Weakest president in a century capitulates to Americas old foe

The mask is well and truly off. Any who thought President Donald Trump could be flattered and cajoled into supporting Ukraine or defending democracy and the rule of law must now accept that they were guilty of wishful thinking, or perhaps we could call it willful blindness. The “peace plan” he has presented to Ukraine proposes a shameful capitulation to the war criminals and brutal invaders of Russia.

Meanwhile, Trump this week called for the execution, yes execution, of six Democrat lawmakers for the “crime” of publishing a video stating the truth that US military personnel are not obliged to obey illegal orders. And in the heart of the White House he publicly belittled the murder and dismemberment in 2018 of a Saudi Arabian journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by agents of the Saudi government, simply to curry favor with the man on whose behalf that murder was committed, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, who was by his side in the Oval Office.

A famous saying from his first presidential election campaign, in 2016, is that Trump should be taken “seriously but not literally.” This year, whenever he seemed to be criticizing President Vladimir Putin of Russia, or was unhappy after the two leaders’ summit in Alaska in August, or was supposedly contemplating the resumption of weapons supplies to Ukraine, the right response would have been to avoid taking him literally, and instead wait for real actions. Now that those actions have arrived, they need to be taken very seriously indeed.

Trump’s action has consisted of conducting secret bilateral talks with Russia and then presenting a 28-point peace plan to Ukraine that largely reflects the demands made by Putin in Alaska: that Ukraine should cede territory that Russia has failed to conquer; that Ukraine’s sovereignty should be stripped by forcing it to more than halve the size of its armed forces and to amend its constitution to forbid it ever to join NATO. The plan’s proposal to forbid the presence of any foreign troops on Ukraine’s soil would mean that not only its sovereignty but also its security would be stripped away.

The serious way in which to understand this American “peace plan” is that it shows that Trump is the weakest president to occupy the White House for 100 years. Unlike every president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected in 1932, he has proven incapable of standing up to Russian aggression and Russian bullying. Another way to interpret this is that Trump really wants to join forces with Russia, to make money from it for himself, his family and his friends, and perhaps to join in the bullying.

Some of that second interpretation sadly looks likely to be true. Yet the greed and unscrupulousness that such motives involve do not contradict the weakness that these actions convey. Moreover, both interpretations represent a sobering foretaste of the weak and craven way Trump is likely to deal with Russia’s “strategic partner,” China, when he meets President Xi Jinping for the two summits that have been penciled in for next spring.

Presented with this set of unacceptable and poorly drafted proposals, Ukraine has been right to say to America that it does not accept them but is willing to talk about how best to achieve peace. Any who think that for the sake of peace President Volodymyr Zelenskyy should simply accept such proposals should ask themselves what they would think if their own country were to be stripped of its sovereignty and security in this way.

The self-described “sovereigntist” parties in Europe such as Lega, France’s Rassemblement Nationale and Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland must be made to explain what they mean by sovereignty for their countries if they consider this to be acceptable for Ukraine. And if they argue that Ukraine’s recent corruption scandal somehow makes that country unworthy of support against the far more corrupt Russians, they should be asked to review the history of corruption in their own countries (including in wartime).

The most important thing for Ukraine to do is to buy time in the hope that the many pro-Ukraine voices in America’s Republican Party gain the courage at last to speak out and put pressure on Trump to drop these pro-Russian proposals.

More realistically, however, time needs to be bought in the hope that the governments of the European Union and the United Kingdom will show that, unlike Trump, they ought to be taken both literally and seriously when they say that they are going to support Ukraine for as long as it takes. They must and surely will reject this “peace plan” but must also show that they can act to create an alternative future.

The key moment will come on December 19when the European Council is due to discuss making a loan to Ukraine of €140 billion based on the Russian central bank assets that have been frozen in EU accounts, mainly in Belgium, since the invasion in 2022. At the last meeting, in October, the decision on the loan was deferred due to opposition by the Belgian government, which wants to make sure that it does not carry all the legal risks incurred by using the Russian assets in this way. Belgium’s request is perfectly reasonable: This is a shared decision, for a shared purpose so the risk should be shared.

It will also be a hugely important political moment, for the credibility of the EU and perhaps for its whole future. By making this loan, it will finance Ukraine for the next two years and will demonstrate to Russia that it has resolve even if America does not. But if it fails to make the loan, or to provide the same scale of financing and military support to Ukraine rapidly in another way, the EU and the UK will have demonstrated that their words are worthless and that they are unable to take their own decisions.

Giorgia Meloni, Friedrich Merz, Emmanuel Macron, Donald Tusk, Sir Keir Starmer and all your colleagues, this moment is yours. It is yours to seize and to shape the future of Europe. Or it is yours to paint yourself and Europe with shame and dishonor.

Formerly editor-in-chief of The Economist, Bill Emmott is currently chairman of theJapan Society of the UK, theInternational Institute for Strategic Studiesand theInternational Trade Institute.

This English original of an article published in Italian by La Stampa was first published on his Substack newsletter, Bill Emmott’s Global View. It is republished with permission.