There is no ‘Trump Doctrine' in foreign policy. Just chaos
The Europeans scrambled once again, trying to get the addled Trump back on the page he was on before the summit. Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, sped to Washington to confer with Trump to try to pick up the pieces. At their last encounter, Trump jibed: 'You don't have any cards.' But Trump had just handed over his cards to Putin. Zelenskyy was not about to play the appeasement card. The European leaders gathered in an extraordinary posse to accompany Zelenskyy in an attempt to restore a unified western position. Unlike the last Zelenskyy meeting with Trump, he was not hectored. With the Ukrainian leader urrounded by a protective phalanx, Trump made agreeable sounding but vague gestures about a future summit with both Zelenskyy and Putin. Trump seemed favorable, if indefinite and imprecise, about western forces stationed in Ukraine to maintain its sovereignty. But the notion of a ceasefire, pressed again by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, had evaporated. While the European recovery effort took place at the White House, Russian bombs rained down. Trump dreams of receiving the Nobel peace prize. Before the summit, he called the Norwegian finance minister to lobby him.
In Alaska, Trump melted again in the presence of Putin while the whole world was watching. The self-abasing embarrassment of his previous meeting in Helsinki in 2018 did not serve as a cautionary precedent. Now, he invited the sanctioned war criminal to US soil. He ordered uniformed US soldiers to roll out the red carpet, 'the beautiful red carpet' as the Russian foreign ministry called it. He applauded when Putin stood next to him. He patted Putin's hand when he clasped it with an affectionate gesture. Then the door of 'the Beast' opened for Putin.
Trump's personal negotiator for the summit, Steve Witkoff, a New York real estate operator whose knowledge of Russian culture to prepare him for his delicate role may had been a bowl of borscht at the Russian Tea Room on 57th Street, was easy prey for Putin. Bild, the German newspaper, reported on 9 August that Witkoff had committed an 'explosive blunder'. According to Bild, Putin 'did not deviate from his maximum demand to completely control the five Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea before the weapons remain silent … And even worse: Trump's special envoy Witkoff is said to have completely misunderstood some of the Russians' positions and misinterpreted them as an accommodation by Putin. He had misunderstood a 'peaceful withdrawal' of the Ukrainians from Kherson and Zaporizhzhia demanded by Russia as an offer of 'peaceful withdrawal' of the Russians from these regions'.
'Witkoff doesn't know what he's talking about,' a Ukrainian government official told Bild. An assessment that, according to Bild information, is also shared by German government representatives.
Bild further reported: 'There was a telephone conference on Thursday evening between representatives of the US government – including the special envoy Witkoff and Foreign Minister Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance – and the European partners. As BILD learned, the American side was perceived as chaotic and ununited. This was primarily due to Witkoff, whose remarks about his conversation with Putin on Wednesday in the Kremlin were perceived as confusing. He himself seemed overwhelmed and incompetent to the Europeans when he spoke about the territorial issues in Ukraine.'
The German newspaper also reported friction between Rubio and Vance, with the vice-president seeking to shut the European allies out of the process and Witkoff taking his side against the secretary of state. 'Apparently, there was also disagreement about the further course of action between Witkoff and Rubio, as the foreign minister emphasized that the Europeans should be involved in the further process, while Vance and Witkoff only wanted to inform Europe of the results of the further Trump steps.'
Bild's report on Putin's position turned out to be completely accurate and its description of the Trump administration's unsettled position prophetic of the fiasco that would unfold.
Little noticed in the US media accounts, Trump had presented Putin with enormous economic advantages, according to the Telegraph. He offered access to valuable Alaskan natural resources, opportunities to tap into the US portion of the Bering Strait, which would boost Russia's interests in the Arctic region. Trump promised to lift sanctions on Russia's aircraft industry, which would permit Russian airlines (and by extension the Russian air force) to return to US suppliers for parts and maintenance. Trump would give Putin approval for access to rare earth minerals in Ukrainian territories currently under Russian occupation.
In Trump's new world order, Putin would be his partner, especially on the frontier of the Arctic, while Trump waged a trade war imposing harsh tariffs on every other nation. Ukraine stood as an obstacle to the gold rush.
According to the Telegraph, Witkoff suggested to the Russians: 'Israel's occupation of the West Bank could be used as a model for ending the war. Russia would have military and economic control of occupied [parts of] Ukraine under its own governing body, similar to Israel's de facto rule of Palestinian territory.'
Then, after Trump laid on lavish treatment for the Russian dictator at the US military base, marking his indifference to international condemnation, came the joint appearance, which exceeded the Helsinki disaster. An elated Putin and dejected Trump appeared on stage together.
The announced joint press conference was a theater of the absurd. Its brevity contributed to the farce. There was no agreement, no plan for an agreement, and no press conference. Trump deferred to Putin to speak first, to set the tone and terms after which he would come on as the second banana to slip on the peel.
A clearly delighted Putin reiterated his belief that Ukraine was a security threat to Russia, and that 'we need to eliminate all the primary roots, the primary causes of that conflict,' which was his language for the elimination of an independent and democratic Ukraine. He blamed Biden for the war he had launched. He affirmed Trump's presumptuous boast that there would have been no war had he been president. 'Today, when President Trump is saying that if he was the president back then, there would be no war, and I'm quite sure that it would indeed be so. I can confirm that.'
A clearly glum Trump stepped to his podium. 'So there's no deal until there's a deal,' he said. He had pledged during the 2024 campaign that he could and would end the war on 'day one'. It had taken him 210 days to reach the 'No Deal'.
Trump wistfully talked about doing business with Russia, his will-o'-the-wisp ambition since he attempted for decades to build a Trump Tower in Moscow even through the 2016 election. He threw Putin a bouquet. 'I've always had a fantastic relationship with President Putin, with Vladimir.' He blamed their inability to monetize their relationship to the inquiries that extensively documented Putin's covert efforts in the 2016 election to help Trump. 'We were interfered with by the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax,' Trump complained. He would not let it go, drifting incoherently into his grievances. 'He knew it was a hoax, and I knew it was a hoax, but what was done was very criminal, but it made it harder for us to deal as a country, in terms of the business, and all of the things that would like to have dealt with, but we'll have a good chance when this is over.'
Then, Trump praised the Russian officials accompanying Putin. Chief among them was the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, who had arrived wearing a sweatshirt embossed with the Cyrillic letters 'CCCP', standing for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, signaling Putin's ultimate objective to restore the empire of the Soviet Union. The message was more than nostalgia; it was a mission statement. And Trump called Putin 'the Boss', not a reference to Bruce Springsteen. 'Next time in Moscow,' said Putin.
The press conference was over. There were no questions. There were no answers. Trump fled from the stage.
Before the summit, Trump threatened new sanctions if Putin did not agree to a ceasefire, but now he forgot he had ever said that. He spoke loudly and carried a tiny stick. On Air Force One, on the return to Washington, he gave an exclusive interview to his lapdog, Sean Hannity of Fox News, along on the ride for this purpose. Trump reverted to his tacit support for Putin's position. He put the burden on Zelenskyy to accede to Putin's demands, which were unchanged.
Then, Trump spiraled down a wormhole, obviously anxious about his growing unpopularity and the prospect of the Democrats winning the congressional midterm elections, which has prompted him to prod the Texas Republicans to gerrymander districts and California Democrats aroused to counter it in their state. 'Vladimir Putin, smart guy, said you can't have an honest election with mail-in voting,' said Trump. 'Look at California with that horrible governor they have. One of the worst governors in history. He is incompetent, he doesn't know what he is doing.'
Is this a subject that Putin actually spoke about in their discussion? Has he had experience with mail-in voting or even know what it is? Was it brought up by Trump during their car ride? Or was Trump simply making it up for his gullible Fox News audience? Whatever the reality, Trump's fear about losing control of domestic politics was at the top of his mind as he flew away from his charade in Anchorage.
The shambolic scene left in Alaska represented the wreckage of Trump's attempt at diplomacy. Setting the stage himself, Trump babbled, whined and weakly sided with Putin. Trump's foreign policy team was exposed as incompetent, confounded and feckless. This was no best and the brightest, no rise of the Vulcans, but the circus of the Koalemosians, after Koalemos, the Greek god of stupidity.
Apologists for Trump, in advance of this exemplary event, had suggested that there was such a conceit as a Trump doctrine. A former Trump official from his first term, A Wess Mitchell, has called it 'The Return of Great Power Diplomacy' in the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs. He described 'a new kind of diplomacy' that is 'diplomacy in its classical form' and 'an instrument of strategy'. He cited an ancient Spartan king, Archidamus II, the Roman Emperor Domitian, Cardinal Richelieu, and in his mélange did not neglect to throw in Metternich and Bismarck. (Kissinger, in his grave, must be weeping over the parading of Metternich's mannequin as a forerunner of Trump. Mitchell, in any case, dismisses Kissinger as a fake realist and an 'idealist', which would have been a revelation to Kissinger.) Left out of Mitchell's pantheon of great diplomatic influences through the ages is the influencer Laura Loomer, the loony far-right troll who has an open door to Trump, feeding him lists of national security officials he must purge.
In Putin's shadow, Trump was bared as having no larger or smaller concept or strategy of Great Power politics. It would be unfair to accuse Trump of having an idea beyond his self-aggrandizement. If anything, he aspires to be like Putin, whom he called a 'genius' after his invasion of Ukraine. Putin has created and controls a vast kleptocracy. In 2017, Bill Browder, an American businessperson who had invested in Russia and has been targeted for assassination by Putin for exposing his corruption, testified before the Senate judiciary committee that Putin was 'the biggest oligarch in Russia and the richest man in the world'. Nobody, however, knows Putin's true personal wealth.
Trump, the Putin manqué, is trying to turn the United States into a kleptocratic system. According to the calculations of David D Kirkpatrick in the New Yorker, in just six months of his second term his alleged personal profiteering, 'would disappoint the haters who saw Trump as a Putin-level kleptocrat. Yet some three and a half billion dollars in Presidential profits – even though my accounting is necessarily approximate – is a dizzying sum.'
Meanwhile, three days before the Trump-Putin summit, the Trump family crypto business, World Liberty Financial, raised $1.5bn to buy the Trump family token. The CEO of World Liberty Financial, Zach Witkoff, son of Steve Witkoff, along with Eric Trump of WLF, will join the board of the investing company. That is the Trump doctrine.
Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist
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