end of Mr Trump’s eccentricities; they are, however, not the only one. It is clear that the world will become less safe and unpredictable, and dictatorships everywhere will flower as long as they can flatter the US president and stay out of his way. But sooner or later, countries which call Mr Trump’s bluff will discover that his bark is far more than his bite, despite America’s military power; and that, worse, there is no method to his madness. The world is also about to discover that Mr Trump and the US are not invincible. Because America is wealthy and militarily powerful, it has turned on its friends and allies who had sided with it since World War I, while lionising dictators and those secretly plotting the collapse of America. The Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991 without a shot being fired, literally; why should America not also collapse from within? US enemies muse.
What the world may be witnessing in Mr Trump and the US is the difficult, entangled dynamics of leadership. The American presidential system has been fortunate to produce some excellent and visionary leaders like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and a few others who both exemplified and embodied not just what America stands for but also what America should stand for. America’s raison d’etre was not always intrinsic to its founding; it was partly epiphanic, with some of their great leaders experiencing eureka moments and inspiring and imbuing their country with great domestic and international ideals. On its own, the presidential system does not possess the innate quality to guarantee the emergence of great leaders. In fact, the British parliamentary system has had better luck in producing great leaders than the American system, despite the brilliance of the US constitution. As the dysfunctional Mr Trump has shown by his actions, in the hands of a political vagrant, that brilliant constitution can be bastardised. The Chinese system cobbled under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping (Paramount leader between 1978 and 1989) has performed far better in producing competent leaders than both the presidential and parliamentary systems year-on-year. Yet, even the Chinese system, as President Xi Jinping has shown by his 2018 constitutional amendments to remove term limits, is not immutable or infallible.
A leadership and character portrait of Mr Trump shows that American voters and the rest of the world are dealing with an unusual but greatly flawed personality unable to anchor his policies on great principles. He prefers ad hocism, transactional policies, and sentiments. This explains why Ukraine is in a quandary as it struggles to convince Mr Trump to recognise Mr Putin as the most pressing danger to American values and system in this century. The turmoil is not explained just by the incompetence of Mr Trump, but also by his lack of finesse and ideological mooring. As far as competence is concerned, no leadership institution mentored or apprenticed him, unlike France’s Emmanuel Macron who virtually humiliated him during last week’s visit to the White House. The US president’s private businesses have been products of bluff and bluster, record falsifications, and tax evasions. His first term in office (2016-2020) witnessed horrendous turnover of aides and cabinet members to the point that today many of them still speak ill of his capacity as a leader. It is curious that America elected into office for a second term a man whose ability his extended family and cabinet dismissed with brutal candour. Ukraine may have made many mistakes in its war with Russia, but that war was not always inevitable, despite the turbulence of the preceding years, Russia’s political voyeurism, and the mismanagement of the war of words with an equally deluded Mr Putin who still longs for the years of empire. Mr Biden and the EU recognised that the war might become drawn-out, for after all, there have been wars that lasted for more than four, five, six or even 100 years until a victor emerged. Therefore, seeking peace at the price of humiliating Ukraine and ceding land to an insatiable and rapacious Mr Putin may not help that peace to last.
A peace deal is sorely needed. But it must be one that is based on justice and can endure. Mr Trump’s lack of capacity, however, complicates the search for peace. His lack of leadership character, shortsightedness, mercantilist approach to politics, and almost total repudiation of Western values and rules-based system present analysts with an irresoluble dilemma of how societies produce one great leader after another? Are great constitutions and brilliant political structures/systems enough to guarantee stability, greatness, and longevity? Every empire from antiquity has had to grapple with that dilemma, whether it was the Chaldeans, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, or the Ottomans. There are never any guarantees, as the Chinese also exemplify by sustaining term limits over only four leadership successions. It was always taken for granted in the US that having produced presidents like Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt, no utter incompetent could ever emerge, at least not someone like Mr Trump. They have been proved wrong.
Like all fallen empires, the US is also exposing its Achilles heel through a president who repudiates alliances, despises friendships, courts dictators, elevates personal interest above national interest, and displays a shocking and disgraceful lack of understanding of the consequences of the choices and statements he makes, whether regarding Ukraine, the EU, or tariffs. In the Russo-Ukranian war, Mr Trump has indifferently tied Ukraine’s hands behind their back, causing them to groan in private over the enormous losses they have sustained. If Mr Zelensky cannot dissuade Mr Trump from backing Russia and Mr Putin, Ukraine will be left with the choice of either surrendering to American wishes or committing suicide by defying the US president’s wishes. Neither choice is palatable. But the forces being unleashed by Mr Trump, both domestically and foreign, will not only haunt the US for decades to come, it may determine the fate of the American Century.