BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  JULY 15, 2025 

President Donald Trump keeps getting stomped on by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. Just in recent days, President Trump said he has had some “pleasant” and “lovely” conversations with Putin who he has called a friend for years. Shortly after those calls, Putin attacked Ukraine again.

With friends like that, who needs enemies.

At the same time, President Trump has publicly and aggressively campaigned for the Nobel Peace Prize. He really needs to suspend the campaign until he can fully recognize the delusions he harbors about the Russian President.

In the past couple of weeks there are indications he may be turning a corner. We must hope it doesn’t become a U-turn. He seemed to accept the fact that his Russian friend was not going to “STOP” (Trump’s word) the reign of terror raining down from the skies over Ukraine. He finally decided to open the pipeline for more weapons to Ukraine he says NATO nations will pay for.

When Putin continued the bombardment, Trump came up with a new threat: if Putin doesn’t agree to a truce in 50 days, he would impose severe economic sanctions (called secondary tariffs) on countries that buy oil and other critical products from Russia. Again, good effort, but maybe wasted. Former Russian President and Putin proxy Dmitry Medvedev said the Kremlin “didn’t care” about Trump’s “theatrical ultimatum.”

A Nobel Prize? It’s the cart way ahead of the horse.

Ukraine and the Ukrainian people who have suffered so much through three long years of war live as a testament to the failure of Trump’s actions. The President who boasted during his campaign that he would end the war immediately after taking office has had his white horse shot out from under him. The bloodshed across Ukraine’s cities, villages, and farms has kept the death toll on the rise and the suffering relentless.

Trump surely has seen on television the devastating loss of life, maiming and dislocation of Ukrainian men, women, and children who we have all seen wandering through the rubble of their cities laid waste by the Russian missiles and drones, recently 700 in just one day and night. He surely knows of the untold number of children kidnapped and trucked off to Russia. Surely, he has seen the courage and determination of the Ukrainian people to preserve their sovereignty.

Yet, while Trump has seen success in other international theaters with his impulsive, unrehearsed diplomacy, he seems to still have delusions about his “friend” Vladimir.

When the President announced that the US would resume sending weapons he said “…and we will send them Patriots, which they desperately need, because Putin really surprised a lot of people,” Trump was quoted in the Wall Street Journal. “He talks nice, and then he bombs everybody in the evening…There’s a little bit of a problem there, and I don’t like it.”

Surprised a lot of people? A little bit of a problem here? Putin surprised a lot of people? Lovely and pleasant phone calls? Only “disappointed” in Putin? Trump seems to be the last to know.

The Russian dictator comes across as a ruler ruthlessly committed to his objective of restoring the former Russian empire one independent nation at a time and to hell with the cost. His brutality seems to be without any moral compass and his deceitful diplomacy leaves little doubt that if he looks like a tyrant, talks like a tyrant, and acts like a tyrant, no more evidence is needed.

The tragedy of US policy toward Ukraine is not another inconsequential conflict in which we should not be engaged. The old Russian empire enveloped the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania; Poland and Belarus; the Caucasus, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, as well as what are known as the stan countries—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

What makes our President think that Putin can be stopped, even if half of Ukraine is sacrificed for a temporary peace deal, the kind that Putin seldom honors? What makes the President think that the NATO alliance won’t be decimated? What makes our President think Putin’s expansionism won’t eventually threaten the United States?

And he longs for a Nobel Prize and its million-dollar prize money?

Trump supporters believe he has earned the medal for his role in the Abraham Accords signed at the conclusion of his first term. And there is reason for that belief. The Accords normalized relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. He just recently hosted a group of five African leaders after a settlement between the Democratic Republic of Congress and Rwanda.

He has been also nominated for nuclear non-proliferation progress with North Korea, which I can’t buy, and has been involved in negotiating settlements between Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, and Egypt and Ethiopia.

“I won’t get a prize for keeping the peace between Egypt and Ethiopia,” he complained. “I just heard that the head of that country is getting the Nobel Peace Prize for saving the country. I said did I have something to do with that. Yeah,” according to Bess Levin writing in Vanity Fair.

In the 2024 campaign for a second term, Trump complained bitterly that “If I were named Obama, I would have had the Nobel Prize given to me in 10 seconds. He got the Nobel Prize. He didn’t even know what the hell he got it for,” Trump said, according to Levin.

It is interesting to note that President Obama was in office when Putin annexed Crimea without so much as a hyperbolic protest from the United States.

Trump’s shameless campaign for the Prize is taking place in an atmosphere of volcanic global tensions and disruption, a good share of which can be placed at the big feet of Uncle Sam.

President Trump, for his part, has disrupted international trade enough to potentially cause economic chaos and hostilities. He is supporting the slaughter and relocation of millions of Palestinians in Gaza. He has managed to alienate our Canadian neighbors and closest allies. He has broken many of the bonds between Western Europe and the US. He’s sending Haitian refugees back to the devastation and terror in their homeland, suggesting that all is well there now.

Let’s say that, Ukraine aside, his foreign policy record is mixed. Outcomes remain far off and yet unknown. Outcomes depend on an unpredictable and erratic international atmosphere and what transpires through the remainder of Trump’s second term of office in the face of so much upheaval here at home, a good share caused by him and his predecessor.

Trump would be wise to put the Nobel on the back burner of his self-aggrandizing ambitions and keep his eye on the real prize—helping to bring meaningful peace and security to nations roiled by war, nations threatened by global empire builders, and nations that have for decades looked to America as a protector and champion of democratic rule and individual freedom.