A day of infamy in Washington

The old world perishes and with it dies the American Idea.

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They were vindictive people, Donald and JD - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together. They enjoyed watching the spectacle unfold as others did whatever they could to come to terms with this strange new reality they had created. We are the masters, they crowed, relishing the pain they inflicted on smaller people whose affairs mattered little and whose anguish only confirmed that Donald, and his supporting picador, were correct all along. Can you hear the squealing? How sweet it is, how very sweet indeed.

With apologies to F Scott Fitzgerald, this is the core lesson of Friday’s White House Massacre. The horrified international reaction to the Trump-Vance tag-teaming of President Zelensky will only confirm this American administration’s underlying analysis. The cruelty of the ambush was the point. This was something that was coming even if the precise way in which it unfolded was something else.

There are certain days you remember and which leave you sickened. The murder of Jo Cox MP was one, the slaughter of journalists working for Charlie Hebdo another. So, of course, on a much greater scale was 9/11. There have been others too. No-one died in the Oval Office last Friday but certain ideas perished nonetheless and since these were good ideas and principles worth cherishing and defending this was as low a day as there has been in the modern history of the American presidency. It was nauseating and enraging to watch.

The Americans have picked a side and they have chosen Russia, not Ukraine. Trump’s aversion to offering any kind of American security guarantees in the event, however improbable it might have been, of any kind of ceasefire was a means of demonstrating that reality. Who knows, he has said, Ukraine “might be Russian one day”. He doesn’t care because the fate of free peoples and sovereign nations neither interests nor moves him in the slightest. Repairing Washington’s relationship with Moscow is all that matters and it that requires sacrificing Ukraine then so be it. Because who cares about Ukraine?

Of course it won’t end there. Even the “peace” imagined by some would have left Russia occupying a significant portion of Ukrainian territory. It would be no kind of lasting settlement, let alone any form of just one. It would not just encourage Russian interference elsewhere, it would implicitly authorise it. Georgia next, perhaps, then the Baltic states. And even where this expansion was not backed by artillery, it would be licensed politically. Russian shenanigans are already evident in Romania; they would not be limited to Bucharest.

Russia is to be granted its sphere of influence, a recognition of its historic perquisites and, viewed from Moscow, the opportunity to finally recover from the humiliations of the 1990s. All this would be grim enough without the added arsenic of it being encouraged, endorsed, and supported by the Americans.

But this is where we are. What, in the end, did you think an America First presidency actually meant? It’s not just a slogan on a t-shirt. This is the word from White House advisors; this is the world to which we must rapidly adjust.

Could Zelensky, as some suggest, have handled this better? Perhaps, though he was so sorely provoked most reasonable observers will conclude he was remarkably restrained given the circumstances and the duress under which he was put. It would have been satisfying, if only momentarily, to see him stick one on Vance, for instance.

But, really, there was little Zelensky could have done differently. His role was to prostrate himself and volunteer his country’s abasement. This was an ambush, right enough, and a demonstration of where the White House’s sympathies truly lie. As I say, they lie with Moscow, not Kyiv.

For we must note that Trump considers himself the victim here. This is the hallmark of the bully and the abuser through the ages - “You made me do it!” - but there we have it. Trump, wounded by the accusation Russian shenanigans helped him win the White House in 2016, now very obviously considers Putin a wounded party too. Trump is innocent, so Putin must be too. They stand or fall together.

Everything is personal for this American president. Hunter Biden was up to no good in Ukraine and Joe Biden handed Ukraine billions of dollars of aid and guns. Consequently Ukraine must be anti-Trump. If this seems simplistic then so be it for Trump is a very simple man and the truth of this miserable situation is no more complicated than that.

Hence this show trial in the Oval Office - for that is what it was. An act of persecution - “This is going to be great television” - deliberately produced to put Zelensky and his country in its place. For Ukraine is small and the world belongs to the big battalions.

Like every other European nation, Britain is small too. For 24 hours the Foreign and Commonwealth Office could reflect on a “job well done”. Sir Keir Starmer’s visit to Washington had passed off as well as anyone could have expected. Perhaps, in fact, better than there had been solid reason to suppose. Armed with the King’s invitation for a state visit - so unprecedented, so great, so deserving - Starmer had done all he could to nudge and cajole the American president into seeing the world as we see it. This is a delicate task for it is founded on an acutely painful appreciation of the power dynamics involved.

Handling Trump is, in the famous old saw, akin to carrying a Ming vase across a highly-polished dance-floor except that in this instance the vase is filled with an unstable high-explosive and you are required to wear both a blindfold and felt-soled shoes. Even a successful operation owes something to luck.

But Starmer, like Emmanuel Macron, was right to make the effort even if doing so came at some risk to his own dignity. The national interest demands as much for even if this iteration of the United States cannot be persuaded to recognise its own self-interest, or even be reasoned with at all, its allies must attempt to do so up to the point of final exhaustion. If this is itself mildly humiliating then so be it. People like us can emote on X or Bluesky or where we feel we must but the business of diplomacy and national security takes place elsewhere.

The reality of the United Kingdom is that it is the most European of the Atlantic nations and the most Atlantic of the European countries. Our interests have been bundled with American interests and with European ones. As such and in the post-war era we have been of the view that choosing between them is the kind of choice best avoided wherever possible. That is a harder position to maintain now even if salvaging something from this disaster remains in the national interest.

(It is harder for Britain than for other European nations because, to take but one example, the relationship between GCHQ and the US National Security Agency is quite unlike anything any other European power has. Unravelling that, like so much else, is best avoided because it is not easily done and hard to repair once accomplisted.)

Still, this is a shivering moment. Much of this is especially galling for those of us who generally like and admire the United States, recognising its drive, its endless capacity for renewal, its boundless optimism, and its willingness to parade its faults in public, recognising that doing so is a precondition for overcoming them and making some further progress towards the forging of a more perfect union. The angels of America’s better nature have never had it all their own way but they have generally, if imperfectly and sometimes slowly, had the upper hand.

We can no longer say such things with any confidence. Something has perished this week and it has died a hard and ugly death.

Ukraine is to be sacrificed and it is easy to see how this can be done. European arms companies can step up their efforts but if the Americans wish to shut off the supply of components or ban the export of armaments to Ukraine and Europe then it can do so. Similarly, even if Elon Musk’s satellite internet system, Starlink, is not as vital to Ukrainian defence as it was in the early stages of the war, it is still important. It is easy to envisage the circumstances in which this is switched off too. All the glasses used to peer into the future are darkening now.

Here at home, the days of kidding ourselves have to be over. The increases to defence spending announced last week are not enough. Everyone knows this. Getting to 2.5 percent of GDP is only the first phase but three percent - and possibly more than that - will be needed by the end of the decade. Cumulatively that amounts to an extra £22 billion on defence every year, when compared to last year’s spending. That means real choices and all of them will be hard. Government ministers must be honest about the cost of this. Some taxes will have to go up; some areas of spending will have to be cut. This will go far beyond slashing overseas aid. A lot of old assumptions are either too expensive for or irrelevant to this new era.

And do not forget that it really is a new era.

Just listen: Here’s Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defence: “I’m here today to directly and unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States from being the primary guarantor of security in Europe.”

Just watch: Consider the countries that could not bring themselves to support a UN resolution deploring Russian aggression in Ukraine. Russia and Belarus and North Korea, of course, but also the United States of America.

The Americans have been telling and showing us their new world for some time. In truth, the time for paying at attention began at least a decade ago but there is no excuse for failing to see what is happening now.

The old world was never a perfect one and the United States has made any number of blunders in the past but it could generally be assumed that the Americans were the custodians - at least as they saw it - of liberty and leaders of the international order. Their heart was generally in the right place and they stood for things and standards and beliefs that collectively enjoyed a certain nobility and that could be contrasted with the things and standard and beliefs espoused by its opponents.

That assumption has died for this American administration is now actively hostile to the very things by which the United States once defined itself. It is the most un-American White House any of us have ever seen. This is a tragedy for the rest of the world and it is a tragedy for the United States too.

They are vindictive people in the White House now and they are disgusting people too.

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