There are many reasons to regret President Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. But a big reason is that the call greatly damaged Trump’s otherwise stellar record on Ukraine.
Between Jan. 20, 2017, and July 25, 2019, Trump’s support for Ukraine was extensive, robust, and positively distinguished from that of former President Barack Obama — at least the known knowns of Trump’s policy, that is. In contrast, the July 25 call appears to have involved a quid pro quo threat to withhold appropriated aid to Ukraine in lieu of Zelensky’s agreement to find dirt on Joe Biden.
But up until that phone call, Trump had a superb record on Ukraine.
It begins with Trump doing, in the first year of his presidency, that which Obama could not bring himself to do in the three years of his presidency which followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: selling Ukraine lethal arms. Alongside that sale, Trump has supervised an escalating U.S. Navy presence in the Black Sea. A deployment routine to remind Vladimir Putin that his own escalation in the Black Sea will not go unchallenged.
Supporting this pro-Ukraine effort from the shadows, then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo authorized more aggressive operations against Russia. That effort continues under Pompeo’s successor, Gina Haspel.
But Trump’s Ukraine policy has been positively defined beyond the military side of things.
The Trump administration has also stood as a diplomatic bulwark against Franco-German pressure on Zelensky into making unfair concessions to Putin. This was the only standout positive of the July 25 call. And without America, the European Union would likely have forced Ukraine into accepting Russia’s seizure of its territory.
Finally, U.S.-Ukraine trade has increased during Trump’s presidency.
All of this illustrates why the aid package at the center of the impeachment proceedings was so impressive: It wasn’t just instrumental to Ukraine’s improved security, it was reflective of a Trump administration trend. A trend of enacting increased bipartisan military support for a pro-American government. Zelensky was elected, in large part, on a righteous pledge to confront a real problem of corruption. He deserves American friendship.
Trump should refocus there and return to the good work of the past — not on the fiction of a Ukrainian cover-up of Hunter Biden’s supposed criminality.
