PPI - Radically Pragmatic
  • Donate
Skip to content
  • Home
  • About
    • About Us
    • Locations
    • Careers
  • People
  • Projects
  • Our Work
  • Events
  • Donate

Our Work

Jacoby for Washington Monthly: Donald Trump and the End of American Global Leadership

  • February 24, 2025
  • Tamar Jacoby

The United States strove for more than 100 years—since we entered World War I in April 1917—to hold its own as leader of the free world. It took Donald Trump precisely one month to abdicate that leadership, destroying everything his predecessors—from Woodrow Wilson to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan—had built through two global conflicts, the Cold War and the creation of the post-World War II Western alliance. Trump thinks he is strong and making America stronger. But his bullying of Ukraine and capitulation to Vladimir Putin make us immeasurably weaker—a loss of reputation and power never likely to be regained.

Americans sympathetic to Ukraine have long worried that Trump would turn against the country on the receiving end of Russia’s brutal aggression. But the president’s behavior in the last week stunned even the Trump worriers. His ingratiating overture to the Kremlin, his preemptive giveaways—suggesting Ukraine should cede one-fifth of its territory and renounce joining NATO before Moscow even asked for those concessions—and his administration’s rush to meet a Russian delegation without Ukraine or our European allies, all of that was stunning enough.

But now the American president has sunk to baseless insults, calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “modestly successful comedian,” a “dictator,” and a thief. Zelensky’s measured response, telling Ukrainians that he was counting on their unity and courage and “the pragmatism of America,” showed up the president’s barbs for the schoolyard taunts they were.

Read more in Washington Monthly. 

Related Work

Op-Ed  |  August 27, 2025

Jacoby for Forbes: Ukraine Looks Abroad For Joint Ventures To Boost Its Defense Industry

  • Tamar Jacoby
Feature  |  August 20, 2025

Jacoby for Washington Monthly: Trump, Zelensky, and European Leaders Got Along—Mostly by Sidestepping the Big Issues

  • Tamar Jacoby
Podcast  |  August 18, 2025

Jacoby on Washington Monthly’s Politics Roundtable: Trump Just Gave Putin Everything He Wanted

  • Tamar Jacoby
Op-Ed  |  August 18, 2025

Jacoby for Washington Monthly: How to Reverse Trump’s Capitulation to Putin

  • Tamar Jacoby
Feature  |  August 11, 2025

Jacoby for Washington Monthly: Ukrainian Fighters Aren’t Expecting Much from the Trump-Putin Summit

  • Tamar Jacoby
Podcast  |  July 24, 2025

Jacoby on Chew’s Views Podcast

  • Tamar Jacoby
  • Never miss an update:

  • Subscribe to our newsletter
PPI Logo
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Donate
  • Careers
  • © 2025 Progressive Policy Institute. All Rights Reserved.
  • |
  • Privacy Policy
  • |
  • Privacy Settings