Trumps Pivot Toward Putins Russia Upends Generations of U.S. Policy
For more than a decade, the West has faced off against the East again in what was widely called a new cold war.But with President Trump back in office, America is giving the impression that it could be switching sides.Even as American and Russian negotiators sat down together on Tuesday for the first time since Moscow’s full-fledged invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago, Mr.
Trump has signaled that he is willing to abandon America’s allies to make common cause with President Vladimir V.Putin of Russia.As far as Mr.
Trump is concerned, Russia is not responsible for the war that has devastated its neighbor.Instead, he suggests that Ukraine is to blame for Russia’s invasion of it.
To listen to Mr.Trump talk with reporters on Tuesday about the conflict was to hear a version of reality that would be unrecognizable on the ground in Ukraine and certainly would never have been heard from any other American president of either party.In Mr.
Trump’s telling, Ukrainian leaders were at fault for the war for not agreeing to surrender territory and therefore, he suggested, they do not deserve a seat at the table for the peace talks that he has just initiated with Mr.Putin.
“You should have never started it,” Mr.Trump said, referring to Ukrainian leaders who, in fact, did not start it.
“You could have made a deal.”Speaking at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, he went on: “You have a leadership now that’s allowed a war to go on that should have never even happened.” By contrast, Mr.Trump uttered not one word of reproach for Mr.
Putin or for Russia, which first invaded Ukraine in 2014, waged a low-intensity war against it through all four years of Mr.Trump’s first term and then invaded it in 2022 aiming to take over the whole country.Mr.
Trump is in the middle of executing one of the most jaw-dropping pivots in American foreign policy in generations, a 180-degree turn that will force friends and foes to recalibrate in fundamental ways.Ever since ...