Timothy Snyder on the hook Putin used to catch Trump
The American President has made extraordinary concessions to Russia in exchange for nothing at all. Russia has repaid him by continuing the war in Ukraine and mocking him on state-controlled television.
Read more about these concessions in the column by Timothy Snyder, the inaugural Chair of Modern European History at the University of Toronto: Trump's world of illusions: how the US President walked into Putin's trap.
The author points out that just by meeting Putin in Alaska, Trump ended more than three years of Western diplomatic isolation of the Kremlin.
"By shaking hands with an indicted war criminal, Trump signaled that the killings, the torture, the abductions in Ukraine do not matter," writes Timothy Snyder.
According to him, even the choice of Alaska was a concession, and an odd one. Russians, including major figures in state media, routinely claim Alaska for Russia.
"Inviting people who claim your territory inside your main military base on that territory to discuss a war of aggression they started without inviting anyone representing the country they invaded – well, that is just about as far as a foreign-policy fantasy can go," thinks the professor.
He underlines that it was the very end because Trump had already conceded the more fundamental issues.
Snyder reminds us that Trump does not speak of justice for Russian war criminals or of the reparations Russia owes. He grants that Russia can determine Ukraine’s and America’s foreign policy on the crucial point of NATO membership. And he accepts that Russia’s invasions should lead not only to de facto but also de jure changes in sovereign control over territory.
"Accepting that invasion can legally change borders undoes the world order. Granting Russia the right to decide the other countries’ foreign policy encourages further aggression. Abandoning the obvious legal and historical responses to criminal wars of aggression – reparations and trials – encourages war in general," writes the author.
According to him, Trump speaks loudly and carries a small stick.
The notion that words alone can do the trick has led Trump to the position that Putin’s words matter, and so he had to go to Alaska for a "listening exercise."
"Trump’s career has been full of listening to Putin, and then repeating what Putin says," thinks the author.
He is certain that both men are moved by the future perception of their greatness.
Trump believes his legacy can be secured by being associated with peace, which, so long as he is unwilling to make policy himself, puts him in the power of the warmaker.
"Putin has refused any such thing, and he did so again in Alaska. The Russians propose an obviously ridiculous and provocative counter: Ukraine should now formally concede to Russia territory that Russia does not even occupy, lands on which Ukraine has built its defenses," Snyder writes.
On top of that, as the author believes, Putin knows that Trump wants the Nobel Peace Prize.
According to Snyder, now that Trump has failed to secure an unconditional Russian ceasefire, there are two paths he can take. He can continue the fantasy, though it will become ever more obvious, even to his friends and supporters, that the fantasy is Putin’s.
Where will he go next?