President Donald Trump says the quiet part out loud. He has no sotto voce setting. This militates against statesmanship.
Former President Bill Clinton told CNN years ago it’s best to be “brutally” honest in private but, if you want someone’s help, not to say things in public that embarrass them. But Trump doesn’t work that way. He is brutal in public to foreign powers and allies and trade partners with whom he is trying to make a deal.
His handling of today’s two most prominent news issues, Ukraine and tariffs, make the point.
Ukraine has agreed to a ceasefire in talks with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, which offers hope that Europe’s biggest war since 1945 may be ended in the foreseeable future. Much hard work is still to be done. Russia must be won over. Although Trump has seen encouraging signals from Moscow, he said on Wednesday that “a positive message means nothing.”
Real progress requires not vapors but solid compromise from President Vladimir Putin of a type he has not yet even suggested, even while he is pocketing Trump’s preconcessions about keeping territory conquered in three years of Russia’s imperial war of aggression. (It should be noted that in allowing this, Trump is following former President Barack Obama, who let Russia annex Crimea in 2014).
To force the Kremlin to agree to what Ukraine can also accept, to bridge that gap, Trump will have to show he is willing to turn the screws of economic sanctions so tight on Putin that acquiescence is more attractive to him than continued recalcitrance. Trump has the cards, but will he play them?
What is unclear and interesting is the question of what made Ukraine agree, as it has unofficially, to give up more of its land permanently in exchange for peace. Several irreducible facts played a part. Ukraine is weaker than Russia, millions of its people have been killed, injured, kidnapped, or displaced, its cities and infrastructure lie in partial ruins, and it can’t fight without foreign armaments and money. All this confirms what Trump shockingly said in his Oval Office confrontation two weeks ago, that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky does not “have the cards.”
But was it just the facts on the ground that switched Zelensky from trying to dictate the terms of U.S. involvement in the war to a more pliant stance? Or was it partly the public brutality to which Trump and Vice President JD Vance subjected him? Their stunning accusation that he started the war, that he was ungrateful, disrespectful, and needed to change his attitude always seemed to be a show of contempt and indifference to soften him up, to make him submit. So, too, did Trump’s decision to cut off aid and military intelligence, which were presented from the outset as temporary punishment contingent on Ukraine’s behavior.
The usual suspects reflexively accused Trump of being a Russian stooge, a would-be strongman who sucks up to tyrants, etc. But perhaps it took brutal public comments to push Ukraine to where it needs to be on negotiations.
Trump’s public brutality undermines the international prestige of, and respect for, America as a beacon of democracy and principle. That is an absolute and undeniable loss. But it is nevertheless also arguably an effective way of proceeding amid new international realities that Trump is not creating, as his critics imply, but recognizing and adapting to.
Is there any chance that Ukraine and Russia would now be heading for peace negotiations if Kamala Harris or Joe Biden were in the Oval Office paying continued lip service to an old order that they failed to recognize has ended?
As with Ukraine, so also with Trump’s decision to charge into trade war. His rhetoric on tariffs — imposing, suspending, and escalating them in varied order and without pausing for breath — make it impossible to know what administration policy is from one moment to the next. It is different today than yesterday and will be different again tomorrow.
Working out policy used to be done behind closed doors, but not anymore. After musing publicly, on Sunday TV about whether he will impose higher tariffs or will lower them, and about whether there will be a recession, Trump doubled down on the uncertainty he has created by talking to reporters on Air Force One. He talked of hating to make predictions and of a period of “transition.” This spooked investors and businesses, and crushed stock prices as soon as markets opened on Monday.
Similar confusion covers Washington. Sometimes Trump’s trade war is supposedly a negotiating tool, but sometimes he presents it as a long-term source of revenue, even a replacement for the income tax. On Air Force One, he told reporters, “We are going to take in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs.” That doesn’t sound like a temporary negotiating position.
If public threats, tariffs that last a day and then disappear, and the confusion and contempt for allies sown by Trump, eventually produce better terms of trade, it will be arguable that what we are seeing now was always clever stuff at the White House.
TRUMP’S FLOOD TIDE OF DIPLOMACY
But even if one gives the benefit of considerable doubt to Trump in this matter, it is surely a worrying wager. It bets the certainties of current financial harm, economic anxiety, and weakened international trust against the possibility of future improvement in terms of trade.
Saying the quiet part out loud raises the stakes. That is what Trump does. Unlike everyone else, his tolerance of uncertainty and risk is apparently limitless.