Trump’s Russia-Ukraine War

The President’s Deflections and a Chaotic Foreign Policy

This weekend, Donald Trump took to Truth Social to demand that European NATO members stop buying Russian oil and impose sweeping tariffs “between 50% and 100%” on all Chinese and Russian goods until the war in Ukraine ends. He then declared that the war “is not TRUMP’S WAR (it would never have started if I was President!), it is Biden’s and Zelenskyy’s WAR.”

Ending Europe’s dependence on Russian energy is already a shared strategic goal, and, though sometimes too-slow, has been advanced through painstaking sanctions and diversification efforts. Blanket tariffs on Chinese products, however, would be far more difficult for European policymakers to implement and serve little strategic purpose. There is no reason for Europe to participate in Trump’s reckless trade war. When European leaders inevitably balk, Trump will seize the opportunity to brand them as freeloaders and use their refusal as a pretext to abandon both the Ukraine peace process and European security commitments.

Most alarming is Trump’s claim that this war belongs to Biden and Zelenskyy. Beyond the absurd implication that Zelenskyy somehow started this war, Trump is aligning himself with Russian propaganda that blames the West for Moscow’s aggression. More importantly, he is wrong: this war is more his than it is Zelenskyy’s. For four and a half years, Trump undermined Western unity and invited aggression against Ukraine and NATO. His first administration’s permissive stance toward Russia laid the groundwork for the 2022 invasion, and his current administration’s wavering commitment to our allies only invites further conflict.

Trump’s pronouncements are more than bluster - it is abdication, deflection, and sabotage rolled into one. Trump is not leading; he is scapegoating. Rather than taking meaningful action, he is demanding that Europe bear the burden of punishing Russia while his own administration stands aside. He is passing the buck, expecting European NATO members to implement punitive measures against Russia that he is unwilling or unable to pursue. This demand follows multiple instances of the White House failing to act after Russia ignored timelines to begin negotiations or implement a ceasefire. It also comes just weeks after Trump’s summit with Putin in Alaska ended a shambles with eight world leaders flying in three days later to repair the damage. Trump’s White House does not have the stomach to make the hard choices and is content to leave Europe to do the heavy lifting while Trump plays at peacemaker.

Why it Matters: Donald Trump consistently deflects blame and manufactures success. It is the one constant of his character. He has rejected responsibility for foreign policy disasters, whether it’s signing a flawed peace deal with the Taliban that helped shape the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, to denying that Russia would ever invade Ukraine. He wants the world to deny what we have seen with our own eyes. The truth is Trump owns the litany of foreign policy failures. His first term witnessed four years of the Russia-Ukraine war without doing anything to end the conflict or deter further Russian aggression. His cheerleading for Putin encouraged Russian impunity and helped precipitate the full-scale invasion. Trump spent four years undermining Western resolve, signaling to Putin that the U.S. would not stand in the way of Russian aggression. The 2022 invasion was launched into the permissive environment that Trump created.

Trump is not a bystander to this war. He is one of its authors. Today, Trump encourages Russian impunity, fractures allied unity and creates the conditions for protracted war. He is doubling down on weakening U.S. commitments, signaling retreat, and preparing to leave Ukraine to face Russia alone.

This is Trump’s war. He helped start it, he is prolonging it, and he is losing it.