When a Mafioso demands protection payments, it’s customary to provide the victim with protection afterward. So I give the President of the United States credit for the novelty and audacity of publicly shaking down Ukraine for the rights to its rare earth minerals without offering security in exchange.
To be fair, at the press conference with the leader of Ukraine, the President referred repeatedly to wanting “raw earth” rather than the “rare earth minerals” (such as lithium and uranium) that had previously been demanded. It’s hard to know what the President meant, but perhaps he was only asking for Ukrainian dirt, in which case, it was appropriate that he and the Vice President chose to dish dirt in return.
Their bullying disdain made for an extraordinary display of the new administration’s version of statecraft, and the unflattering video clips ricocheted around the world. This isn’t the way a democratically elected leader treats a beleaguered ally; it’s historically the way a lord might treat an insufficiently deferential vassal or supplicant, and, particularly, a Jewish one.
There’s no way to know if President Zelensky’s religion played a role in his denigration, but I found it hard to watch the exchange without thinking back (before the state of Israel) to centuries of Jewish leaders bowing to overseers so that their community might be permitted to remain on their parcel of land. It’s an imperfect analogy but an unsettling one.
The timing was also unsettling, given the proximity to the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Vigils commemorating the start of the war were organized across the U.S. by Ukrainian American communities, and Los Angeles happens to be home to one of the largest. In Santa Monica, more than a thousand people gathered on February 23 for a rally at City Hall organized by the Stand With Ukraine Foundation. Blue and yellow Ukrainian flags billowed beside American ones as participants lamented three years of death and destruction, including the personal loss of family members for many attendees.
“It’s shameful,” said State Sen. Ben Allen, who was one of the speakers, as he voiced his solidarity with the crowd and denounced the White House’s recent actions. “Our speaking up on this issue has never been more important, with American leaders trying to rewrite history and siding with autocrats like Putin,” the senator stated afterward.
It was 87 years ago when another Eastern European country, Czechoslovakia, was forced to accept territorial concessions to a belligerent neighbor. In 1938, Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister of England, made a deal with Germany that he described as providing “peace for our time,” and if he meant peace for six months, then he was accurate. Because it was only six months after Chamberlain approved Germany’s annexation of roughly 25% of Czechoslovakia that Hitler invaded to claim the remainder of the country and ignited World War II.
The President seemed to have been recently briefed on the topic, because he repeatedly warned about the possibility of World War III—and castigated Ukraine for potentially instigating it. Which is like blaming Czechoslovakia for World War II, an odd lesson to draw from the historic parallel of appeasing a war-mongering country.
Still, you don’t make peace with friends, and the President has a point that calling Putin a war criminal isn’t the best way to bring him to the negotiating table. I wish I could report the President made other valid points, but I watched the entire press conference and the truth is that it was a travesty long before the flares of temper that went viral.
Zelensky made tactical errors as well as syntactical ones. (English isn’t his first language.) Some might also say it was undiplomatic to correct some of his host’s misstatements in public. But it was the President of the United States who dared to criticize the besieged nation of Ukraine for being hostile to the nation besieging it.
The President proceeded to preen over fawning questions from far-right media outlets, disseminate disinformation about the 2024 vote count and denigrate his predecessor, before explaining why he was confident he could end the war. “I’ve stopped many wars,” he claimed. “My people will tell you, I stop wars that nobody ever heard about.”
It was the absurd apotheosis of his vanity, immaturity and hyperbole. But I’m grateful if his staff is pumping him up with tales of his derring-do ending wars we’ve never heard of, because it might protect us from him starting the wars we most fear.
