Monday, March 3, 2025

Part I

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A Showdown of Epic Diplomatic Proportions: President Trump and VP Vance Clash with Ukrainian President Zelensky

Well, rarely does diplomacy just explode on the front pages, but it was either a diplomacy, or a lack of the same, that landed the headlines over the weekend. The Financial Times reported the headlines above the fold this way, “Zelensky’s White House Talks Break Down in Blaze of Acrimony.”

The Los Angeles Times headline, “Trump and Vance Berate Zelensky in Heated Oval Office Gathering.”

The Associated Press headline, “Trump Trashing of Zelensky Undoes Weeks of Diplomacy.”

Now to be clear, those headlines are justified. Something very big did happen Friday in the Oval Office. And the talks between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the American President Donald Trump did break down in acrimony and it appeared to be a meeting that started positively. And as a matter of fact, the White House and Ukraine had announced ahead of time that the expected outcome of the conversation was going to be a formal agreement between the United States and Ukraine concerning American access to mineral rights in that nation after the war. Given America’s investment in Ukraine, in its armed forces in its war against Russia, this was considered to be something quite legitimate, quite necessary. But nonetheless, that agreement never got signed and effectively the Ukrainian president was shown the door at the White House. 

What did happen in the full glare of live television cameras in the Oval Office between that warm greeting and that very cold departure, we’ll no doubt go down in American diplomatic history. We’ll talk more about what it means for the future of Ukraine and the future of Ukrainian-American alliances and frankly, the partnership that also includes European nations. But we do need to recognize that the key word “diplomatic” here plays a very big role. And that’s because the profession of diplomacy is a profession that has developed its own symbols, its own customs, its own forms of address, its own forms of negotiation.

And much of this was hammered out in the classic age of foreign policy in the development of great powers, particularly during the 18th and 19th centuries beginning in Europe, but then spreading also of course to the participation and eventual leadership of the United States of America. But going back even further into ancient times, there were envoys, ambassadors, delegates, representatives of kings and of monarchs who would visit other kingdoms in order to establish some kind of trade, to negotiate some kind of deal, to establish some kind of necessary peace or even cessation in hostilities. And of course, you go to the medieval era and there are courtly traditions, there are monarchial traditions, there are very thick traditions in terms of how European courts and Asian courts also communicated with each other and with one another even across continental and cultural barriers. One thing that has marked out diplomatic customs and diplomatic relationships over the years is their essential formality.

There is an exchange of greetings. There is a presentation of credentials. There’s a recognition of one nation and another nation. One of the key moments in American diplomatic history was when the first American envoy John Adams appeared before the British monarch. He appeared as an American for the first time and as the representative of the United States of America. That diplomatic event, by the way, took place on June the 1st of 1785. At that point, John Adams, who would later be the second President of the United States, was the first US minister to Great Britain. He presented his credentials on that first day of June 1785 to King George III and his court there in Great Britain. Sometimes by the way, this vocabulary can get technical because in actual terms, the United States ambassador to Great Britain is known as the ambassador of the United States of America to the Court of St. James. That refers historically to the monarch’s previous residence in St. James Palace there in London.

But we need to recognize that the history of diplomacy and the traditions of diplomacy are rich. Now, diplomacy proper has to do with diplomatic events. The meeting between two heads of state is not the same thing as the formality of the meeting say of their ambassadors and ministers or the presentation of credentials. This is different. Nonetheless, the diplomatic niceties generally continue even in a meeting with heads of state. You have in so many cases a formal event such as the playing of the respective national anthems, the presentation of flags and official welcome to the White House. The visit of President Zelensky was not that kind of state visit. It was a necessary visit, even as President Trump is pushing for Europe to take responsibility for the protection of Ukraine and pressing Ukraine to be willing to go to the table for ceasefire and eventual peace negotiations with Russia. Everyone knew that President Zelensky went to the White House with a great deal on the line and the meeting was a disaster.

You need to understand that even as the president and the Vice President of the United States met with President Zelensky, the meeting didn’t go as they had planned, it certainly didn’t go as President Zelensky had planned. There are a couple of things to watch here. First of all, when the case was made by the Vice President of the United States that President Zelensky had not come with the right attitude, he had not come with the right strategy, the meeting turned hot. There was an exchange of very, very heated expressions from both sides, and at one point you saw the Vice President of the United States basically going at the President of Ukraine and the President of Ukraine returning fire President Trump for a time was in the middle, but then he injected himself and he did so with equal energy and he did so with rather historic and explosive language.

At one point, Vice President Vance said to President Zelensky, “I think it’s disrespectful for you to come to the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media.” Well, the big point there is that that kind of formal conversation prior to the real conversation is the way diplomacy usually works in the modern age. You bring the television cameras in at the beginning, you bring them back if everything is successful at the end. And in the middle you close all the doors, kick everyone out except the responsible parties for both sides. You have a conversation. And in that conversation, things are said that generally are never said publicly, but what happened on Friday is that the stuff that takes place in private exploded into public. Or to put it differently, there was nothing unique about the heat, nothing unique about the energy behind the disagreements and the statements made in the Oval Office, but generally, those kinds of expressions take place with the television cameras out of the room, not in the room.

The presence of those cameras in the room was absolutely a game changer. Now, political observers are asking the question, did those three lead participants, the vice president and then the President of the United States, and then the President of Ukraine, were they calculating when they made the decision to take this disagreement to the public? Well, for one thing, you might think that at the very least, President Trump was not disappointed since he made an offhand comment to the media that this surely made for good television. Showing obvious frustration, the President of the United States said to the President of Ukraine, “You don’t have the cards right now. With us, you start having problems right now. You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people. You’re gambling with World War III.” At another point, the president pressed the case with Zelenskyy saying, “You either make a deal or we’re out.”

After the meeting and a post to social media, the American president said, “I have determined that President Zelenskyy is not ready for peace if America is involved because he feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiations. I don’t want advantage, I want peace,” he said all caps, “He disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office.” Now, after the meeting, President Zelensky, at least in public, attempted to try to make some kind of peace with the White House expressing profuse thank-yous to the United States and to President Trump, the American Congress and the American people. He went on to say, “Ukraine needs just and lasting peace, and we are working exactly for that.” But here’s where there is a basic clash of worldviews between Ukraine and the United States, certainly as represented by President Zelenskyy of Ukraine and President Trump of the United States.

Vice President JD Vance, very much a part of that conversation, but this is the foreign policy of President Trump and it comes down to this. There is going to have to be some kind of negotiation for a peace between Russia and Ukraine, and it is going to have to come sooner rather than later. Now I have to say the great advantage of the president’s candor is that he has broken through the diplomatic niceties simply to say there is going to be some kind of settlement eventually in peace between Ukraine and Russia. Ukraine as the background fact has fought nobly against the Russian invasion. The Russians did invade Ukraine. Ukraine did not invade Russia. But even as Ukraine has shown remarkable bravery and is not collapsing as a total force before the Russian onslaught, the reality is Russia is advancing. Russia is far larger. Russia has a far larger army.

It has far larger armed services and it believes it has history on its side. Ukraine has fought nobly. It has fought with remarkable effectiveness, courage and bravery. It has pushed back to the Russians at times, and the most important thing is that it didn’t collapse. The Russians clearly thought that Ukraine would collapse entirely within a matter of weeks, if not days after the invasion. That has not happened. Ukraine has proved its national identity. It has proved its national self-determination, but its losses have been massive. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have died and at this point the Ukrainian armed forces are growing very, very thin. Ukraine cannot keep fighting this war on these terms for long. Ukraine has to know it. The European allies of Ukraine have to know it, and the United States of America surely knows it.

Part II

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‘President Zelensky, What is Your Plan?’ – The U.S. Presses Ukraine for Realism in Settlement Talks Between Ukraine and Russia

One of the big questions is then: What is your plan? To President Zelenskyy, what is your plan? 

On the one hand, President Zelenskyy has represented the courage of his people by coming back and saying, “We won’t be satisfied until Russian forces are completely expelled from our historic territory.” Going back to say the mid-1990s. And that includes not only pressing Russia back from its invasion that took place just three years ago, but it also means regaining control and ownership and sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia took by force years ago in February and March of 2014. To state the matter clearly, I don’t think any rational actor believes all of that is going to take place. Those terms are simply not going to be met. To put it another way, there is no rational calculus that suggests that there is any likelihood of believing that Russia is going to concede all of that territory. And you can just start with a Crimean Peninsula.

There is no way Russia is going to give that back to Ukraine. Furthermore, in historic terms, it was a part of the Russian Empire, for a very long time, it was a part of the Soviet Union, and so Russia feels that it has a moral cause to seize the Crimean Peninsula and then also the Russian-dominated areas in Eastern Ukraine, particularly the region known as the Donbas. So let’s ask the question, is it morally right for Russia to invade Ukraine? Absolutely not. Is it morally satisfying that Russia may end up keeping some of that territory? Absolutely not. But wars are often not ended with moral satisfaction. They are ended sometimes in absolute exhaustion, which is better than absolute surrender. They sometimes, and indeed in the modern age, more often than not, end with some kind of negotiated settlement. That settlement in some sense is unthinkable to the parties who sign it until the moment when it becomes thinkable and they sign it.

Realism in foreign policy, looking at this situation with principled realism means we call things what they are. We recognize who invaded whom, but we also recognize the relative strength and determination of these two nations. And we understand that Ukraine has only survived at least this far in the war because of massive rearmament that has come from allied forces, including Europe and the United States. But the United States in terms of its determination and its role has been absolutely crucial. But no sane actor believes that the situation as it stands now is going to continue indefinitely. To put the matter bluntly, President Trump bluntly has made that clear. Some note almost immediately this represents what’s claimed to be a reversal in American policy. Under President Joe Biden, the United States was very clear in its support of Ukraine and did not press Ukraine to reach some kind of settlement with Russia. And by the way, President Trump is taking that further by indicating that he intends for an American initiative to lead to what will eventually be a settlement agreeable to Russia and Ukraine.

Part III

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President Trump’s Approach to Diplomacy: President Trump is Changing the Game on U.S. Foreign Policy – We Can Only Hope It is Effective

But the one question that simply was never answered by the Biden administration is what was their plan? They never made their plan clear. Their plan was a matter of rhetoric and it was a matter of massive support for Ukraine, but it never acknowledged the fact that this could not continue indefinitely. And the insinuation that it could continue indefinitely was irresponsibility. Now we go back to the Oval Office on Friday. Did President Trump demonstrate a responsible approach to foreign policy in that meeting? He clearly intended to let his anger be known and to make his point very clear, he changed the game in terms of American presidential diplomacy. Will he be vindicated in that action or will it go down badly in history?

Well, at this point, we have to say he intended to change the game. It will take some time to find out if he changed the game effectively. We do need to state that President Biden and his approach did not represent a long-term gain that had any end point, and frankly, they never indicated how they believed this situation, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine at the center, could possibly be settled. The rhetoric about Ukraine being solitary in its authority to set the terms in which it would find some kind of ceasefire acceptable, that was never honest either with the American people, nor with the Ukrainians, nor with the world. In Christian terms, we are simply reminded again of how dangerous the world is. We live in a very dangerous place. Nations rise up against nations. We are no longer in the position to claim that we are living in some kind of new peace as was declared after the fall of the Cold War. That false peace has given way to what we could describe as a new Cold War.

But it is interesting and humbling to recognize that many of the rules of the old Cold War are showing up with particular relevance in the new Cold War. One final point about President Trump’s approach to diplomacy, that Associated Press headline said that, “Trump’s Trashing of Zelensky Undoes Weeks of Diplomacy.” We do need to note that President Trump has intentionally changed the way the diplomatic game is played, and there are those who are absolutely appalled, and that especially includes the diplomatic establishment, and particularly in Europe. It has sent shock waves throughout diplomatic communities over the globe. Will it turn out to lead to a faster, stable piece? That remains to be seen, but we have to hope so. 

Part IV

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Bezos Indicates Major Shift at The Washington Post: The Editorial Pages of The Post Will Now Be Centered on Personal Liberties and Free Markets

Okay, we’re going to shift gears and look at the media landscape in the nation’s capital in Washington, D.C. because at the end of last week, there was a seismic announcement that came from the owner of The Washington Post, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.

He made a public statement, which he said, “I’m writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages. We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars, personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.” Bezos also announced that The Washington Post editorial page editor David Shipley, had announced that he was not going to be the one to lead that change and he would resign from the paper. Well, this is actually big news. It’s news about the news, and lately the news has been making the news. And that is because big changes are taking place in America’s media and news landscape. And now we’re talking about the editorial section of The Washington Post. Let’s just give ourselves a little historic view here.

The Washington Post was a major paper of the United States, precisely because it was one of the daily newspapers in Washington, D.C.. But over the course of the 20th century, particularly in the last decades of the 20th century, it became the dominant news source there in Washington, both in terms of investigative reporting, think Woodward and Bernstein and Watergate and also in terms of political commentary. When you talk about the East Coast newspapers, the dominant papers have been The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. The Washington Post is the newcomer to that game. Jeff Bezos bought the paper as it was hemorrhaging untold amounts of money. He basically saved the newspaper, and for the most part in terms of its news coverage, he stayed out. But getting close to last November’s election, he made the decision as publisher of the paper. Remember, the publisher in this case either represents the owner or is the owner of the paper, and in this case, Jeff Bezos is the owner.

As publisher, he made the statement that The Washington Post would not be endorsing a candidate for President of the United States. Now, The Washington Post predictably, in terms of its editorial staff, already had an editorial prepared endorsing Kamala Harris. So this was a major setback in terms of the Kamala Harris campaign. By the way, it may have affected very few votes. DC is overwhelmingly democratic, and furthermore, the main thing about that editorial is the symbolic value of having it, and then in this case, the even greater symbolic value of Bezos saying, “You’re not going to have it.” But this is a big second shoe to drop. It’s giant. He said that the editorial page is going to focus now on only two things in terms of positive affirmation, individual liberties and free markets. Well, the editors of The Wall Street Journal famously committed to free markets, issued an editorial statement in which they basically said, welcome to the game.

They referred to the decision as “The Washington Post’s freedom turn.” There will be others who will be massively disappointed. In particular, the political Left is going to be absolutely furious. It remains to be seen exactly how this policy is going to take shape there at The Washington Post, but you can count on the fact that it’s going to make big news. The Financial Times in London ran a major article in which they said, “Stop the press. Bezos focuses Washington Post’s opinions on personal liberty and free markets.” It tells you something that one of the most influential newspapers in Britain has seen this as a big story. It is a big story. In political terms, it’s a huge story. It’s going to be fascinating to see how in material form this policy leads to a different editorial tone and a different editorial approach by The Washington Post.

At the same time, it is also interesting as a Christian to notice that Bezos has identified two points of emphasis, personal liberty and free markets. Now, perhaps your ear has picked up the pattern there. That is the pattern of libertarianism as a worldview, not conservatism, not liberalism, but libertarianism. What is libertarianism? It is not conservatism. It is distinct from conservatism. It focuses on those two very things, personal liberty, unrestricted personal liberty. Libertarianism opposes any constraint or restraint on personal behavior and personal choice, and then free markets because free markets are the economic representation of that libertarian impulse. And so libertarianism basically arose also in the second half of the 20th century as an influential political force in the United States. It has never played a big role in presidential politics with a libertarian candidate, although some of them have gained publicity. But the libertarian vote has usually been a predictably Republican vote, at least in terms of the economic issues.

But on the personal liberty side, honestly, the Democrats have often been the representation of a more libertarian perspective. Certainly when it comes to an issue like say, sexual identity, sexual morality, abortion, the libertarian position is you should not impose constraints on human liberty as they define human liberty. Now, one other footnote here is necessary, and that is that if you have three libertarians in a room, you have three different definitions of libertarianism. But if you classically reduce it to two principles, Jeff Bezos just identified those two principles, personal liberties and free markets. So is this a shift from what’s been described as center-left? I think further left and center-left in terms of the current editorial page or pages of The Washington Post, is that a shift now from liberalism to libertarianism? Well, we just need to note, it is not a shift from liberalism to conservatism.

It likely is if it is as significant as is promised and is feared, it is likely to be more a shift to libertarianism. What that will look like, again, it will be very interesting to find out. The editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal, for example, do have some libertarian representations, but they often follow more traditional conservative arguments along with a commitment to free markets. Most of the other mainstream legacy media are pretty much opposed to free markets, they’re gung ho for personal liberties as defined by the Left. We are living in a time not only of a clash of worldviews, but we’re living in a time when there are vast changes on the political, economic, academic, and media landscapes. In this case, we’re looking at a landslide in the national media. It’s also very interesting to see how the other legacy media respond to this announcement by The Washington Post and many of them representing what they call the journalistic profession are up in absolute outrage over Bezos announcement.

But does Jeff Bezos have the right to make this policy change? You bet he does. He owns the newspaper. It belongs to him. It is under his control. The journalists actually work for him. They work for the company that he owns. For far too long, by the way, people that represented more conservative positions often owned media that didn’t just lean left, but actually subverted the worldviews of their owners. That’s stupid, it’s inexcusable, and Jeff Bezos has the right to do this. So many in the liberal press have been freeloaders for a very long time. I will simply admit there is some satisfaction in seeing the freeloading come to an end or at least come to an end at one newspaper.