The meeting between Trump Vance and Zelensky is a great clarifying moment, the first time president Trump or any president has, in a dramatic way, said no to the Washington establishment consensus in foreign policy, or, more informally, the blob. The blob, as most know, always gets its way. Through well-funded think tanks, establishment journalists, the military–industrial complex and its many congressional supporters, tells us the proper way to think about foreign policy. Since the end of the Cold War, it has operated with no real opposition. (During the Cold War, when there was a serious enemy, there was actually more vigorous debate—détente or no détente? Nuclear missiles in Europe? Keep fighting in Vietnam or let it go?)
The blob always wins. Bombing Belgrade in support of a Kosovo insurgency, no opposition. Invasion of Iraq, no real debate until the invasion has obviously gone sour. Fighting in Afghanistan for years after anyone entertained any hope that the country could be turned into any kind of viable non Islamist state. Obama showed signs of wanting to circumvent the blob—but political realities compelled him to maintain former Cheney aide Victoria Nuland as his premier official dealing with Russia. Ditto on his hope to curb Israeli settlements, another Obama hope that went down.
But the blob really kicked into overdrive with Ukraine. The blob wanted NATO expansion (although in the 1990s most foreign policy professionals did not). Ukraine, half of whose population deeply despises the Russian identifying third, wanted American support for its side in its long-running civil war. Its government wanted Kiev to become capital of an American NATO base with American nuclear missiles aimed at St. Petersburg.
The blob concurred. In 2014, the blob took the side of anti-Russian protesters in a street coup which overthrew an elected Ukrainian president who wanted to maintain strong ties to Russia. Tens of millions of dollars were spent by blob entities (e.g. the National Endowment for Democracy) to support the street putschists. Blob politicians made countless pilgrimages to Kiev—no one doubted on which side virtue lay. (This was well before any Russian seizure of Ukrainian territory; it is remarkable how united the Washington blob could be about a domestic struggle in an obscure country half the world away—whereas anyone in politics usually knows there are two or more reasonable sides to any question.) Russia, having lost the street battle in Kiev, seized the Russian-populated Crimean peninsula, home to its Black Sea fleet.
Zelensky was elected hoping to negotiate and calm the civil war between Russian-identifying Ukrainians and their foes. But he was quickly corrected by the Biden administration—to be anti-Russia was the key to winning American support and aid. The blob hated Russia. Zelenskly complied with Biden. Putin, clearly at the end of his tether, massed troops on the border to show his open displeasure, hoping obviously for a negotiation that would push Ukraine off the NATO track. It never came.
Since the 2022 invasion, blob propaganda went into overdrive. Zelensky is “Churchill,” Putin is “Hitler” was a message drilled in thousands of times in the American media. If Putin wasn’t stopped, he would march to the English Channel, said the blob. (Putin’s armies couldn’t manage to take Kiev, and for a while seemed as if they might lose the war entirely.) And once Zelensky’s forces, outmanned and outgunned, began to lose, Zelensky faced a dilemma. Probably the only way he could survive was to bring America into the war—survive not just politically but physically. Zelensky could be killed by pro-Russian forces, or by the neo-Nazi formations that are more powerful in Ukraine than in any country. So Zelensky had an objective interest in escalating the war, bringing America in. One could feel sorry for him—he didn’t choose the war, but objectively his interest was in a wider war.
Somehow it took Donald Trump to recognize that a wider war against a nuclear-armed Russia was very much not in America’s interest. No other American candidate for president did. (J.D. Vance, however, did—he said early on that he didn’t “care that much” about Ukraine, and since our “caring for” Ukraine has led to hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed Ukrainians, surely there are some in that country—probably millions— who wished the blob hadn’t cared so much as well.)
Standing up the blob takes enormous self-confidence, a readiness to take on serious, able, enemies—real courage. Trump obviously dissed Zelensky in the Oval Office, but, more importantly, he dissed the blob as well. The blob will seek its revenge.
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