There’s a reason it is called “the art of the deal.”
It has nothing to do with the position you like best, the politician you like best or even who, in fact, is right and who is wrong. (Here is the mandatory disclaimer about Russia, Putin and war crimes.)
The art is figuring out how far you can go in how many steps and whether each step brings you closer to what you really want — or really need. It isn’t that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is wrong or Vladimir Putin is right or President Donald Trump has a loud and disconcerting habit of throwing out elements of a plan and waiting for counter-plans. (This is not a secret.)
Zelenskyy not only didn’t read Trump well, but he also showed that he didn’t understand America — even though Sen. Lindsay Graham apparently tried to explain it to him.
Americans are not Europeans; it’s shocking but needs to be said. Americans are in the middle of the biggest civic reset since, well, since forever. We are just finding out how much money our government has been spending without telling us where it went. Had the public been asked whether or not to spend the money in some of those places, most Americans would have said not only “no,” but “HELL NO.”
Further, it is not yet clear how Zelenskyy can win. That’s not to say he can’t, but a path to “winning” hasn’t shown itself. There are no achievable war goals, only three points that Zelenskyy makes frequently – and from which he appears not to have deviated are:
- Restoration of all the land Russia took, including Crimea.
- International war crimes trials for Putin.
- Billions in reparations paid by Russia.
That being the case, there is every reason to believe that the war is destined to grind on until the last Ukrainian or the last Russian. And since there are more Russians than Ukrainians, the ultimate outcome would look like Chechnya.
- NATO is not going into Ukraine. If anyone told Zelenskyy it would, they were lying to him.
- The money spigot is not infinite. If anyone told Zelenskyy it was, they were lying to him.
- The weapons spigot is not infinite. If anyone told Zelenskyy it was, they were lying to him.
Trump appears to have two goals. The loud goal is to find a way to end the war through negotiation; the quiet goal is to secure Ukraine without NATO and without a U.S. military presence in the future.
The art is in doing both. And the deal was in rare earth minerals managed by the United States.
The benefit of substantial a NON-military American presence is twofold: to dissuade Russia from further meddling in Ukraine; and give the American people a reason to support Kiev. Subgoals are to fill an American requirement for natural resources and — while paying Ukraine — recoup some of the hundreds of billions American taxpayers have spent.
With American mining and engineering professionals working in Ukraine, it would be hard for Russia to consider invading or bombing it. While the risk of biting off chunks of Ukraine is manageable for Putin, the risk for Russia of starting a war with the U.S. would be too great.
But Zelenskyy is angry. The Europeans are angry. anti-Trumpers are having a field day pointing fingers at the “nasty” president, accusing him of being a Russian agent. It makes you wonder why they’re so determined to have more war, more death, more destruction — regardless of who is at fault. And yes, the Russians are largely at fault.
But so what? Until what? At what cost?
While Americans are having a financial reset, we are also having a political reset. As long as the U.S. wouldn’t control and manage its own northern and southern borders, Canada and Mexico had no reason to take those borders seriously. Now they do.
As long as the U.S. offered money, health insurance, and protection from deportation to criminal aliens as well as other people, criminal aliens and other people took it. That has changed.
As long as the U.S. wasn’t willing to punish Hamas terror supporters in the U.S. for violating the civil rights of Jewish/pro-Israel people as well as supporting listed terror organizations in the U.S., they did it with gusto. That has changed.
And as long as no one was looking too closely into how and where taxpayer dollars were going, they were spent without care. That too has changed.
The art of Trump’s deal was to read the American people on both the military/political and economic level, and to create a situation in which both interests could be advanced.
Zelenskyy had no art, and now he has no deal.
Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of The Jewish Policy Center and Editor of inFOCUS Quarterly.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].
