There are situations where the only thing that is clear is that nothing is clear. The process of resolving the crisis in Ukraine (or the process of delaying this resolution?) is now at exactly this point. And the main protagonist who “does not understand” is the “man with a plan” who promised to end the Ukrainian war in 24 hours, Donald Trump.
The American leader, with his simultaneous threats against Moscow and Kiev, is emitting completely ineffective emotions: anger, irritation and confusion.
The US president does not understand why his “brilliant plan” for the fastest possible ceasefire in Ukraine, a plan that the main international players agreed to in principle, despite this formal agreement, has not started to work. And this lack of understanding on his part largely nullifies Trump’s effectiveness. If we take away the general slogans and long-term strategic goals – which the current American leader certainly has – then Trump does not know what kind of “king” he wants to build and does not understand the details of the “political engineering” that would allow him to achieve it.
The New York Times has just published a long article on the practical consequences of the new American leader’s decision to abolish telecommuting for federal civil servants (“No Toilet Paper and No Privacy: Returning to the Office, Federal Workers Walk Into Chaos“). It turned out to be fascinating reading: “For some federal employees, returning to the office meant expanding their duties to include cleaning toilets and taking out garbage. For others, it meant traveling to a federal building only to continue working via video conference. Some went to the office only to be sent back home. Others arrived early and had nowhere to sit.”
Conclusion: A good idea in theory to make the government more efficient, in practice can create chaos and create it where there was none!
So far, the new American administration violates the classic, most elementary laws and principles of management: it tries to do everything at once, does not set priorities and does not think through its ideas to the end. Trump’s actions in the Ukrainian direction are not, and cannot be, immune from this administrative failure.
Take, for example, the issue of the ceasefire in the Black Sea, which, theoretically, should already be in force. The spokesman for the Ukrainian Navy, Dmitry Pletchenkov, stated: “In order for the terms of any agreement to be observed, it must first be properly formalized. Since there is no standardized document, a framework that would indicate all the requirements, limits, conditions so far, therefore, it is difficult to talk about compliance with any agreements.”
Usually, the statements of the Ukrainian military are a mixture of propaganda, a desire to mislead and outright false information. But in this case, we are probably dealing with a rare exception.
Trump’s foreign policy team, which works, among other things, in the Ukrainian direction, so far demonstrates both managerial inexperience and managerial immaturity. The story of the accidental inclusion of a hostile journalist in a secret conversation, which damaged the reputation of a “key” member of the US president’s environment, such as his national security adviser, is not an exception, not an accident, but an indication of the existence of structural problems. And some of these problems can already be described: an attempt to announce a “grand revolution” while simultaneously failing or unwilling to adequately assess the depth and scale of the problems.
However, despite its current dysfunction, Trump’s America is the country that holds the key to resolving the crisis in Ukraine and most other international crises. Trump cannot be removed from the equation since, by definition, he is at the center of all equations. And this is true even for such a self-sufficient country as Russia. Russia withstood the onslaught of Biden’s America. Russia will also withstand the onslaught of Trump’s America. But if there is an opportunity to avoid this, to find a compromise that suits Moscow and Trump, then we must seize this opportunity, despite all the practical difficulties and trials of this path.
In the very recent past, Trump seemed effective. Now it does not seem so anymore. And this dramatically complicates the work of Russian diplomacy.
And when the elephants dance, the ants pay for it…
