Richard Haass
It could not have gone worse if Vladimir Putin had scripted it himself. A meeting meant to produce a rapprochement between Ukraine’s leadership and the new administration in Washington instead produced a rupture. The question now is whether that rupture is irrevocable and, more fundamentally, what U.S.-Ukraine relations look like going forward, and in turn what this means for the war between Russia and Ukraine.
It is difficult to discern what was intended as opposed to what happened spontaneously, and to what extent the president and vice president were spoiling for a fight. Whatever their intent, they got one. President Trump began with the odd formulation that the United States was aligned with the world rather than with Ukraine. While he may think such neutrality is a precondition of being a successful diplomat, history suggests otherwise. In the Middle East, for example, it was the United States’ continued and public alignment with Israel that facilitated the historic agreements between Israel and the Arab states as well as the more recent ceasefire in Gaza. Indeed, it was U.S. closeness to Israel that gave it the confidence it needed to compromise while signaling to other regional actors that compromise brokered by the United States was their least bad option.
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