Jonathan S. Tobin
JNS, Mar. 3, 2025
“… it is the height of chutzpah for Trump’s detractors to say that he might do the same to Israel since he has reversed every one of his predecessors’ anti-Israel policies—from arms deliveries to moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.”
It was, as President Donald Trump said, “good television.” But the dustup at the White House last week between Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was a disaster for Ukraine. The quarrel, which was based on Zelenskyy’s clearly stated opposition to Trump’s peace initiative with Russia on any terms but those that treated the war as a straightforward act of aggression by Moscow that had to be punished rather than settled by compromise, had serious consequences.
Three days after the joint press conference, which had started amiably but at about halfway through the tense 50-minute event turned angry, the administration let it be known it was suspending military aid to Kyiv. The understanding was that the halt on shipments would remain in place until Zelenskyy backed down and gave Trump what he thought he had when he agreed to host the Ukrainian: his commitment to peace negotiations.
Given Ukraine’s dependence on the steady flow of U.S. arms and ammunition to maintain what has become a World War I-style stalemate with Russia, this is a devastating development for Zelenskyy’s government. The Ukrainian not only failed to make it up to Trump in the days after the spat but doubled down on his insistence that he had been in the right. He basked in the adulation that his defiance of Washington had gained him among Democrats and Europeans who, among other things, feted him with a private though much-publicized meeting with King Charles III of Great Britain.
But if his country is going to survive in the long run, Zelenskyy, who has spent the last three years being treated as not so much an international superstar but the second coming of Winston Churchill, will eventually have to eat crow and bow to Trump’s demands.
While the debate over blame for this turn of events is just getting started in the United States, the question now in some minds is not so much about Ukraine’s future but what this could mean for other countries dependent on U.S. support, like Israel…..SOURCE