Hillbilly Diplomacy

Trump and Vance are Trashing America's Reputation

Money is not everything. Hard power is not what it used to be. In a world where illiberal leaders and authoritarians amass armies, navies, and nukes, friends, allies, values, and good reputations are essential.

Yet America’s good reputation is being squandered by Trump, never before more so than in today’s exchange between Ukranian president Volodimir Zelenskyy where Donald Trump and JD Vance erupted into a belligerent rage that made them look like they were auditioning to be on Jerry Springer, all but throwing chairs at the visiting president seeking aid during his country’s fight for freedom.

You would think the man who wrote “Hillbilly Elegy” would have some of that small town charm, that love-your-neighbor kindness and ability to be a courteous host, especially to a guest so deserving of kindness and courtesy, but no. As a guest, Zelenskyy was calm, subdued, and appropriately somber given the seriousness of the circumstances. Yet, in the face of such a sensitive guest in such somber circumstances, standing at the helm of the United States of America, Vance and Trump pounced on Zelenskyy like pathetic drunks at a bar ganging up on someone with a broken leg.

As Zelenskyy presented his country’s position and desires, what he thought was the universal love of democratic values and recognition of the autocratic Vladimir Putin as the aggressor, Vance interrupts belligerently “… do you think it’s respectful to come to the Oval Office of the United states and attack the administration?”

But, of course, Zelenskyy had not attacked the administration, but rather he just finished explaining how Putin signed a ceasefire in 2014 and violated ceasefire when he invaded Ukraine. Zelenskyy had asked what the US policy should be with someone like that, and Vance returned by claiming Zelenskyy was putting his conscripts to the front lines to get killed, completely refusing to acknowledge the “front lines” are within Ukranian soils, and conscripts are volunteering to fight for their country.

As Zelenskyy tried to calm tempers and return to more reasonable discussion, Trump and Vance interrupted him, refusing to let him speak. As Zelenskyy’s tone and demeanor remain constant, Trump and Vance get visibly riled and Trump shouts repeatedly “YOU ARE GAMBLING WITH WORLD WAR III,” echoing Vladimir Putin’s own brinksmanship rhetoric warning of WWIII as Putin himself fires ballistic missiles on Ukrainian cities following Putin’s own invasion of Ukraine.

In the run up to World War II, after Hitler invaded Poland in September of 1939, Chamberlain’s policies of appeasement were quickly shown to be among the most consequential failed foreign diplomatic efforts at the time. Now, after Putin has invaded Ukraine and killed over 57,000 Ukrainians, after Putin has allied with another dictator in North Korea who sent his own troops to be slaughtered on Ukrainian soils, after Putin has indiscriminately bombed Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, and killed Ukrainian civilians, we are seeing a foreign diplomatic failure that I wager will leave Chamberlain’s historic failures in the dust.

The pugilistic, isolationist hillbilly diplomacy of Trump and Vance risks more than World War III, it risks the ability of the free world to win it.

Let’s table for now how Trump and Musk are weakening America at home, cavitating funds for medical sciences, appointing a drunk to run the Department of Defense and a woman sympathetic of Russian narratives as DNI, firing nuclear security experts who maintain our nuclear deterrent, firing FAA officials as planes fall from the sky, and more. Let’s even ignore the foreign policy disaster of Trump’s isolationism, threatening tariffs on Canada, Mexico and Europe, sowing divisions in NATO with threats to claim Greenland, alienating us further from Latin America by dehumanizing their migrants and threatening to claim the Panama Canal, alienating us from the Arab world by proposing to claim Gaza. Let’s table all of the other outrages any one of which would be a massive failure and the collection of which is an ongoing disaster for our country.

Let’s focus just on the issue of Ukraine.

Russia invaded Ukraine. That is a fact. Any claims of “provocation” overlook critical ethics - if Russia is “provoked” by Ukraine seeking to join NATO, then that is Russia’s own insecurity and inability to allow other countries to manage their own affairs, to form their own alliances and enter their own treaties. In a sense, the claim of provocation is already an appeasement to Putin’s regional ambitions that Russia gets to dominate its neighbors. Thus, Russia invaded Ukraine and the only countries in the world unable to say it as plainly as that are Russia and its allies. Even the United States collectively knows that Russia invaded Ukraine - the Democrats know this, the GOP knows this - it seems that it is just the President, his hillbilly Vice President, his drunkard running the Secretary of Defense, and the Russian-aligned DNI who have trouble saying this.

When Trump came to office, one of his first foreign policy failures was to engage directly with Vladimir Putin. Not NATO, not Canada, not Ukraine, not any of the countries that fought beside us in Afghanistan or even Iraq. No, Trump preferred Putin, as he always has. Predictably, going it alone without even listening to our allies’ positions, let alone representing their interests at the table, has divided the US from its allies. The rhetoric Trump spews is rhetoric everyone can recognize: it is rhetoric aligned with Putin and the Russian state-sponsored media he controls, and now our long-standing allies are left to wonder whether the United States is a friend or foe.

I would normally excuse a modicum of ‘Merican loudness were it not for the seriousness of this issue and the consequences of failed policy at this stage. Americans have always been wild cards, from George Patton’s fiery love of a good fight to the country’s countless entrepreneurs who move fast and break things, but there are critical times in history when volume is detrimental to our interests and quiet, somber, serious people must be put forward to represent our country with tact, managing delicate situations as if it were geopolitical nitroglycerine. If Trump truly believes there is a risk of World War III (which I do), then why did he have such a high-stakes meeting in front of cameras? Why did he not pull the leash on his barking attack dog, Vance, and why did he not read the room of global sentiment to avoid making things worse?

A comedian must read the room at a funeral, a clown must drop the act when a child is choking at the party, and our pugilistic reality TV buffoon beside his screaming hillbilly in a suit failed to recognize the somber mood of the Ukranian people represented by president Zelensky, the seriousness of Zelenskyy’s plea for the United States to defend democracies under attack by an autocratic Russia. Instead of reading the room and speaking in a manner that calms the world’s nerves, Trump insulted the Ukranian president by loudly shouting that “You’re not in a good position!” and Vance said “have you said ‘Thank you’ once this meeting?!”

“Please, if you must speak very loudly about the war…” Zelenskyy pleaded

“HE’S NOT SPEAKING VERY LOUDLY” interrupted Trump.

The form of diplomatic bullying on display in the White House, by a man twice impeached and convicted of felony charges, matches the content of Trump’s policy proposals. In the same weeks Trump is proposing to claim Gaza, claim Greenland, and claim the Panama Canal, Trump refuses to say Russia invaded Ukraine, refuses to criticize Putin for the lives lost in Ukraine, and proposes a deal to extract minerals from Ukraine without any security guarantees.

Trump says he wants peace in Ukraine, yet the content of the peace he pursues reveals that what Trump wants is not peace, but subjugation. In this way, Trump is again like Vladimir Putin on his quest to subjugate Eastern European countries, Trump is like Kim Jong Un who subjugates his people and sends them to be slaughtered, Trump is like Xi Jinping who seeks to subjugate Tibet, the Uighur Muslims, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

Everyone in the world, Americans most of all, must see Trump’s ambitions with clear eyes. Now, we have to see the Hillbilly diplomacy in context. Trump wants to consolidate power at home by firing people in the executive branch and replacing them with loyalists who will do his bidding, all while Trump orders his loyalists to disobey court orders to subjugate the judicial branch and override congressional appropriations by impounding funds and thereby subjugate the legislative branch. Trump and Vance’s hillbilly diplomacy is fraying long-standing ties that America’s greatest presidents have built with our allies over generations, all to please autocrats who share Trumps proclivity for illiberalism as a path to power.

While attitudes towards America have been complicated by many foreign policy failures in the past, never has a country so great been weakened and brought to such low esteem, in such a short amount of time, than in Donald Trump’s second term. As Hitler’s invasion of Poland marked the fall of Chamberlain’s appeasement policies, the moment the world came to see Trump and Vance not merely as appeasers but as the autocrats they are may well have been those moments in the Oval Office today. A president of a war-torn country came to humbly request aid on our soils, and two men with all the wealth and power of the world proceeded to shout like drunk hillbillies on Jerry Springer with nothing to lose, trashing our country’s hard-earned reputation and long-lasting alliances, seeking to subjugate Ukraine and making it beholden to Trump, leaving the entire world vulnerable to the rising authoritarianism not just in Russia or China, Belarus or Hungary, but in the United States of America.