President Donald Trump is reported to be upset with Vladimir Putin of Russia over the latter stating that Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine is not a legitimate leader. Trump is said to have even stated that he is “pissed off” at Putin. This is the same Donald Trump who had called Zelensky a “dictator.”
So why is Trump angry with Putin? My guess is that he isn’t angry with Putin. Trump is just mindful of the negative coverage he has received over his abandonment of Ukraine and he has feigned tension with Putin to keep the press at bay.
And this tactic has precedent. It’s reminiscent of the early 1970s when President Anwar Sadat of Egypt expelled thousands of military advisers from the now-defunct Soviet Union. The year was 1972 when Sadat issued an abrupt dismissal of the Soviets from Egypt. The measure took everyone by surprise, even the United States. Henry Kissinger, the national security adviser under President Richard Nixon, made a personal call to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev to assure him that the U.S. played no role in Sadat’s rebuke.
To this day, historians offer less than adequate analysis as to why Sadat expelled the Soviets from Egypt. Some claim Sadat was onerous toward the Soviets for the latter’s relinquishment of any commitment to the Arab states in the Middle East conflict. Yet other historians insist Sadat expelled the Soviets because he resented the latter pushing Egypt into a war with Israel.
The two theories cannot be reconciled. If the Soviets were adopting a hands-off approach to the Middle East, they would not have been pressuring Egypt into a war with Israel. And the Soviets were certainly not discouraging Sadat from launching a war against Israel. The only viable explanation is that Sadat was setting the world up for a surprise attack on Israel. And that is exactly what Sadat did in 1973 (very much with the support of Brezhnev and the Soviet Union). Expelling the Soviets from Egypt in 1972 was part of Sadat’s plan to stun Israel and the rest of the world in 1973.
Back to the pseudo-conflict between Trump and Putin. The former had issued a threat of secondary tariffs against the latter. But considering Putin is poised to incorporate Ukraine into the Russian sphere, it’s doubtful he is worried about secondary tariffs (whatever that means). Indeed, more telling is how Trump condones a Russian sphere along the same lines as the Helsinki Accord of 1975 when Kissinger (by this time the Secretary of State under President Gerald Ford) accepted Soviet domination of Central Europe as a fait accompli).
Of course, the Soviet Union has since been dissolved. But as indicated by the late Israeli scholar and diplomat Abba Eban in his 1973 book “The New Diplomacy,” Soviet aggression was more a Russian trait than a communist impulse. And Putin’s designs on Ukraine (in addition to his obvious and imminent designs elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe) validate Eban’s assessment.
What good is it to Ukraine that Trump is angry with Putin? Trump still favors Putin retaining Crimea (seized by Russia in 2014) and the areas of Ukraine since taken by Russia in the war initiated by Putin in 2022. Indeed, Trump has indicated his willingness to accept Russian gains in areas of Ukraine not yet under Putin’s control.
The point is that Ukraine benefits little from a minor disagreement between Trump and Putin. Trump still intends to deliver Ukraine to Putin, either in whole or piecemeal. The Soviets posed a menace to the democracies worldwide. The Russians under Putin intend to continue this expansionism at the expense of the free world. Make no mistake about it: Trump intends to abandon Ukraine and Ukraine will not be Putin’s final target.
John O’Neill is an Allen Park freelance writer and a graduate of Wayne State University.
