Our foreign policy: Trump delays, Congress ignores, Ukrainians die | Opinion

How many Ukrainian lives have been lost as President Donald Trump has dilly-dallied? Days, weeks and months have gone by as he wrings his hands about Russian and Ukrainian lives lost, never once distinguishing between the lives of the aggressors and the lives of the innocents, as though they are equally at fault for being caught in the path of Vladimir Putin’s war machine.

Putin’s ruthless and deadly attacks on civilians daily inure Americans to the tragedies Ukrainian families are experiencing. After so long, the reports might as well be about this week’s price of eggs. Life in America and life in the White House go on as though the lives of the Ukrainian people are dispensable.

It reminds me once again of Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter C.J. Chivers’ book, “The Fighters: Americans in Combat in Afghanistan and Iraq.” He wrote an epigraph to the book quoting a handwritten note on a wall during the Iraq War. It read: “America is not at war. The Marine Corps is at war, America is at the mall.”

Today Americans are more likely to be online than at the mall, but they are nonetheless distracted by the media’s focus on the Jeffrey Epstein issue and Trump’s uncanny ability to use social media to shift the focus away from Epstein and to other issues.

One day he’s taking the corn syrup out of Coca-Cola, the next he’s trying to fire a Federal Reserve member, the day after that he wants Intel, a private corporation, to fire its CEO, and then he calls for reform of college football, and his list of daily fakes goes on. Anything to cover up his complete mishandling of America’s relationship with Western Europe and its fear that the U.S. has given up on Ukraine.

It is the height of folly to hear the media repeat that Trump’s recent decision to bring the National Guard into America’s cities is a distraction from digging into Jeffery Epstein’s relationship with Trump, while Democrats and the national media say less about the devastation Trump’s delaying tactics on Ukraine have caused civilians — lives cut short by an American president fiddling while Ukraine suffers.

Congress, controlled by a Republican Party drained of the slightest bit of righteous indignation or moral outrage at Putin’s murderous rampage through a democratic ally, sits in silence. Don’t even ask where Idaho’s congressional delegation is on the issue.

Quiet as a church mouse, even Sen. Jim Risch, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee which once had leaders who made a difference in American foreign policy, fiddles alongside Trump.

Trump’s recent Alaskan welcome and literal rolling out of the red carpet for the war criminal, Putin, shows just how little Trump cares about offering American support to Ukraine. His warm embrace of the dictator victoriously setting foot on American soil with the pomp and circumstance of a hero’s welcome is indicative of Trump’s cavalier attitude toward Putin’s attack on democratic Ukraine.

Trying to figure out how Ukrainians can possibly beat back Putin and avoid defeat gets tougher each day. Trump has delayed and delayed any action as Putin bombards and kills Ukrainians daily. We don’t hear much about the distinct possibility that Trump, like Putin, has no interest in seeing Russia turned back to its borders. Every day of delay is a stronger argument for an American president who is rooting for the Russian side, while Ukraine could benefit from additional U.S. military hardware and technology.

The bully Putin understands only one thing: force and its companion intimidation. I think back to my days growing up where you always had to be on guard for the schoolyard bully who preyed on those he could intimidate. It was either someone of greater authority, like the principal, or another student in the schoolyard bigger than the bully who would come to the rescue and see to it that the bully didn’t pull his ruffian antics again.

In Ukraine’s case, that person of greater authority who is also bigger than the bully is the American president. But Trump acts as a Quisling, simply deferring to Putin instead of employing swift and forceful American support of Ukraine.

That’s all you need to know about Trump’s hollow call to bring Putin to the negotiating table. Putin ignores Trump’s call for a peace settlement, likely planned by Trump as another lame notch in his peacekeeping gun as he makes no secret of his desire for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Trump did threaten Putin with consequences if he doesn’t come to the negotiating table, but offered little information initially on just what that would mean for weeks at a time as Putin killed more civilians. Too many critical days were lost as Trump hemmed and hawed over how disappointed he was in Putin and how much time he would give Putin before he acted.

Trump did levy secondary sanctions, like the tariffs he leveled on India for buying Russian oil, but sanctions, whether imposed by the Biden administration or Trump, have had little impact to date. In the case of India’s Prime Minister Modi, Trump’s 50% tariffs on imports from Asia’s largest democracy have driven Modi into the arms of China and Russia with his recent attendance at the regional summit hosted by China’s Xi. That will be recorded in history as one of Trump’s most disastrous foreign policy blunders.

Masha Gessen, the former Russian journalist now with The New York Times, wrote recently that Trump may be doubling down on sanctions, but Putin is laughing all the way to Alaska, claiming the ineffectiveness of sanctions on Putin’s war. Gessen believes only the stark realization that Putin could lose the war in defeat will bring him to the negotiating table.

Back to the schoolyard bully analogy, it will take a stronger show of support for Ukraine on the battlefield with additional arms from the U.S. and Europe to bring this war to an end that respects Ukrainian borders.

I’m far from a military strategist, but I doubt you would have to go very deep into the Pentagon bureaucracy to find strategies for military assistance to Ukraine that the U.S. has not fully utilized. President Volodymyr Zelensky’s insistent plea throughout the war has been for more artillery shells to defend itself and strike back at Russian offensives that rained down on Ukrainian civilians. He has also called for more training for F-16 pilots.

Considerable time has been lost on the defense of Ukraine as Trump has wasted opportunities to increase production of military hardware for Ukraine and to supply Ukrainians with the firepower required to defend themselves against Putin’s deadly assaults of missiles and drones.

No way can we expect much from the bumbling and acquiescent Trump, Putin’s chief admirer on the world stage. But there was a day when we had leaders in Congress who would not have been distracted by Trump’s diversionary tactics and would have called publicly for Trump to act decisively to support Ukraine.

Pass those thoughts along to members of Congress.

Bob Kustra served as president of Boise State University from 2003 to 2018. He is host of Readers Corner on Boise State Public Radio, a regular columnist for the Idaho Statesman and a contributing columnist for the Chicago Tribune. He served two terms as Illinois lieutenant governor and 10 years as a state legislator.