Tag-Team Wrestling

by R. Owen Williams

Volodymyr Zelensky did not ask Russia to invade his country, nor did he ask for a televised meeting in the Oval Office with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. Yet many people in America now hold him responsible for both. That is equal part revisionist and reckless storytelling.

Some Republican congressmen have expressed pride in the behavior of Trump and Vance, suggesting that they stood up to Zelensky and defended America. Stood up to Zelensky? Really? Zelensky may have brought a bit of feistiness to the White House, but what would we expect from the leader of a war-torn country that has been bombed to rubble and sacrificed tens of thousands of soldiers along with many thousands of civilian casualties? (It is almost impossible to get accurate numbers of either soldier or civilian death rates, but the number is quite high when compared to the total population. Also, the number of wounded soldiers and civilians seems to be in the hundreds of thousands.) It seems a safe bet that Zelensky, amidst the horrors surrounding him, knows not to pick a fight beyond the one he’s already got.

Confident people tend to be calmer in stressful situations. Confident leaders can afford to be generous and humble with their underlings. Confident negotiators do not taunt their counterparties. Confident nations do not publicly humiliate smaller states. Bullies, by contrast, prey on vulnerable people. Bullies tend to throw their weight around when they have more of it. As the English philosopher and statesman Lord Shaftesbury once wrote, “True courage is cool and calm. The bravest of men have the least of a brutal, bullying insolence, and in the very time of danger are found the most serene and free.” There could be no better wisdom to share with Trump and Vance, who carried on like tag-team wrestlers toying with a wounded opponent from a lighter weight class.

Just look at these numbers. America’s population is 340 million, whereas Ukraine’s population, at under 38 million, is smaller than California’s. The Gross Domestic Product of the United States is 28 trillion dollars, while the GDP in Ukraine is 178 billion dollars, or just .64% of the U.S. That’s right, Ukraine’s economy is not even one percent of what we enjoy in the United States. American military expenditures are 820 billion dollars a year, more than the military expenses of the next nine countries combined. Between 2018 and 2021, Ukraine spent six billion a year on defense, though according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, that number jumped by 640% to 44 billion after the Russian invasion in 2022.

There is, however, no need to parse Friday’s conversation to determine whether Zelensky, or Trump, or Vance caused the derailment of diplomatic discourse. It ultimately doesn’t matter whether Zelensky was somewhat pugilistic, Vance was smugly provocative, or Trump was Trump. What matters is that the United States ceased to be a world power. We all watched as a once-great-and-trusted nation stumbled and fell.

Zelensky is doing for his country and ours what the Republican Party (now better known as the Trumpian Party) suddenly no longer has the stomach to do. It is defending itself against a ruthless dictator. Strong men like Zelensky have no choice but to stand up for their country. Strong countries like the United States should have no choice but to stand up for weaker ones. And that seems especially true when the weaker one is a devoted, democratic, and deserving ally.

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R. Owen Williams, Ph.D., past president of the Associated Colleges of the South, previously served as president of Transylvania University. He did his undergraduate degree at Dartmouth College, MA at Cambridge University, MSL at Yale Law School, and Ph.D. at Yale University. Williams served as vice-chair of the Board of Governors at Gratz College, the oldest Jewish college in America, and is currently on the Board of Trustees at Morehouse College and the advisory board at Cambridge University in England.