Donald Trump is selling out his allies while he still has time

The most transactional president in US history, now nearly 80, knows he is running out of road in his second term and has realised there is more to gain by hiking the price of Pax Americana than by indulging the country’s traditional friends, writes Sean O'Grady

We’ve heard a lot over the past few weeks and, indeed, for about a decade on and off about how so much of the coverage of Donald Trump in the mainstream media (that’s me) is biased, unbalanced, and suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome”.

Well, the man can be maddening in all manner of ways but, as ever, I’d love to offer a balanced assessment of his peace plan for Ukraine so far as we understand it, and his motivations.

Despite the angry rants he sometimes indulges in, and a taste for extra-judicial execution of America’s “enemies”, I think Trump is sincere in wanting an end to all sorts of wars, and not just to get his hands on the Nobel Peace Prize to outdo some of his predecessors (the risible Fifa peace prize he was recently awarded being a pitiful, Poundland version of the real, noble thing). When he talks with some force about the thousands of lives lost every week in the vicious conflict, he probably means it, though he invariably fails to mention who started it and occasionally, grotesquely, blames Volodymyr Zelensky.

It also seems fairly obvious that Trump really does want that Nobel prize, if only because it feeds his vanity. The medal would look grand on the mantelpiece in the Oval Office, albeit competing with many other golden goblets and baubles. It seems that gongs matter disproportionately to Trump, and if they incentivise him to stop the killing, then there’s no harm in that. Quite the opposite.

This is also a president who knows he is running out of time. Whatever the truth behind reports that his health is failing, he’s nearly 80, his second term will come to an end, and he knows his domestic power is crumbling. He is an old man in a hurry.

All that said, though, there is no mistaking Trump’s materialism, both on behalf of his country and for himself and his family. He’s a real estate guy who enjoys wealth, almost for its own sake. I imagine that’s why he pulled down the East Wing of the White House and why he wants to build that questionable “ballroom” to dwarf the original residence – and get other people to pay for it.

Everywhere he goes, he sees commercial opportunities. He wants to annex the whole of Greenland, because of the rich mineral reserves beneath and, also, just because it’s there, a big “vacant plot”. Who can forget the quizzical look on Benjamin Netanyahu’s face when Trump revealed at a joint press conference his bizarre scheme to depopulate Gaza and turn it into a luxury beach resort.

Whatever happens to Ukraine, including any subsequent further Russian occupation, the new lucrative American mineral rights in the southeast of the country will be preserved. Many years ago, too, we may remind ourselves, after the fall of the USSR, he tried to get a Trump Tower built in Moscow. It feels likely that he still hankers after such a personal monument amongst the onion domes.

There is no mistaking Trump’s materialism, both on behalf of his country and for himself and his family. He’s a real estate guy who enjoys wealth, almost for its own sake (AFP/Getty)

In other words, this is a transactional president who has his eye on commercial opportunities, national and personal. It may not be a coincidence that his personal envoys in this peace process are another property developer, Steve Witkoff, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, both at least as influential in this as Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, who increasingly resembles a hostage. They will know that Trump would like to know what’s in all this for America and for Trump himself.

Too crude an analysis? Unfair? Well, we need look no further than the official record. After the Putin-Trump love-in in Alaska, the Russian president said there was “tremendous potential” in “trade, digital, hi tech and in space exploration” – music to the ears of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. At the same meeting, Trump noted the presence of Russian business representatives and “looked forward” to dealing with them. The latest US National Security policy states that a “core interest” is to “re-establish strategic stability with Russia” – “strategic stability” meaning a resumption of normal economic relations with Europe and the US, and thus a more propitious environment for business.

In a way, Trump is right. Russia obviously has potential, though such is the nature of the Putin regime that any enterprise will have to bend to whatever the Kremlin wants from it, and is at permanent risk of sequestration. If China and India can rejoin the world economy and prosper, as they have in recent decades, then there is no reason, in principle, why a post-Putin Russia might not do the same eventually. The price for such lush business opportunities for American companies and the tech oligarchs is that Ukraine will be treated more like a US-Russia condominium than a sovereign European state in its own right.

It is starting to feel just a little like Trump and Putin would like to carve out spheres of interest just as their predecessors did at the end of the Second World War. It is not only Ukraine that is about to be sold out by Trump. That may sound like an extreme verdict, but as it’s based on current trends and public remarks, it is a balanced, and frankly terrifying, one.