Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, visited the Oval Office today for a meeting meant to seal a minerals deal meant to pay for the U.S.’s ongoing support of his country’s struggle against the Russian invasion. But it turned instead into an outright shouting match with President Trump (and Hype Man/Vice President JD Vance) that seemed a lot more like a scene out of The Sopranos than what you’d expect from a meeting of world leaders.
In a scene that gives chills as much as it will send shockwaves, Trump sought to humiliate Zelensky, a wartime leader of an invaded sovereign country, casting him as weak and having none of the cards, instead of standing with him as an ally.
Is that where we are? Are we entering an age of Tony Soprano foreign policy, in which, to get the support of the U.S., our allies will need to bend the knee, kiss the ring, and — as Vance demanded, say thanks with the proper degree of deference?
To understand what’s at work behind this new art of the deal in international relations, we talked — as Zelensky, Trump, and Vance were arguing — to foreign policy scholar Stephen Wertheim about just what the Trump administration’s chaotic moves over the last month mean for the future of the United States’ place in the world.
Trump’s and Vance’s anger at Zelensky is very much in keeping with what Wertheim told us about the difficulty he envisioned Zelensky would have making a moral argument to Donald Trump, whose vision of international order is both unclear and transactional, and who had already veered back and forth just this week between mobster-styled arm twisting and more traditional diplomatic appeals to peacemaking.
We talked to Wertheim about the shift from a U.S.-dominated post-Cold War international order to a more multipolar world, the risky legacy that Democratic foreign policy orthodoxy has left us with, and Trump’s attitude toward the international order: a cartoon imperialism based on the notion that transgressive things are good, creating a new narrative that overturns the story Joe Biden was telling outweighs the truth, and anything is worth saying if it will help him get what he wants out of the next transaction. And understanding that is key to cutting through the Trumpian bluster that overwhelmed Zelensky today, and that is likely to define the negotiations to come.
So if you’re looking for more background on the tensions behind the Oval Office explosion and don’t mind putting aside your preconceptions, you won’t want to miss our discussion with Wertheim, who’s always made a strong argument against the blob-based, weak-sauce consensus thinking that often dominates international relations debate. Just click on the video player above.
A note: I noticed in the live chat of this conversation some frustration that people were not getting the usual anti-Trump catharsis they were looking for. I love that catharsis as much as the next guy. But this is not that kind of conversation. It’s a complicated conversation about foreign policy, where some of the good people you may like have abetted very bad things in the past, and where some truly malign actors are picking up issues that needed to be picked up, and then dealing with them ruinously. If you’re up for some complexity, tune in. If not, we recommend ice cream, and we’ll have you back for the next chat!
Come back and join us next week for three more great Live conversations: Monday, March 3 at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, we’ll have our weekly conversation with scholar of fascism Ruth Ben-Ghiat. On Tuesday, March 4, at 11:00 a.m. Eastern we’ll be speaking with California Congressman Ro Khanna, and on Thursday, March 6, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern we’re back with messaging guru Anat Shenker-Osorio. We hope to see you at all three!
To join and watch, download the Substack app (click on the button below) and turn on notifications — you’ll get an alert that we’re live and you can watch from your iOS or Android mobile device. And if you haven’t already, subscribe to The Ink to access full videos of past conversations and to join the chat during our live events.
Share this post