"I cannot recall an uglier scene in American diplomatic history"

 

“It was a sickening spectacle: the man who tried to upend democracy bullying the man who is fighting for democracy.”

– Maureen Dowd, “Trump is Rootin’ for Putin,” The New York Times, March 2, 2025.)

“Trump barked at Zelensky: 'You’ve got to be more thankful because…you don’t have the cards.  With us, you have the cards, but without us, you don’t have any cards.'  Pretty rich for a draft dodger to lecture a man whose name has become synonymous with wartime bravery.”

–Dowd, March 2, 2025.

In the summer of 1938, it was increasingly obvious to the international community that the German invasion of Czechoslovakia was being planned in Berlin.  The Czechs had an alliance with the Soviet Union, but that wasn’t expected to save them.  British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain knew that, if France decided to defend Czechoslovakia, he would have to join in.  Britain was in no position to wage a general European war, so Chamberlain boarded a plane for the first time in his life and flew to Munich to placate Adolf Hitler.

Chamberlain’s concessions were insufficient for the Fuehrer, so he made a second trip only to find greater German demands.  Additional meetings were held, as Hitler and his cohorts launched violent tirades against the Czechs.  Hitler then held a public rally at which, according to historian William Shirer, Hitler was “shouting and shrieking in the worst state of excitement I’ve ever seen him in…with a fanatical fire in his eyes.”

I recalled these odious events while watching the video of the March 1 meeting in the Oval Office in which a vile President Donald Trump and an even more vile J.D. Vance abused and tormented Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with their shouts and threats. 

There is no question that Trump is a dangerously disordered president who has already diminished the United States on the world stage and caused significant domestic damage.  There is no point in discussing Vance, the worst kind of toady and sycophant.

The mainstream media will not say it, but Trump is grossly deranged and represents a threat to the American way of life and to Americans themselves.  He is driven by a pathological hatred of anyone who has ever challenged him and veneration for those autocrats who control all around them. 

Meanwhile, the servile Washington Post under the active leadership of Jeff Bezos, was critical of Zelensky because he “took the bait and turned punchy.”  Bezos’s Post also praised Trump because he “sees himself as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine.”

In holding a gun to Zelensky’s head, we are reminded of Trump’s exchanges with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and his multiple references to having a “bigger button,” the nuclear button.  In the summer of 2017, Trump’s first term, he threatened North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen.” 

Similar to the decision to remove Zelensky from the White House, Trump abruptly cancelled talks with Kim Jong-un.  “Based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement,” Trump wrote to Kim, any meeting would be “inappropriate at this time.”

Several weeks ago, Trump threatened the Gazans unless Hamas released American hostages.  Trump favors the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, which supports the Israeli right-wing movement, and he is encouraging Israel to annex the West Bank.  These events would be dramatic as dystopian fiction, but this is America’s reality at the moment.  Indeed, it is a global reality.

Unlike Trump’s first term, when there were some adults or moderates in the room such as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, White House chief of staff John Kelly, and others, there now are only toadies surrounding the most unethical and deranged president in the history of the United States. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who supported military and economic aid to Ukraine as a senator from Florida and once referred to Zelensky as a “modern-day Churchill in a T-shirt,” went on CNN to thank Trump for “standing up for America in a way that no President has ever had the courage to do before.” 

The following day, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz went on national television to demand an apology from Zelensky. The thought that Rubio and Waltz will be leading U.S. negotiations with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, an experienced and deft diplomat, is a part of this nauseating series of events.

In ten minutes in the Oval Office, Trump and Vance have managed to produce an embarrassing erosion of American credibility and decency.  They have opened the door wider to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s campaign of terrorism against Ukraine and have given Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even greater carte blanche in conducting his terror campaign on the West Bank and his occupation of southern Lebanon and southern Syria. 

China’s Xi Jinping may now believe the door is open to a military campaign against Taiwan that will not have to deal with U.S. involvement.  Trump’s outrageous purge of senior military leaders as well as China’s military drills off the coast of Australia and Vietnam, including live-fire drills in the Gulf of Tonkin, create additional worries about the direction of events in the Indo-Pacific.

Nearly 80 years ago, the United States initiated a magnanimous act, the Marshall Plan, to revive the economies and societies of Europe in the wake of the Second World War.  It is believed incorrectly that Winston Churchill called the Marshall Plan the “most unsordid act in history.”  Actually, Churchill was talking about the Lend-Lease Bill and President Franklin Roosevelt’s courageous decision to provide military aid to a beleaguered Britain.

Just as Lend-Lease and the Marshall Plan were designed to assist Western democracies, U.S. and European support for Ukraine was similarly inspired to enable the weakest European nation to stand up to the tyranny of Vladimir Putin.  

In a matter of minutes in the Oval Office, Trump and Vance have eroded the U.S. leadership of the Western democracies that has existed since the end of the Second World War.  For now, the post-war Atlantic Alliance is dead.

Nearly 240 years ago, Elizabeth Powel asked Benjamin Franklin “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”  Franklin’s response was “A republic, if you can keep it.”  Well, the republic has been compromised in a few weeks, and now we must ask if we are going to be okay as a nation.  Trump’s decisions, his appointments, and yesterday’s conduct indicate that we are not okay at the moment.

In scenes reminiscent of “The Godfather,” Trump performed as a high-ranking mobster, a member of La Cosa Nostra, a consigliere of the family, who will crush anyone who challenges his version of U.S. interests.  I cannot recall an uglier scene in American diplomatic history, and most of the international community shares that view.

For the moment, Volodymyr Zelensky is the leader of the free world.  It will take serious and urgent opposition to stop Donald Trump from additional vile acts at home and abroad.  In setting up a scene to humiliate Zelensky and the Ukrainian nation, Trump has embarrassed himself and the entire nation.  In doing so, Trump has undermined 80 years of an Atlantic Alliance that protected democracy in the West and challenged autocracy and patrimony in the East.

 

Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University.  A former CIA analyst, Goodman is the author of Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism. and A Whistleblower at the CIA. His most recent books are “American Carnage: The Wars of Donald Trump” (Opus Publishing, 2019) and “Containing the National Security State” (Opus Publishing, 2021). Goodman is the national security columnist for counterpunch.org.