Robert E. Hamilton
(FPRI) — I’m sitting in Ukraine as I write this. In a case of perhaps the most awkward timing imaginable, I arrived here on the day the Trump-Zelensky Oval Office meeting went off the rails. I was having dinner with Ukrainian colleagues when our phones blew up with the news. In another case of ironic timing, I am here to do research for a book project on US military assistance, a major theme of the Oval Office rumble.
Having now taken a couple of days to process the event, I just read through the transcript of the meeting. There are three reasons it went the way it did. First, the two sides had diverging objectives for the meeting. Although nominally they were there to sign a rare earth minerals deal, the Trump Administration wanted a photo op and a chance to score some political points by disparaging the Biden Administration. Zelensky, on the other hand, wanted to discuss the issue of security guarantees for Ukraine. Normally these diverging objectives would not have been fatal to the photo op and could have been discussed after the media left. Except for the second reason the meeting went sideways: the unprecedented intervention of Vice President JD Vance. In a normal Oval Office photo op, the others in the room are rarely even on camera, much less starting arguments with the visitor. Vance broke that norm and pushed the meeting into the open argument it became. The final reason the meeting went the way it did – and this is less important but not unimportant – was the language barrier. While Zelensky’s English is good, it was not up to the task of a two-on-one verbal sparring match in front of the cameras with his country’s existence on the line. And it was unfair to put him in the position of engaging in such a sparring match in what was supposed to be a photo op. As the argument escalated, the language barrier led to several misunderstandings that further inflamed it.
Vance threw the opening punch. Although it was mostly meant to deprecate the Biden Administration and curry favor with his boss, it came across to Zelensky as admonishing him to let the US find a diplomatic solution to the war. This, naturally, triggered Zelensky’s fears of the US negotiating with Russia over his head (because that is what is happening) and signing a cease fire deal that had no security guarantees for Ukraine. At this point, Zelensky tried to make the point that Russia cannot be trusted to respect anything it signs. To do so, he gave an overview of all the agreements Ukraine has signed in the past with the Kremlin, including several with international support. He correctly made the point that Russia had violated them all, culminating in the full-scale invasion of February 2022.
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