Inkompetenz vor Malignität

Eliot A. Cohen: “There is a rule in politics never to ascribe to malignity what one can explain through incompetence and stupidity. This approach has become difficult to sustain in the case of the Trump administration. But there is another possibility: Both explanations operate simultaneously …”

“Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, for example, was speaking the truth when he said at the Munich Security Conference that a Ukrainian cease-fire will probably freeze the battle lines and not involve NATO membership. But Senator Roger Wicker, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was equally correct in calling it a rookie mistake to have given away one’s position in advance. Hegseth stumbled through a retraction, but the damage was done …”

“The latest meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, between an American delegation consisting of the secretary of state, the national security adviser, and a special envoy with two experienced Russian diplomats was even worse. It was a meeting about Ukraine without Ukraine—a move calculated to make the Ukrainian leadership less tractable. It was a meeting about a European war not only without Europeans, but without the slightest consultation with them. Instead, the U.S. made concessions to the Russians—promising to let them send intelligence operatives masquerading as diplomats back to their embassy in Washington without extracting anything in return.

“The Trump administration seems not to realize that the Russians are the ones in trouble, not us; that they are the ones with a faltering economy, a stalemated war, and more than three-quarters of a million casualties. Most important, the administration refuses to see Russia under President Vladimir Putin for what it is: a predatory dictatorship bent on rebuilding an empire on the bodies of its former subjects …”

“The negotiators displayed mainly incompetence, as well as cringeworthy servility to their master in the White House. Trump’s part, though, was pure malignity. Shortly after the meeting ended, he criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, lied about the latter’s polling numbers, and said, in a particularly callous remark, that Ukraine had had a seat at the table for three years. How being invaded and having your civilians tortured, raped, and slaughtered counts as a seat at the table is beyond understanding.”

Read more here: [https://theatln.tc/KZnYJzzi](https://theatln.tc/KZnYJzzi)

Speaking as a UK & European citizen, this whole situation is frankly horrifying. We’ve moved in the space of a week from being concerned that Ukraine could be hung out to dry, to it now seeming that that is only the half of it – the US is more interested in forming a long term alliance with Russia than protecting democracy.

Perhaps many ordinary Americans are barely even cogniscent of how major this is at this point (not people here, I know), and might even not care – thinking it doesn’t affect them – but if the leadership of the USA is no longer concerned by petty trivia such as „democracy“ then it will also be Americans who are now going to live in an autocracy too and a lot of freedoms and strengths long fought for are going to be lost.

I wasn’t looking forward to 4 more years of Trump, but this looks far worse than I had expected and it is for just about everyone except Putin.