The dramatic public row between US President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky popped the bubble of the White House echo chamber. Zelensky, a wartime leader, exposed the man whose closest brush with war was a medical deferment that prevented him from serving.
Trump and Vice-President J.D. Vance showed their limited understanding of anything outside Washington. When Zelensky asked Vance if he’d been to Ukraine, he said he’d “watched and seen the stories”. Where? TikTok perhaps?
Trump is the wrong person to be involved in geopolitical mediation. His transactional style is that of a businessman who is too invested in closing the deal to understand that the role of a mediator is to diplomatically bring parties together to find common ground; first to link little fingers and finally to shake hands.
In his limited experience, he sees a deal as having winners and losers. When he wins, he wants to leave nothing for the other guy, and when he loses in the court of law, he just walks away. Zelensky cannot walk away from his own national interest.
As a principle, Trump deals with the seemingly strongest side first, be it Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Russian President Vladimir Putin. There is rarely any deference to the other seemingly weaker side who he expects will meekly agree to fall in line. Zelensky didn’t play the game when he said that Putin had gone back on agreements in the past.
To succeed in negotiations, a mediator must be dispassionate and talk to both sides. Trump’s blinkered approach leads to the same one-sidedness with his tariff policy. By taking the nuclear option first – unilaterally applying sudden high tariffs – he damaged his negotiating credibility. It disappears completely when he abruptly changes course.
Source link
