Crack National Security analyst Joe Cirincione has written a piece for his Substack with a perfect headline:
Thank you. That is refreshingly direct —- and absolutely true.
Here’s the opening. The piece is free and you should click over to read the rest. It’s spot on:
For fifty days, Donald Trump insisted that Putin had to agree to a ceasefire in his war on Ukraine. He said that he would be very unhappy if Putin refused. He warned of “severe consequences,” including tough new sanctions on Russia.
He then announced a “summit” with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in Alaska with one week’s notice. He literally rolled out the red carpet for an accused war criminal, applauded him, couldn’t keep his hands off of him, had a private meeting with him in the presidential limo, talked with him for a couple of hours, then canceled all the other events of this summit, held a 12-minute session with the press where Putin spoke first and spoke longer, then completely dropped any talk of ceasefires, sanctions, criticism and seemed to say that ending the war was now up to Ukrainian President Volodymyer Zelensky.
“Even in the annals of Mr. Trump’s erratic presidency,” wrote Peter Baker on the front page of the Sunday New York Times, “the Anchorage meeting with Mr. Putin now stands out as a reversal of historic proportions.”
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, often called the Trump of London, was even more blunt, calling it “just about the most vomit-inducing episode in all the tawdry history of international diplomacy.”
There is lots to say about the debacle, this propaganda victory for Putin, and many people have already said it. I had a long interview with journalist Bill Press on his podcast last week. I told him that “this has got to be the most jarring failure of any American president in U.S. history when dealing with a foreign leader.” And that was just the beginning. You can hear “The Tale of Two Summits” in its entirety here.
Even beyond the fawning treatment of a brutal dictator, the near-betrayal of U.S. allies and the lasting damage done to U.S. standing in the world, it is what this summit and the emergency meeting with Europe’s top leaders in Washington three days later revealed: Trump has absolutely no idea what he is doing.
He has purged or sidelined most of the seasoned national security experts in the government. He relies on a very small circle of loyalists who are singularly lacking in foreign policy experience, including Vice President JD Vance, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and right-wing lunatic Laura Loomer. He sets up major meetings on a whim, with zero preparation, agency coordination or clear goals. He seems to believe his own hype that he is a master negotiator who alone can get deals done.
It is time that we all recognized that this is complete nonsense. We have to let go of the idea that he might have some grand strategy in mind. Or a master plan. Trump’s attempt to show some results from the two meetings — that he would set up a meeting between Putin and Zelensky to hammer out a peace deal — was a complete scam. Russia announced this weekend that no such meeting is planned.
He’s just dancing as fast as he can, as usual. But he’s slower and more distracted (demented?) than he was even in his first term when he really was just winging it. Now it’s just possible WWIII on a whim.