The live broadcast of the humiliation suffered by the President of Ukraine in the Oval Office of the White House is already part of the worst story of the 21st century. The behaviour of Donald Trump and his vice-president, J.D. Vance, towards Zelenski, marks a change of course for the United States with unpredictable consequences. And in which the aggressor, Vladimir Putin, emerges victorious.
It was a world turned upside down in the Oval Office. A demonstration of the ‘alternative facts’ practised by Trumpism. The victim, the president of the invaded country, was accused by Trump of “playing with World War III”. Volodymyr Zelenski, instead of opting for diplomatic silence, stood up and pointed out that the President of the United States was adopting Vladimir Putin’s arguments.
The invasion of Ukraine began on 24 February 2022, with a Democratic administration in the White House, an administration committed to the defence of democracy and Europe and aware of the need to combat Vladimir Putin’s expansionism. Now the change is radical. Trump is committed to an alliance with the authoritarian Russian regime and to turning his back on Ukraine. The geopolitical chessboard has changed dramatically.
The war in Ukraine was a clash between two worldviews: a system based on economic globalisation, but also on democracy and human rights; and another world order, represented by Vladimir Putin, ruled by autocratic regimes that reject democracy and freedom in the name of the nation-state, a single morality, supposed economic efficiency and powers sustained by propaganda and repression. And the great, tragic news is that the President of the United States is now aligning himself with this second world view.
This battle of the two worlds is also being fought within the West, between those who believe in rights and freedoms and those who, whether out of disillusionment or conviction, defend a closed, autocratic social model; between those who believe in international cooperation to tackle global challenges such as climate change and those who want to return to the model of sovereign states fighting for supremacy. Reactionary movements in the US, such as the one embodied by Trump, and the European far right have much more in common with Putin’s attitude than with the defence of democratic values.
In the new scenario, we do not know if Russia will win on the battlefield, but we can be sure that it has lost on all other fronts. It has encouraged the cohesion of its supposed enemies (even Sweden and Finland have joined the Atlantic Alliance) and has lost, perhaps forever, any emotional connection with the Ukrainian population. It has sown hatred that will last for generations. Its only victory has just been handed to it by Donald Trump.
What name do Putin and Trump deserve?
Adam Michnik, the renowned Polish journalist and winner of the Princess of Asturias Prize for Humanities in 2022, warned back in 2016 that “Putin is a new phenomenon that does not yet have a name. Just as fascism did not have a name when it first appeared. In the 1930s, the great ideologies clashed: liberal democracies against Nazism; Nazism against Communism. We all know what happened. Democracy won. But the anti-democratic seeds remained. Eight decades after the Second World War, democracies are under political, military and economic attack by a totalitarian regime. Most seriously, the US government is not currently on the same side of history. It is as if it has switched sides.
And what does Trump represent? Does he have a name? What happened in the Oval Office is a clear expression of Trumpism, a term that is essentially a contemporary name for political phenomena ranging from populism to the far right and even linking us to fascism. Trump is a modern version of very old impulses, but they are named after him because he has expressed them from the most powerful office on the planet.
The real threat is what the sociologist Pierre Rosanvallon has called a ‘democradure’. That is to say, a form of government that blends democracy and dictatorship by popular consent, based on the feeling that Western societies are ungovernable, and that chaos threatens us, given the inability of politics to deal effectively with the disasters that beset us.
Zelenski stands up for himself
Faced with the ‘ambush’ he was facing, Volodymyr Zelenski could have chosen to remain silent. But he stood up for himself. Why? David Leonhardt, a columnist for the New York Times, wrote a portrait of the man shortly after the invasion that provides one possible answer: ‘When Russia invaded Ukraine, Volodymir Zelenski became a figure worthy of Churchill, the personal embodiment of his country’s refusal to yield to an authoritarian murderer. The comparison gained weight when Ukraine managed to resist the Russian army.
Zelenski himself, in a moving speech in the British Parliament (8/3/2022), promised that Ukrainians would fight the Russian invaders ‘in the forests, in the fields, on the coasts, in the streets’, echoing the words of Winston Churchill himself during the Second World War to encourage his people in the face of the Nazi threat.
Faced with the ‘imprisonment’ he was facing, Volodymyr Zelenski could have chosen to remain silent. But he stood up for himself. Why? David Leonhardt, a columnist for the New York Times, wrote a portrait of the man shortly after the invasion that provides one possible answer: ‘When Russia invaded Ukraine, Volodymir Zelenski became a figure worthy of Churchill, the personal embodiment of his country’s refusal to yield to an authoritarian murderer. The comparison gained weight when Ukraine managed to resist the Russian army.
Zelenski himself, in a moving speech in the British Parliament (8/3/2022), promised that Ukrainians would fight the Russian invaders ‘in the forests, in the fields, on the coasts, in the streets’, echoing the words of Winston Churchill himself during the Second World War to encourage his people in the face of the Nazi threat.
Zelenski has always been aware that his character embodies a symbolic resistance, which is why he often refers to episodes from history. In a speech to the Spanish Congress of Deputies (5.4.2022), the Ukrainian president recalled an episode from the Civil War very similar to what the cities of his country had suffered: the destruction of Guernica under the bombs of the German and Italian air forces. It is April 2022, but it seems like April 1937, when the world learned of the attack on your city,” he declared.
Adam Gopnik described Zelenski’s performance in the early hours of the invasion in The New Yorker (13/3/2022): “No one will forget the image of Zelenski speaking for his people and his cause within the confines of a clandestine Internet broadcast. Some of his improvised lines were memorable, such as his rejection of an American offer to get him safely out of Kiev: ‘I need ammunition, not an escape plan’.
According to Gopnik, what fuels admiration for Zelenski, a former comic actor, is “that dignity is within reach of those who smile in the face of adversity, and that courage and comedy have a transitive relationship. Those who are willing to knowingly debase themselves, like a clown, are the ones most capable of acting with dignity’. These words take on full meaning after the scene in the Oval Office of the White House.
Complementary Activities
1. Debate on the isolationist policy and the entente between Trump and Putin
- Objective: To reflect on the consequences of isolationist policies and how the decisions of one country can affect other regions of the world, especially in international conflicts such as the war in Ukraine.
- Description: Divide the students into two groups: one will defend Trump’s isolationist policy and the other will argue for the need for more active US involvement in international affairs.
- Duration: 30-40 minutes.
- Materials: Original article, research tools, whiteboard or projector.
2. Analysis of the current situation of the European Union
- Objective: To understand the challenges facing the European Union in achieving greater political and military integration, as discussed in the article.
- Description: Students will research the EU’s current political, economic and military mechanisms and compare its capacity to respond with that of superpowers such as the US, China and Russia. They will then present their conclusions.
- Duration: 45 minutes to 1 hour
- Materials: Internet access for researching up-to-date information on the EU, equipment for presenting the results.
3. Study of the consequences of the war in Ukraine for Europe
- Objective: To reflect on how the war in Ukraine affects not only Ukraine, but also the European Union and the world stage.
- Description: Students will analyse the impact of the war in Ukraine on international relations and global security, with a particular focus on how it affects the EU’s position and foreign policy.
- Duration: 40 minutes
- Materials: Original article, updated news articles, reading material on the conflict in Ukraine.
