Putin wouldn’t be invading if Trump were still in the White House

President Trump was derided by his political opponents as an isolationist, soft on strongmen autocrats like Vladimir Putin. The Left painted him as a populist who undermined America’s alliances while turning a blind eye to human rights abuses by dictator regimes. 

Having met the former President several times in the White House, and having closely observed and interacted with the foreign policy workings of his administration, I saw a very different picture. I witnessed first hand a presidency that was deeply committed to strengthening America’s leadership in the world, believed closely in working with America’s allies, and actually put the fear of God into America’s enemies. 

In many ways the Trump Presidency was the antithesis of the weak-kneed Biden Presidency. The humiliating debacle of Biden’s reckless Afghanistan withdrawal would not have happened under Donald Trump, a leader who was highly respected by America’s military, and was not afraid to deploy American firepower to deadly effect. We saw this in both Syria and Iraq respectively, where Trump ordered US forces to hit back hard against Russian mercenaries, as well as the leadership of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. 

I am convinced that the Russians were strongly emboldened by the disastrous nature of Joe Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal, and by the fact that they were no longer facing a far more aggressive and unpredictable President in the form of Donald Trump. Putin has clearly read Biden like an open book, predicting correctly that the former Senator from Delaware would not threaten any kind of US military action, would be slow to arm the Ukrainians, and would spend a great deal of energy coordinating with the appeasement minded European Union, with Germany and France at the helm.