Just when it seems our actions and image can’t sink any lower, a wave of Trump betrayals cascaded over Ukraine this month.
By Stephen Golub, Benicia resident and author, “Benicia and Beyond” in the Benicia Herald, 10/18/2026, Updated for the Benicia Independent on October 20, 2026
>> For over 25 years, ending with the Covid era’s onset in 2020, I took numerous overseas consulting and research trips to support democratic development abroad. On those journeys, I was so often struck by how much foreigners admired America’s ideals or respected our power.
When I called a Polish legal aid program “great,” a young Polish law professor jokingly but approvingly replied, “Great! Typical American! So enthusiastic!” Shortly after 9/11, I insisted to an Indonesian taxi driver that the attack caught us by surprise. His response suggested that he considered the United States omniscient and even omnipotent: “America must have known! America knows everything!” During two visits to Ukraine, I encountered similar sentiments in a nation striving for democracy and prosperity after nearly seven decades of crushing, genocidal Soviet domination.
Most of my overseas contacts and colleagues were not blind to America’s sins and setbacks. But they also saw substantial good in Americans, not least because of our help for their societies.
Times Have Changed
Those days of democratic hope and more general U.S. development support are gone. Donald Trump and Elon Musk slashed and burned the U.S Agency for International Development, with public health cuts potentially causing over 14 million deaths by 2030.
Trump has also alienated allies such as Canada and Denmark, both of which sacrificed soldiers for our Afghanistan war; embraced tyrants such as North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, with whom he exchanged “love letters” (in Trump’s own words), despite his expanding nuclear arsenal capable of destroying US cities; and pardoned world-class criminals, such as Honduras’s drug kingpin/former president, Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a 45-year sentence for conspiring to import 400 tons of cocaine into America.
All of this, and much more, has trashed our reputation abroad. Amazingly, China and its brutally repressive President Xi Jinping are now more admired in most surveyed countries than the United States and Donald Trump.
Even Worse
But just when it seems our actions and image can’t sink any lower, a wave of Trump betrayals cascaded over Ukraine this month. Not only is he abandoning that beleaguered nation, which is helping us against Iran; he’s instead siding with Russia, which aids Iran as it targets American soldiers, allies and interests in the Middle East. More on that in a minute.
By way of background, though: Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, in a campaign that most observers thought would topple Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government in a matter of days or weeks. Instead, despite their more limited firepower and personnel, the Ukrainians brilliantly and heroically turned the tables on Russia, stymying and even reversing some of its advances.
Since 2022, Ukraine has mastered the art of drone warfare, to the point where it’s taking the offensive to a certain extent by targeting refineries, data centers and other economic and strategic targets deep inside Russia, with regrettable but relatively small and inadvertent numbers of civilian casualties. The attacks have taken a toll on the refineries in particular, thus constraining petro-state Russia’s resources for pursuing the war.
For its part, Russia has committed human rights abuses on massive scales: kidnapping thousands of Ukrainian kids, murdering Ukrainian civilians in areas its occupied, launching massive missile attacks against civilians and even escalating its crimes in recent weeks.
Which brings us back to this month’s news regarding Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine, first by suspending sanctions against Russian diesel transactions, a move that boosts Russia’s capacity to attack Ukraine while yielding little benefit for America. Here’s a good New York Times summary:
For [Ukraine], the blows came one after the next in just one very bad week.
Mr. Trump blamed the war launched by Russia against Ukraine almost five years ago for rising diesel prices, instead of what energy experts call the real cause: the war that Mr. Trump launched against Iran. He temporarily lifted U.S. sanctions on Russian diesel sales in what is likely to be a failed attempt to lower those prices. He unilaterally declared an “ENERGY CEASEFIRE” in the war that only helped Russia and hurt Ukraine. And he called for a new Ukrainian president.
Here’s how a leading conservative and former George W. Bush speechwriter, David Frum, summarized the significance of Trump suspending sanctions against Russian diesel sales:
But while the deal will not benefit American consumers, it has immense consequences for others. For Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the deal is a potential lifesaver. For war-ravaged Ukraine, it is the most outrageous and heartless Trump betrayal to date. For Trump’s entourage, the deal promises corruption opportunities on a multibillion-dollar scale.
But wait, as a dystopian game show host might say, there’s more! In the past week, Trump has dumped far more betrayal on Ukraine. As another useful NY Times summary put it, after suspending the diesel sanctions, Trump:
…lifted [broader] sanctions on Russia and pressured Ukraine to stop hitting Russian oil refineries. Kyiv began reporting sudden restrictions on a Pentagon-funded satellite internet network, gaps in the sharing of U.S. military intelligence and delays in the delivery of American interceptor missiles…
[Tensions] reached a new pitch on Monday when Mr. Trump said that “Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine” and that “they haven’t been doing much” — even as Ukrainian civilian casualties from Russian attacks have reached new highs, rising by 85 percent last month compared with a year before, according to the United Nations.
Aiding the Enemy
All of this is against the backdrop of Russia’s intense, ongoing aid to Iran in its war against America. As confirmed by General Dan Caine, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, this includes sharing intelligence information and satellite imagery that helps Iran target US soldiers, bases and interests.
Russia is also: supplying Iran with a variety of armaments, including drone components and possibly entire drones for use against US soldiers and our Middle Eastern allies; exploiting the Caspian Sea (which both countries border on) and Russia’s secretive “shadow fleet” of ships to help Iran evade sanctions and obtain weapons and other supplies; and aiding Iran’s construction of nuclear facilities.
In contrast, drawing on its years of experience battling Russia, Ukraine is helping the US and our Middle Eastern allies with anti-drone equipment, training and advice and electronic countermeasures so as to limit the impact of Iran’s attacks. It’s asked for US aid in the forms of anti-missile weaponry and negotiating a ceasefire with Russia on fair terms that don’t amount to Ukrainian surrender.
In response to Ukraine’s aid, everything Trump has done is the strategic equivalent of multiple stabs in Ukraine’s back.
Why should America care about Ukraine? Because if Russia triumphs there, it may in turn attack other European allies, most immediately the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania. Because further aggression could drag us into a far more costly war – one that, unlike in Ukraine, puts American lives at risk. Because it’s also seeking to undermine our other European allies. Because by destabilizing those allies, Russia threatens America’s mutually beneficial economic relations with them, which have been a source of much of our prosperity. Because Russia’s attack is not just against Ukraine, but against a rules-based world order that America has supported to our own great economic and strategic benefit through Republican and Democratic administrations alike since World War II – until Trump came along.
Finally, because backing a democracy and fighting a dictator, at no cost to us in terms of lives and at minimal cost to our finances at this point (since European nations now provide much of the support), is the right thing to do.
The Biggest Betrayal
Which brings me back to that Polish law professor and that Indonesian taxi driver. Like so many across the globe, they admired America for its good intentions or respected us for our pure power. They weren’t blind to the mistakes we’ve made and the destructive things we’ve sometimes done. But they still saw a country, that for all its faults, and through Republican and Democratic administrations alike, was often a force for stability, prosperity and democracy.
Who could say that now, as Trump smashes alliances and embraces autocrats – even ones like Putin, who aids Iran even as it seeks to slaughter our soldiers? As we struggle against that despicable Iranian regime, which Trump’s impulsive war of choice has only strengthened (with Russia’s help), a war that our standing around the world has only weakened? As America First becomes America Last in much of the world? As Make America Great Again becomes Make America Mocked Again?
The biggest betrayal, then, is not what Trump is doing to Ukraine or our other allies, as despicable as those acts are. It’s what he’s doing to us at home and what he’s doing to our ideals, our image, our respect and our power across the globe.
Trump’s biggest betrayal is of America.
Stephen Golub writes about democracy and politics, both in America and abroad, at A Promised Land: America as a Developing Country.
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