Shoshana Bryen
Jewish Policy Center, Mar. 3, 2025
“Trump appears to have two goals. The loud goal is to find a way to end the war through negotiation; the quiet goal is to secure Ukraine without NATO and without a U.S. military presence in the future.”
There’s a reason it is called “the art of the deal.”
It has nothing to do with the position you like best, the politician you like best or even who, in fact, is right and who is wrong. (Here is the mandatory disclaimer about Russia, Putin and war crimes.)
The art is figuring out how far you can go in how many steps and whether each step brings you closer to what you really want — or really need. It isn’t that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is wrong or Vladimir Putin is right or President Donald Trump has a loud and disconcerting habit of throwing out elements of a plan and waiting for counter-plans. (This is not a secret.)
Zelenskyy not only didn’t read Trump well, but he also showed that he didn’t understand America — even though Sen. Lindsay Graham apparently tried to explain it to him. ….Source