(Dobbs) Like It Or Not, Trump's The One Who Put It Together

“I love it,” Trump said as Zelensky walked in. “Look at you.”

There were no blowups, no insults, no outbursts. Ukraine’s president Zelensky even wore a suit— a black suit and a black shirt buttoned to the neck— because after infuriating President Trump in the Oval Office back in February by showing up in his legendary fatigues, which he wears to show solidarity with his troops, he has figured out what makes a shallow man like Donald Trump tick. “I love it,” Trump said as Zelensky walked in. “Look at you.”

The European leaders who came to the White House with Zelensky yesterday also played to the president’s ego. They flattered him in language that, given his crude way of dealing with them and arrogantly scolding them in the past, they could not truly have believed.

But if that’s what it takes to keep the man on your side, or at least steer him away from a blatant boomerang to the other side, then more power to them. We’re not talking about allies’ woke policies Trump doesn’t like, we’re not talking about tariffs that have brought tumult to world trade, we’re talking about war and peace.

It’s hard to call yesterday’s multi-nation White House summit conclusive, but it did set the stage for what comes next. For one thing, Trump committed the United States to participating, in some form, in the security guarantees that Ukraine so badly will need if the fighting really does stop. For another, after Trump personally phoned Vladimir Putin to tell him what they were discussing in Washington, he put out a post saying the next step would be a bilateral face-to-face meeting between Putin and Zelensky and then, depending on the outcome, a trilateral meeting that he would join.

Two caveats on that. First, the read-out from the Kremlin on Putin’s telephone conversation with Trump wasn’t quite that rosy, so we don’t really know whether Putin is on-board. And second, if such a bilateral meeting between the two bitter enemies does come off, each president, Russia’s and Ukraine’s, will be holding a lighted fuse. That’s because Ukraine doesn’t want to give an inch on anything that Russia will demand, and Russia doesn’t want to give an inch on anything that Ukraine will demand. Each might have to— or at least as the weaker party, Ukraine might have to— but nothing will easily be sealed with a handshake.

That might even extend to the whole idea of an immediate ceasefire to buy time for a genuine deal for peace. Russia, which would have to give up the advances its army is making almost daily, says a ceasefire is not acceptable. Ukraine says it’s non-negotiable. At one time or another just in the past week, before and after the Alaska summit, Donald Trump has been on both sides of the argument.

So where this all goes still is anyone’s guess. As history is our guide, we already know that even in a best-case scenario where Zelensky and Putin agree to terms that might lead to a long-term peace, Putin can’t be trusted to keep his word. We also know that even if he says he’ll live with whatever agreement they reach, that won’t diminish the dream he harbors in his DNA of a greater Russia, which might mean another stab at Ukraine or other Western-leaning former Soviet republics down the road. I’ve never forgotten what I heard Putin say at a rally I covered in Moscow many years ago, in the run-up to the rigged election (yes, there they rig them for real) that gave him his second presidential term: “We were a great power once, we will be a great power again.”

We also know that Donald Trump can’t be trusted to make a commitment and keep it. His patronage runs hot and cold. He has thrown Ukraine to the dogs before, he could do it again. A piece of me is skeptical that his assurances of American help with security guarantees aren’t conditional, in other words, that they aren’t dependent on Zelensky making concessions to Putin that are neither in Ukraine’s nor Europe’s nor America’s interests.

I hope I’m wrong.

The good news might be, if the two leaders at war do meet in the same room, President Zelensky is less likely to cave to Vladimir Putin than Donald Trump would be. Even yesterday, Trump told reporters, “Vladimir Putin wants it to end.” Hard to believe, when Russian missiles killed at least fourteen more Ukrainians just in the hours before the leaders met in the White House.

But still, I have to offer a word of praise for President Trump, although maybe it’s more accurate to say, a word of hope.

This happened because of him. We don’t know where it’s going or what it will produce, but Trump’s the one who put it together. We always have to be skeptical about what’s driving him— he says he just wants to end the killing, but at the same time, he hasn’t even tried to hide his longing for a Nobel Peace Prize. However, if this process does produce a deal for peace, I can’t begrudge Donald Trump’s motives, no matter what they are.

Trust me, I’m not going soft on Trump. Deep down, he is a wannabe autocrat and executes policies that make him more of a dictator than a democratic president. Just because he seems to be doing one good turn doesn’t mean he will do another.

But credit to the president for putting the ball in play. For Ukraine’s sake, for Europe’s, for the world’s, let’s hope it will be a home run. But it has to be a home run for our allies and for us, not for Russia.

Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 39-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.

You can learn more at GregDobbs.net