Trudy Rubin: 'Now we are fighting against a dictator supported by a traitor'

One of the most electrifying shocks of the new Donald Trump era is how quickly the president has moved to ally with the Kremlin against Europe — and the security of the United States.

Let me repeat. Trump is eagerly courting Vladimir Putin, who has made clear in speeches and deeds he detests America and its NATO partners and wants to undermine them.

Eighty years after World War II ended, Moscow is carrying on a campaign of sabotage and assassination against NATO allies. Yet, Trump has unilaterally brought an aggressor Russian state in from the cold, ending its diplomatic isolation and promising sanctions relief.

The White House has enthusiastically chosen to give aid and support to America’s enemy, which is the definition of treachery. Trump is openly allied with the wrong side.

Yet, to Americans, consumed at home with White House madness, the threat posed by a U.S. embrace of Putin may be less obvious than it is to Europeans. They must cope with Russia’s cutting of underground cables, cyberattacks, sabotage against warehouses and railways, and assassinations, plus the spillover from the Ukraine war.

So I think it’s important for sane Americans to pay attention to how Trump’s behavior is perceived across the pond, where allied leaders have watched with astonishment as Trump lines up with Moscow against them. That includes U.S. votes alongside Russia at the United Nations, and Vice President JD Vance’s stunningly pro-Putin, anti-European democracy speech at last month’s Munich Security Conference.

It also includes Trump’s Tuesday phone call to Putin, which, according to the U.S. readout, was focused on the “huge upside” of “an improved bilateral relationship between the United States and Russia,” including “enormous economic deals.” There are even hints the U.S. will press for the reopening of the last undamaged Nord Stream 2 pipeline, bringing Russian gas back to Europe and reversing the continent’s costly effort to wean itself off of energy dependence on Moscow.

The intensity of European fears needs to be better understood in America. For that, I’m reprinting parts of a recent speech by a French senator, Claude Malhuret, who is also a former head of Doctors Without Borders. The speech went viral on the internet because it lays out what many Americans have been thinking but didn’t know how to summarize.

Here are Malhuret’s words:

“Europe is at a crucial juncture of its history. The American shield is slipping away, Ukraine risks being abandoned, and Russia is being strengthened. Washington has become the court of Nero: an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers, and a buffoon on ketamine tasked with purging the civil service.

“This is a tragedy for the free world, but it’s first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. Trump’s message is that being his ally serves no purpose because he will not defend you, he will impose more tariffs on you than on his enemies, and he will threaten to seize your territories while supporting the dictators who invade you.

“The king of the deal is showing that the art of the deal is lying prostrate. He thinks he will intimidate China by capitulating to Russian President Vladimir Putin, but China’s President Xi Jinping, faced with such wreckage, is undoubtedly accelerating his plans to invade Taiwan.

“Never in history has a president of the United States surrendered to the enemy. Never has one supported an aggressor against an ally, issued so many illegal decrees, and sacked so many military leaders in one go.

“This is not a drift to illiberalism; this is the beginning of the seizure of democracy. Let us remember that it only took one month, three weeks, and two days (in 1933 for Hitler) to bring down the (German) Weimar Republic.

“I have confidence in the solidity of American democracy, and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in the four years of his last presidency. We were at war with a dictator (Putin); now we are fighting against a dictator supported by a traitor (Trump).

“Above all: make no mistake. The defeat of Ukraine would be the defeat of Europe … Putin’s goal is to return to the Yalta Agreement, where half the continent was ceded to Stalin.

“What Putin wants is the end of the world order the United States and its allies established 80 years ago, in which the first principle was the prohibition of acquiring territory by force.

“The Trumpian vision coincides with Putin’s: a return to spheres of influence, where great powers dictate the fate of small nations.

“Greenland, Panama, and Canada are mine. Ukraine, the Baltics, and Eastern Europe are yours. Taiwan and the South China Sea are his.

“At the Mar-a-Lago dinner parties of golf-playing oligarchs, this is called ‘diplomatic realism.’

“We are therefore alone. But the narrative that Putin cannot be resisted is false. Contrary to Kremlin propaganda, Russia is doing poorly.

“With interest rates at 21%, the collapse of foreign currency and gold reserves, and a demographic crisis, Russia is on the brink. The American lifeline to Putin is the biggest strategic mistake ever made during a war.

“The shock is violent, but it has one virtue. The Europeans are coming out of denial. They understood in a single day in Munich that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands and that they have three imperatives.

“First, accelerate military aid to Ukraine to compensate for the American abandonment.

“Second, demand that any agreement include the return of kidnapped children and prisoners, as well as absolute security guarantees.

“Finally, and most urgently because it will take the longest, we must build that neglected European defense, which has relied on the American security umbrella since 1945, and which was shut down after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The task is Herculean, but history books will judge the leaders of today’s democratic Europe by its success or failure.

“We must convince public opinion in the face of war weariness and fear, and above all in the face of Putin’s collaborators on the far-right and far-left.

“They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump says is that their peace is capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of a (Charles) de Gaullian Zelenskyy by a Ukrainian (Philippe) Pétain under Putin’s thumb.

“Is this the end of the Atlantic alliance? The risk is great. But in recent days, (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelenskyy’s public humiliation and all the crazy decisions taken over the past month have finally stirred Americans into action.

“The fate of Ukraine will be decided in the trenches, but it also depends on those who defend democracy in the United States, and here, on our ability to unite Europeans and find the means for our common defense, to make Europe the power it once was and hesitates to become again.

“Our parents defeated fascism and communism at the cost of great sacrifice. The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st century. Long live free Ukraine, long live democratic Europe.”

Let me add, “And long live the democratic United States.”

_____