"You don't have the cards. You're not acting thankful. That's not a nice thing." Thus President Donald Trump disgraced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a Feb. 28 ambush. Trump was incredulous that Zelenskyy would not play supplicant. Trump's bombastic chest-thumping may make "great television," as Trump effused at the end of Zelenskyy's humiliation, but it doesn't work in diplomacy.
Zelenskyy's public pummeling was like an Apprentice script: "You're fired!" A vengeful Trump rages still over Zelenskyy's refusal to acquiesce to his quid pro quo to resume military aid in exchange for a Ukrainian investigation into Hunter Biden, the abuse of power article of Trump's first impeachment.
Trump deployed his usual Weapons of Mass Deception: Ukraine started the war (Trump joined only North Korea in refusing to support a U.N. resolution condemning Russia for its invasion); Zelenskyy's approval rating was 7% (it is 67%); Europe is not paying its fair share in defense of Ukraine (the EU contributes on average 1.5% of annual GDP since 2022 while the U.S. spends 0.5%; this year, the EU is spending 2%).
Trump would be sabotaging 80 years of U.S. foreign policy if he abandons Ukraine and NATO, portending Russia's annexation of Ukraine and Czar Putin's other imperial aspirations, and emboldening China's global expansion and North Korea's nuclear buildup. Who would form alliances with the U.S. if the president deserts allies during war? And with DOGE's evisceration of USAID and Trump's slashing of foreign aid (1% of the federal budget), the Chinese are poised to exploit this self-destructive lunacy.
Trump accused Zelenskyy of "gambling with World III," but as Trump throws Ukraine and NATO under the bus (such as his statements that Crimea and eastern Ukraine are Russian territories and that Ukraine not join NATO — a non-negotiable for Zelensky), it is Trump who is destabilizing the tenuous global nuclear balance of power. Now Poland, Germany and South Korea are considering developing nuclear weapons.
Trump is the apprentice in his bizarre bromance with Putin, who has exploited his foreign policy naiveté and disarmed him with faux flattery. Trump said that Russia can "do whatever the hell they want" in Ukraine. Despite a recent agreement between the U.S. and Ukraine to jointly develop resource deposits and Russia's mounting economic troubles, Europeans still fear that any missteps could cause another continent-wide war. Thirty-thousand Spokane County Ukrainians are counting on the U.S. to help protect their families back home from Putin. (See the documentary 20 Days in Mariupol.)
In his inaugural address, Trump invoked the 19th century Manifest Destiny doctrine that proclaimed the U.S. would "expand its territory." The Manifest Destiny creed — that the American Empire was divinely ordained — was propagated to dispossess and exterminate Native peoples. It's the John Wayne, Old Hollywood, how-the-West-was-won exceptionalism narrative, more Little House on the Prairie than Killers of the Flower Moon.
"...if we condone policies that subvert our sacred democratic principles...then we are unpatriotic."
Americans love classic Old West film mythology. In these legends, the "good guys" (God-fearing cowboys, law-abiding sheriffs) invariably prevail over the "bad guys" (bank robbers, cattle rustlers). In Trump's script, the bad guys win — Putin, Viktor Orban and the other European neofascists. Bad guys aplenty are riding the global range, reckoning, like the last scene in the movies, that the sun's setting in the West. And that the good guys — like Zelenskyy — get the rope.
Trump's version of Manifest Destiny revives the Monroe Doctrine's claim that the Western Hemisphere is the U.S.'s providential domain (including Canada and the "Gulf of America"). It's likely to be a retread of the acquisitive 20th century U.S.-Latin American policy of unbridled Cowboy Capitalism, servile banana republics and pliant dictators like El Salvador's Nayib Bukele. Greenland not for sale? Trump has proposed that Denmark exchange it for Puerto Rico.
For Elon Musk, Manifest Destiny includes Mars, which natalist Republican technocrats aim to populate with "technological supermen," as they are called in Marc Andreessen's "Techno-Optimist Manifesto." Do we Earth proles then get Neuralink implants?
Then there's Gaza. For Trump, the Gaza carnage is a business opportunity, "the Riviera of the Middle East." Netanyahu's violence against civilians means condos and casinos for Trump. As Trump's former ambassador to Israel mused, "Mar-a-Gaza or Gaz-a-Lago?" This would be a desecration. (See the 2024 Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land.)
Equating criticizing Israeli Gaza policy with anti-Semitism is a tactic to silence dissent. Anti-Semitism has been proliferating in America since 2015 — by 2023, 48% of hate crimes targeted Jews, who make up 2.4% of the U.S. population. Meanwhile, the inconsistencies are glaring, as some of Trump's acolytes are vociferously anti-Semitic and Holocaust deniers.
This is Trump's "exceptional" America in which free speech is only "inalienable" as long as one recites his agitprop. Conflating any criticism of Trump's policy with being unpatriotic is one of his authoritarian dog whistles.
In reality, however, if we condone policies that subvert our sacred democratic principles, here and around the world, then we are unpatriotic. When we are silent, we are complicit. Furious flag waving and unconstitutional assaults won't dispel these truths.
But if all this is only rhetorical cover for an anti-democratic, repressive reality, then America has lost what makes it great, is historically unexceptional and an abbreviated American Century could be swept away to the ash heap of history by our hubris and hypocrisy.
U.S. military power must be predicated on the soft power of democracy and human rights. Trump's Manifest Destiny saber-rattling will not make America great again. ♦
John Hagney, M.A., U.S.-Soviet Relations, researched in Russia and Ukraine from 1988-1993. His oral history of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms has been translated into six languages.
