Donald Trump’s latest freewheeling appearance before the world’s media underlines the unusually formidable challenges Sir Keir Starmer faces as he prepares for his meeting in Washington next week.
Sir Keir’s mission is, broadly speaking, on behalf of the whole of Europe as well as the UK, and it is not too much to say that he carries the hopes of an entire continent with him.
Quite apart from the intricacies of how any American security guarantee for Ukraine might be applied, as the European powers so desperately wish to see, the prime minister will also have to penetrate what Volodymyr Zelensky describes as the “disinformation space” presently inhabited by President Trump.
President Zelensky is as disorientated as anyone by the rapid and radical changes in US policy since Mr Trump’s return to office, and has vastly more to lose through the loss of American favour. Perhaps he might have been wiser to keep his counsel; Mr Trump tends not to appreciate being questioned about his judgements. But the beleaguered Ukrainian leader is entirely right about the state of the president’s mind.
Mr Trump’s most recent dismissive utterances about Mr Zelensky and his country could quite easily have come from the lips of Vladimir Putin himself. Among other calumnies, Mr Trump claimed that President Zelensky has a miserable 4 per cent approval rating; that the war would have been settled if Ukraine had given up some land immediately; and, most bizarrely of all, that Ukraine started it.
In fact, not even the Kremlin claims that hostilities were initiated by Kyiv, saying only that the “special military operation” that was launched almost three years ago was provoked by the Ukrainians and their (perfectly legitimate) ambition to join Nato.
Claims about the chances of bringing an early end to the fighting in 2022 are also nonsense, of course, because it was perfectly apparent that Putin wanted to occupy the whole of Ukraine, having spent many hours on Russian television explaining why it’s not a real country and is part of Russia anyway.
Putin had set a column of tanks directly on the road to Kyiv with a view to capturing it. The fact that Moscow’s troops were so incompetent that all they “achieved” was a massacre at Bucha, before being turned back to Russia, doesn’t detract from the scale of their president’s ambition. He did not want another slice of Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine, but to regain control of what he regards as a colonial province.
At least some of these misapprehensions seem to have seeped into President Trump’s consciousness through his conversations with Putin, both most recently and during the undisclosed number of contacts between the two men since Mr Trump won the US election in November. Sir Keir has his work cut out in trying to guide the president away from Russian propaganda without irritating Mr Trump and bruising the new president’s famously brittle ego.
The prime minister, against all odds, really has to shift Mr Trump from his instinctive isolationism and towards some sort of commitment to the security of Ukraine – and, thus, of the continent of Europe. Sir Keir needs to persuade the president to consider how a “backstop” US commitment to the peace deal now being negotiated could actually strengthen the eventual settlement – and cement Mr Trump’s role as a peacemaker of historic proportions.
The backstop would be in place of any physical US military presence, but would leverage a European security force, probably led by Britain, France and Sweden (Germany, Poland and Spain have declined to join, for now). The Trump Plan, in other words, needs a guarantor for its future success – and that guarantor can only be Mr Trump, acting for world peace. That is the tantalising prospect that Sir Keir can offer the American president – and even the possibility of a Nobel Peace Prize to crown it.
The Russians say they won’t accept such a presence, but they might have to accept it, given the gains they will undoubtedly (and undeservedly) make. As an aside, but a materially significant one, the “backstop” US security guarantee would also protect US access to Ukrainian minerals, including vital rare earth metals.
The prime minister’s job is being made no easier by some typical but deeply unhelpful interventions by one of his predecessors. Torn between his old loyalties to Ukraine and Mr Zelensky on the one side, and to President Trump on the other, Boris Johnson is suffering from what might be termed a bad case of acute cakeism.
His argument is that Mr Trump doesn’t actually believe any of the wildly untrue things he says, and that they are merely products of his eccentric but genius method of negotiation. He maintains this even as Mr Trump accuses President Zelensky of being a “dictator” and describes the Ukrainian leader as a “modestly successful comedian” who is doing a terrible job and ruling under martial law, which is destroying his own country. Mr Trump demands elections.
The truth, of course, is that Ukraine is in no state to hold free elections when a third of the nation is occupied by a foreign power, and the whole exercise would be subject to Russian interference.
The aim, which Mr Trump – putting it generously – has been duped into supporting, is to discredit President Zelensky, Ukraine’s great leader and international asset, and see him replaced by a lesser, more compliant figure.
Mr Johnson acknowledges this cynical truth. Yet instead of sticking up for Mr Zelensky, and condemning Mr Trump’s Kremlin-inspired insults, he dumps on our European allies instead, suggesting that Ukraine doesn’t need the US and that the UK and others should “step up”, as Mr Trump has suggested. For Mr Johnson, this is at least true to form.
Yet all concerned know that Europe hasn’t the military capacity to do any such thing. All agree that American support – the “backstop” in Sir Keir’s plan – is indispensable. To pretend otherwise, as Mr Johnson does, is to indulge in a dangerous fantasy. Observers may wonder why Mr Johnson, the self-consciously-styled heir to Winston Churchill, is behaving in such a quisling-like way.
There have been many before Sir Keir who have aspired, tried, and ultimately failed to be the Trump Whisperer, a quasi-diplomatic role of legendary status. Claudia Sheinbaum, the president of Mexico, is the latest to have been spoken of in such terms, having skilfully parried aggressive US tariffs after years spent learning how to keep a cool head in the face of big personalities at home.
Previous contenders supposedly in possession of near-supernatural powers of communion with Donald J Trump include Mark Rutte, the secretary general of Nato; the Italian premier Giorgia Meloni; Nigel Farage; and Emmanuel Macron, the president of France. In most cases, any early rapport soon cooled.
The task now falls to Sir Keir. He and his Foreign Office team, including the new ambassador in Washington, Peter Mandelson, will also need to persuade those who are trusted by Mr Trump of the need to listen to America’s historical allies as well as the Russians.
The UK, along with the rest of Europe, respects the mandate Mr Trump won in November, and his foreign policy is his prerogative. If he wishes to normalise relations with Russia, then America’s allies have little choice but to accept that.
The key, perhaps, for Sir Keir, is not to be obstructive or negative – still less threatening – but to approach Mr Trump as a helpful and above all respectful partner, and to exude strength. At the moment, sadly, the person who seems to be most successful at getting on Mr Trump’s wavelength – the current Trump Whisperer – is Vladimir Putin. That has to change – and fast.
