Corporate media expressed either surprise or, in some cases, downright glee after it was reported this week that Trump “switched sides” and now says Ukraine can win back all the territories taken by Russia during the ongoing war there.
Trump is suddenly praising Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for “putting up a helluva” fight against Russia and proving Ukraine can reclaim all the land the Russians have taken from them during three-and-a-half years of war.
Even when U.S. military aid to Ukraine was at its highest levels, Russia still made slow but steady gains in battle after battle. So, it makes little sense to expect that the Ukrainian army will suddenly be able to turn things around now given that U.S. battlefield support has been drastically curtailed under Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth.
MSNBC and other media outlets have reported that Ukraine is the “big beneficiary” of the president’s reversal. And President Volodymyr Zelensky is now praising Trump for “understanding the realities Ukraine faces.” The truth, however, could be something entirely different.
Under both Trump and Biden before him, the people of Ukraine—as a result of U.S. policy in the war—have known only suffering, death, and destruction as the U.S. and its European allies pursued a course of fighting a proxy war against Russia to, seemingly, the very last Ukrainian.
It’s true enough that Trump would like to see a Ukrainian victory so that U.S. corporations could grab the country’s mineral wealth and Russia would be knocked out as a potential ally to China. But there is something else entirely behind his flip-flop, and it’s not a sudden change of heart concerning the fate of the embattled Ukrainian people.
It should also come as no surprise that Trump has ended up in essentially the same place vis-a-vis the war in Ukraine that was occupied by former President Joe Biden. As the head of the world’s most powerful imperialist country, the American president commands a military machine spread around the globe, with over 800 bases surrounding not just Russia but also China, the primary long-term target of U.S. imperialism.
Tactics change, but the ultimate strategy under both Biden and Trump is the same: Weaken Russia and clear out obstacles on the U.S. imperialist path to challenging China—economically and militarily.
Part of that strategy necessitated the installation and maintenance of a government in Ukraine that is compliant with that strategy. It started with the expansion of NATO right up to the borders of Russia, followed by the U.S.-backed coup in 2014 that installed an unelected anti-Russian government, and continued with U.S. support for Zelensky.
The latter’s hold on power in Kiev has depended on continued U.S. patronage, not to mention on his tossing out almost every remnant of democracy in the country, including canceling elections, curbing freedom of the press, ending independent trade unions, banning most opposition political parties, and more.
The problem with the U.S. plan to fight a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, however, is that Russia was never going to allow Ukraine to be used as yet another NATO outpost on its borders, with more weapons and missiles positioned only minutes from Moscow.
Trump’s description of Russia, the world’s second nuclear power, this week as a “paper tiger” is, therefore, as absurd as it sounds. One need not be a fan of Vladimir Putin to recognize the Russian military’s capabilities.
U.S. imperialism has been able to keep Russian troops bogged down in a prolonged war somewhat akin to the situation the Soviet Union found itself in the 1980s, when it was fighting CIA-backed Islamist militants in Afghanistan. But as it turns out, the Russian military has not been fatally weakened in the Ukraine war in the way that U.S. strategists had hoped; they didn’t get the Afghanistan rerun they wanted.
The recent gains by Russia on the battlefield may have brought closer the day that U.S. imperialism will finally lose the war against Russia that it is fighting on Ukrainian soil. The alternative path the U.S could have taken, the curbing of NATO and cooperation and trade amongst the U.S., Europe, and Russia would have benefitted the people of the entire world. Unfortunately, U.S. imperialism followed a course of militarism and war.
Trump’s supposed change in perspective on the war, highlighted by his statement that Ukraine is now winning and can finally score victory—with the help of Europe, but not the U.S.—is nothing more than an excuse to wash his hands of what is, for the U.S., a losing proposition.
Unfortunately, the people of Ukraine have paid an unacceptably heavy price for the use of their country as a staging ground for greedy weapons makers. As for the people of the U.S., they have paid for the war with massive cuts in the essential services they need. The days in which the U.S. can win every single military adventure in which it engages are long over.
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