Some Ukrainians – and Ukraine’s supporters in the United States – still harbor hopes that Donald J. Trump is on their side. That America will come to Ukraine’s rescue, saving it from Russian aggression: That Washington, D.C., will give it a hand in preserving its independence and territorial integrity and in becoming free and prosperous – just as America did for Germany after World War II.
Indeed, modern Berlin is a living monument to past American greatness – or should we say a memorial?
Americans didn’t just defeat the enemy nation in the world’s bloodiest conflict. The victory was just the beginning. The United States had come to believe that Germany could emerge from the ruins of World War II as a free and peaceful nation and were determined to make sure it happened. The divided Berlin became a symbol of the Cold War and the firm Western stance against Soviet aggression. Today, the German capital is not just unified once more; it is a beautiful, international, vibrant metropolis – all that in a large part because of American efforts.
The Wall has not disappeared entirely. In Berlin, a massive tourist industry has been built around it. Black-and-white photographs festoon every street corner in the city center, and in all of them, American GIs are celebrated as heroes. On the other hand, the Red Army, which broke Hitler’s spine and fought its way into Berlin in 1945, very quickly transformed itself from hero to villain.
Americans protected West Berlin and its people and gave 17 million East Germans hope that they too could one day be free. The timeline of the city begins with the 1948-49 Berlin airlift and includes John F. Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech. The final phase of the story began in 1987, with Ronald Reagan’s plea to the last Soviet leader: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Two years later the wall was gone.
How ironic that Reagan’s eloquent lines were echoed by Trump’s: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”
By urging Putin’s operatives to hack into American servers during the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump was not just appealing for help to a hostile autocracy in undermining America’s democratic election process; he was allying the United States with the bad guys. Since his election, America has been sinking deeper and deeper into the Dark Side.
The true meaning of Trump’s vaulted America First policy was on display at the G20 meeting in Osaka, Japan last week. For Trump, America FIrst apparently means hobnobbing with unsavory dictators such as Saudi Arabia’s blood-splattered Mohammed bin Salman and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and showing utmost deference to Vladimir Putin while criticizing Western democracies. Moreover, after rubbing shoulders with other scoundrels in Osaka, Trump hurried to North Korea to pay his respects to a truly despicable tyrant.
Just as in North Korea, where the current leader is the third of the Kims to lord over the country, as well as in Syria and Azerbaijan, where the old presidents’ sons have succeeded the fathers, Trump seems to be grooming his daughter Ivanka for a position of power. And, upon returning home, Trump held an Independence Day military parade which was all about war-making and killing machines and not about the lofty ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that America used to stand for. Trump’s sordid pageantry belonged more in Pyongyang or in Moscow more readily than in Washington. All that was missing was a Soviet apparatchik-style fur hat on the head of the Leader of the Free World – which I hope Putin will send to the White House so that Trump could review his troops in winter.
And speaking of lofty ideals. Refugees seeking safety and freedom from hunger in America have been herded there into concentration camps. Their kids have been separated and placed in cages. True, American concentration camps are “more humane” than German death camps or Stalin’s GULAG, but they are no less concentration camps for that.
Meanwhile, Trump’s border guards have been caught running a hatred-filled secret Facebook page which is the first step toward organizing police-run death squads.
Those of us who are alarmed by the way the country is turning into an Evil Empire keep saying to themselves that once Trump is out of the White House the old America – the one that fought fascism rather than adopt its methods and went after dictators rather than fawn on them – will be back. We’re deluding ourselves. A venal political establishment has emerged to protect Trump from the fraying system of constitutional checks and balances. A powerful propaganda machine has been put in place to normalize the unthinkable and to praise the wisdom of every ignorant or false utterance of the president.
One feature of today’s autocracies which Trump is so eager to emulate is that they are not ideologically motivated. This makes them different from the Soviet and Nazi regimes which were held together by ideologies. Nowadays, the role of ideology is performed by corruption, which cements the Russian “power vertical” as well as the regimes of lesser Putin wannabes around the world.
In Trump’s America, too, corruption is becoming rampant. Just look at the former US general and ex-chief of staff in Trump’s White House John Kelly. The man has promptly shed all pretense at honor – military or otherwise – by profiting from American concentration camps: the for-profit company where he sits on the board has won a no-bid contract to “care” for refugee children.
Underwriting this entire sordid system are the moneybags who provided $54 million for Trump’s re-election campaign just in the second quarter of this year, and another $51 million for the Republican National Committee. This is straight out of the old Soviet propaganda’s definition of fascism as the final, desperate stage of capitalism, in which the rich pay thugs to shred bourgeois democracy.
All this paints a dim picture for Ukraine. Russian aggression against Ukraine is a version of Statin’s occupation of Eastern Europe and the Baltic States. Stalin too annexed territory and operated through subservient local quislings. This is the kind of regime Putin would love to see in Kyiv.
America had a chance to play a similar role in Ukraine it played in Germany and in Eastern Europe in the early post-World War II decades – to stand up to the aggressor and to assist Kyiv both economically and politically. With Trump in the White House, the United States is likely to be on the other side, cheering Putin on as he dismembers and subjugates neighboring sovereign nations.
