Stephen Wertheim: Is Europe Misunderstanding Trump's Position on Ukraine?

This was a real surprise.

A Grauniad piece that was not only pretty good (IMO), but which offered a reasonable and justificatory hypothesis about   Trump's position on Ukraine.

   For the record, I don't like/understand/agree with Trump's approach to Ukraine overall.

I'm pretty bone-headed about this stuff: Putin bad. NATO good. Invasion bad. Zelenskyy > Putin. Put on your game face and convince Ivan that we are implacable in our defense of Ukraine, ergo we are (as a friend likes to say) willing to fight to the last Ukrainian. Ergo they can't win. Ergo might as well go back home, eat potato.

   According to the Trumplings, Trump is never wrong, he's just playing 12 dimensional chess and normies can't understand his God-level strategy.

   Problem: that often actually seems to be kinda true...

   I finally came to acknowledge that Trump is good at this sort of thing, and I am not. He's negotiated like $100bn worth of deals or whatever. I have negotiated for...a very old Ford Ranger once that fell apart on the way home. One of Trump's cognitive super powers is merely that he is immune to the blue-tinged groupthink that colors all our public discussions.

Again: I don't agree with what I hear coming from him...but, forced to bet, I suppose I'd have to bet that he's up to something I don't get.

   Which may not add up to a smart strategy, of course.

   But it's probably not stupid and evil, as the blues would have us think.

   I've already acknowledged that the mineral deal seems smart and promising.

   

   Anyway.