A Diplomatic Rorschach Test: Zelenskyy in the White House

I am a great believer in private diplomacy — go to Camp David!

Well we did not have that on Friday and we had a meeting that can be interpreted almost any way you want.

Whatever your views about Trump or Zelenskky, or the Ukrainians or the United States, you can see them in this meeting.

In fact, one good analysis used interpretations of body language to try to objectively understand the flow of the discussion.

This analysis was interesting and certainly showed Zelenskky preparing to blow up the meeting.

The reality is that this conflict can end only one of three ways: a ceasefire, Ukraine yielding to Putin, or the Russians backed by the authoritarians grabbing Ukraine.

But of course, Zelenskky might believe that European states will put their forces into Ukraine to push back the Russians.

In any case, you can view Zelenskyy as the insulted party; you can view Trump and Vance as beating up the Ukrainian leader in ways unbecoming the office of the president; you can view Zelenskyy as a duplicitous leader who agrees to one thing privately and forgets what he agreed to when in public; you can view him as wanting to do an end around on the United States and build a new Ukraine led alliance in Europe against Russia, and so one can go on.

But the reality is the reality. Can Ukraine prevail without support from the United States?

And does the “we are with you until the end” promise of many Europeans and the Biden Administration pass the credibility test?

The “end of the world.” perhaps?

And frankly, I truly don’t get the notion that we have not talked with the Russians for years.

I worked for many years on the Euromissile challenge and it was not too pleasant in Europe then I can tell you.

But we constantly talked with the Russians.

Zelenskky has to accept that reality or fight along with those Europeans willing to send forces to Ukraine.

And the United States will have to calculate how to protect itself from the blowback.

Not just Trump but all of us who work in the national security space.