While many people were shocked by the bullying treatment meted out to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky by Donald Trump and J.D. Vance in the Oval Office Friday, the whole humiliating show should have come as no surprise.
Though “surrender to Putin” was the theme of most mainstream media coverage and Democratic elected officials’ commentary, the made-for-TV moment was yet another signal that the Trump administration is reconfiguring imperial strategy away from conflicts in Europe and toward containment of U.S. monopoly capitalism’s key competitor: China.
A recent series of votes at the United Nations were flashing blinkers indicating that a turn was coming. First, Trump’s U.N. delegation opposed a European-drafted resolution condemning Russia’s invasion and supporting Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Then, the U.S. proposed its own resolution at the Security Council calling for an end to the war but leaving out any criticism of Vladimir Putin—a sharp departure from past U.S. rhetoric centered on the illegality of Russia’s actions.
The ambush of Zelensky at the White House put the final stamp on this reorientation of U.S. policy in Ukraine and Europe more broadly. If the U.N. votes were advance notices, then the meeting in Washington was a screaming bullhorn announcing where things now stand. Those who supposedly didn’t see it coming—and that would seem to include many heads of state internationally and most of the liberal media—are now scrambling to respond.
In the case of European and Canadian leaders, they rallied in London this weekend for a pro-war summit where they pledged money and weapons to help Kiev continue the fighting should Trump cut the flow of U.S. arms.
As for journalists, too many are once more peddling speculative claims about Trump’s supposed subservience to Moscow or making his and Vance’s thuggish behavior the centerpiece of their coverage. With the endless playing and re-playing of the duo raining blows on Zelensky, the news networks are doing exactly what Trump hoped they would.
The president said it himself last Friday when he declared that the Oval Office spectacle will “make good television.” That was the second intention for the show they put on: red meat to prove to the MAGA base just how “tough” Trump will be with other countries in pursuit of an “America First” agenda.
Picking on the one foreign leader who is most dependent on U.S. patronage for his survival, of course, doesn’t exactly qualify as a show of strength on the world stage. But in the style of a Mafia godfather, Trump proved for the cameras how strong he is, able to push around anyone who doesn’t go along with him.
Unfortunately, many Democrats—some of whom might oppose Trump’s attacks on democracy and the standard of living of the working class at home—are reacting to the shift on Ukraine in a dangerous fashion. They’re using the tag-team assault on Zelensky to try to return the U.S. to the militaristic Cold War stances that helped create the mess in Ukraine in the first place.
Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., for instance, declared on ABC: “Essentially, this is President Trump surrendering to the Russians. This is not a statesman or a diplomat. This is just someone who admires Putin, does not believe in the struggle of the Ukrainians, and is committed to cozying up to an autocrat.”
Such a perspective, mirroring that of the leaders who met in London this weekend, aims to extend the fighting. Reed and others are calling for more armaments to be shipped into Ukraine to continue the war, and they seem to oppose any talks between the United States and Russia.
While Trump can’t be trusted to fight for a just peace in Ukraine and his schemes must be exposed, carte blanche hostility to U.S.-Russia negotiations is also not a pro-peace position. The White House maneuvering to enrich U.S. and Ukrainian oligarchs alike via a rare earth minerals deal doesn’t serve the interests of the working class and people of either country, but neither do Democratic demands for a prolonged proxy war.
Beyond ending the killing in eastern Ukraine, the U.S. and Russia also need to be discussing other topics, such as nuclear disarmament. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the last bilateral nuclear weapons agreement between the two countries, expires in less than a year—on Feb. 5, 2026. The treaty limits the number of long-range nuclear missiles the signatories can build and aim at each other, but the atmosphere of confrontation that’s prevailed for the past several years is totally unconducive for its renewal.
What will come of U.S.-Russia negotiations remains to be seen, but the policy previously pursued by the Biden administration—using the fighting in Ukraine to weaken Russia—was a disaster for the prospects of international peace. It encouraged the further militarization of Europe, catered to the wishes of U.S. fossil fuel companies to demolish the EU-Russia energy trade, and sought to preserve the global domination of U.S. imperial power.
Trump and the faction of capital grouped around him have accepted the reality that the unipolar world is dead. They realize U.S. monopoly capitalism can no longer count on dominating the world economy free of competition and that U.S. imperial power is perhaps not as unlimited as it once appeared.
Many may wonder whether there will be some kind of “peace dividend” as a result of Trump’s lowering of tensions with Russia, but everyone should know that MAGA’s shift isn’t about securing peace. It is about preparing us for an even bigger and costlier war—with China.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio revealed the strategy now unfolding in an interview with Breitbart just a few days ago:
“I don’t know if we’ll ever be successful completely at peeling them [Russia] off a relationship with the Chinese…but I do think we’re in a situation now where the Russians have become increasingly dependent on the Chinese.”
That, he said, is “not a good outcome” for U.S. imperialism, since “the big story of the 21st century is going to be U.S.-Chinese relations.”
The Biden administration’s approach to Ukraine also had long-term conflict with China in mind. The difference, however, was that its policy sought to deny China a Russian ally by crippling the latter; Trump and the MAGA faction of the GOP believe they can conclude a Cold Peace with Russia and entice Putin away from tighter ties with Beijing.
This is the angle to this story that most of the media has either missed or ignored for months (or even years). It’s the angle that most Democratic officials don’t want to discuss, either, preferring instead to talk about the need to support a democracy in Ukraine that doesn’t exist.
There is a need for a real pro-peace foreign policy, and neither Trump nor the Democratic Party are providing one. What the current moment demands is multilateral diplomacy, including via the United Nations; direct talks between the major powers on Ukraine, nuclear arms, Palestine, and other pressing topics; cooperation on climate change, labor rights, and emerging health crises; and commitments to reverse policies that shovel more profits into the coffers of the arms manufacturers, no matter what country they operate in.
So far, too few of our political leaders are speaking up for peace, so the people are going to have to do it ourselves.
As with all news-analytical and op-ed articles published by People’s World, the views reflected here are those of the authors.
