The White House Shakedown

Europe, Ukraine, and the new Gangster-Diplomacy

In his riveting fictional re-imagining of the political shenanigans behind the Anschluss, The Order of the Day, Eric Vulliard describes the meeting between the Austrian chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg and Adolf Hitler on 12 February 1938. Schuschnigg was the successor to Chancellor Dollfus, who had been assassinated by the Nazis in 1934.

Following this assassination, the ‘little Austrian despot’, as Vulliard calls him, continued to rule Austria as the nominal head of state, in the face of ‘hypocritical diplomacy, a mishmash of assassinations, blackmail, and blandishments’ from Schuschnigg’s German ally, aimed at undermining and ultimately ending his country’s independence.

At the February meeting, the hapless Schuschnigg was summoned to Berchtesgaden to meet the Fuhrer in his lair. Mining Schuschnigg’s own memoir, Vulliard describes how the Austrian chancellor tries to make pleasantries, only to be told by Hitler: ‘We did not get together to speak of the fine view or of the weather!’

When the flustered Schuschnigg tries to defend his ‘German-friendly policies’ over the years, Hitler swats away the façade of diplomacy:

‘Ah! So you call this a friendly policy, Herr Schuschnigg? On the contrary, you have done everything to avoid a friendly policy!’ he screams. And after another awkward attempt by Schuschnigg to justify himself, Hitler, in a rage, cranks it up a notch: ‘Besides, Austria has never done anything that would be of any help to Germany. The whole history of Austria is just one uninterrupted act of high treason.

Too late, Schuschnigg realises that he must submit to Nazi demands that will pave the way for his country’s annexation. As Vulliard puts it:

There was no question of density or decency. Here, there was only one framing that counted, only one art of persuasion, only one means of getting what you wanted: fear. No more allusive niceties, subtle forms of authority, or maintaining a friendly face. Here, the little Junker was quaking.

I couldn’t help thinking of that exchange on Friday, during a traffic jam on the M6 watching (as a passenger!) the staged encounter between Trump, Vance and their horrific entourage on one hand, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, on the other.

There are important differences: Outwardly, the Hitler-Schuschnigg meeting obeyed the conventions of diplomacy and was held in private, whereas Trump and Vance staged their political ambush in the full glare of the cameras to send a message to their base, in a deliberate car crash that Trump – the former reality tv star – called ‘great television’.

Zelenskyy, unlike Schuschnigg, is not an authoritarian despot, but a democratically-elected former comedian-turned-politician who has found himself leading his country’s resistance to a criminal act of aggression by Vladmir Putin’s KGB-gangster clique.

The Ukrainian president also differs from Schuschnigg in that he is not a coward. Instead of quaking, Zelenskyy defended himself and his battered country - when he could get a word in edgeways - and pushed back against the bullying, gaslighting and infantile mockery from one of the most repugnant and despicable collection of politicians that America has ever put in the White House.

Future historians will undoubtedly be as aghast as many viewers were by the spectacle of a diplomatic encounter reduced to a scene from The Godfather or Goodfellas. Some may focus on Marco Rubio’s pathetic discomfort – a made guy reduced to a grimacing and silent moral invertebrate on the White House sofa.

Others may gape incredulously at the sight of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s boyfriend, one of the few ‘reporters’ allowed to this sinister Corleonesi-like shakedown, berating the leader of a country at war for not wearing a suit. They may shudder at the sight of a president who once dodged military service because of a bone spur -and who has dismissed American soldiers who died in World War 2 as ‘losers’ and ‘suckers’ - parroting Russian talking points and mocking Zelenskyy as a phoney ‘tough guy.’

They may well feel the kind of nausea that many of us felt at JD Vance’s grovelling attempts to ingratiate himself with the president he once called ‘America’s Hitler’, by gloating over Ukraine’s military weaknesses and demanding Zelenskyy’s gratitude. The Hillbilly Faust even had the gall to accuse Zelenskyy of ‘litigating’ the Ukrainian case to the American public, at a meeting that was clearly set up by Trump and Vance to humiliate and undermine him.

Despite the fake concern of these would-be peacemakers and dealmakers at the impact of the war on Ukraine, there was not the slightest recognition that Russia itself was responsible for the kidnapped children, the tortures and bombings, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, the massacres and executions. Insofar as Russia was mentioned at all, it was essentially to berate Zelenskyy for his irrational ‘hatred’ of Putin – the man who had ordered the invasion and destruction of his country.

It was all so brazen, shameless and ugly in its bullying, ignorance, dishonesty and infantile mockery, that even the likes of the Daily Mail and the Telegraph were roused to condemnation.

For the Russian government and media however, the Trump/Vance shakedown was cause for unrestrained celebration. Because Trump may or may not have been a KGB agent, but he and his clique have clearly been doing exactly what Putin wants them to do. First, they initiated peace negotiations, while sidelining Ukraine. Then they effectively blamed Ukraine for starting the war, and now they are blaming Ukrainian intransigence for preventing a ceasefire.

In the same week of the White House meeting, Secretary of Defence Pete Sexpeth (I think I have the spelling right), reportedly halted all offensive cyber operations and information operations against Russia – a breathtaking gesture that does not appear to require any reciprocity from Russia regarding its operations against the United States.

Unravelling the American Century

All this is astonishing enough. But to many observers, the White House meeting – following on from Vance’s Munich Security Conference speech – was another indication of the Trump administration’s gleeful destruction of the ‘world order’, and the system of alliances and mutual obligations that have enabled America to dominate the world since World War II.

In 1991, the US went to war with Saddam Hussein, in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Of course there were other reasons for that, as there always are. But the war was nominally fought in defence of the right to self-determination, with the aim of expelling the Iraqi aggressor.

Now, Trump and Vance have become apologists for a military aggressor that regards Ukraine as its strategic property, and last week they attempted to bully the victim of that aggression into accepting their terms, which also happen to be the aggressor’s terms.

None of this is normal, or at least what used to be thought of as normal. But last week’s clown car shakedown was not just a weird political accident; it was the product of a profound systemic failure that is rooted in American exceptionalism and appears poised to bring that exceptionalism to an end.

To those who wanted to look - and many didn’t - the cracks were already evident in 2001, when George W. Bush recklessly used the 9/11 atrocities as a pretext for unleashing limitless unilateral military action anywhere in the world. The likes of Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Richard Perle were no less exceptionalist, unilateralist and downright arrogant than Trump and his gang, even if they paid lip service to America’s diplomatic alliances.

Some readers may remember the famous observation attributed to an un-named Bush official in 2004 to the journalist Ron Suskind, that journalists like him belonged to ‘what we call the reality-based community,’ who supposedly believed that ‘solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’

According to the anonymous aide:

That's not the way the world really works anymore…We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

This was the kind of arrogance that led the United States to invade Iraq, with all the catastrophic consequences that the world well knows. Now, reality has caught up with these empire-builders, and delivered their country into the hands of political gangsters who are more loyal to their country’s enemies than to its friends, and have no interest in allies, except those who can benefit them financially or complement their reactionary ethnonationalist agenda.

For the moment at least, the militarism has gone, but the Trump mafia still retains elements of the exceptionalism of its predecessors, in its maniacal claims to Greenland, its monstrous Trump Gaza fantasies, or its cynical attempt to turn Ukrainian suffering into American profit while imposing a one-sided peace on a besieged and traumatized country that has fought bravely and tenaciously for the right not to be Russian.

To world leaders who accepted American ‘pre-eminence’ in the past, rode shotgun during American military adventures, or relied on American military power as a security guarantor, it has been difficult to recognize this evolution, and there are those who still cling on to diplomatic niceties, and refuse to say out loud what is now obvious.

It is not clear whether they are being diplomatic in treating Trump as a temporary aberration, or whether, after so many years of relying on America to provide the ‘free world’ with its firepower and economic might, they are simply too frightened and too disorientated to distance themselves from the ally-that-is-no-longer-an-ally.

In practice however, anyone with eyes can see what is happening. The outpouring of support and sympathy for Zelenskyy and Ukraine is a reminder of a larger public than the MAGA base that the Trump/Vance political freakshow was intended to appeal to.

It’s possible that some inadvertent good may come as a result of this debacle. The miniscule number of Republicans with a conscience may turn against a government that is harming their country’s own interests and empowering its enemies. Britain and Europe may develop new political and military relationships, and forge a new independence, in response to the emerging US-Russia rapprochement.

Such outcomes are not certain, and not without risks. It remains to be seen whether Europe has the political will to take responsibility for its own security. Rearmament may be intended as deterrence, but defensive preparations for war can also broaden and intensify wars in unpredictable ways. As Starmer has just demonstrated, the price for such preparations is too easily exacted from those who can least afford it.

Europe will have to step up rapidly to match the military aid and financial assistance that the Trump administration has now paused - the better to blackmail Ukraine into accepting its terms, which are also likely to be the Kremlin’s terms. Even if Europe manages to pick up some of the slack, it is not clear whether it can halt the political and military momentum that Russia has now acquired, in part because of Trump’s intervention.

American-European military assistance was intended to help Ukraine defend itself, and inflict unbearable losses on the Russian invaders that would compel them to withdraw from the territories they had occupied.

Three years later, the Kremlin gangster remains in charge, and despite massive losses, his armies are gaining ground. All wars end, with a complete victory for one side, or negotiations based on concessions and the realisation that neither side can achieve their initial objectives.

None of the countries that have supported Ukraine have known how to achieve victory, but nor have they known how to negotiate or on what basis. The result is a war that seems endless, and it is in this strategic vacuum that the gangster-politicians who now run the United States have kickstarted negotiations, albeit on their terms, and on the aggressor’s terms.

This is why the White House shakedown took place. In attempting to make Zelenskyy an offer he could not refuse, Trump’s brutal gambit has brought a new wave of sympathy for the Ukrainian president and his country, both amongst the general public and amongst Ukraine’s allies.

Yet still these allies appear unwilling to distance themselves - beyond the summits and photo opportunities - from an extremist administration that has clearly stated that it regards Europe as a greater threat to American interests than Russia.

No one saw that coming. And now, in this brutal new geopolitical world, it remains to be seen whether those who condemned the White House shakedown, can find the resolve - and the means - to help Ukraine, and chart a new course through a century that is no longer American, but has yet to become something else.