Remembering The Diplomatic Dumpster Fire, Trump Turns Global Statesmanship Into a Spectacle of Spite

“The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” ~ Thucydides

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” ~ Sun Tzu

“Fascism is not in itself a new order of society. It is the future refusing to be born.” ~ Aneurin Bevan

“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.” ~ Albert Einstein

What unfolded in the Oval Office wasn’t diplomacy, it was a display of ego, insecurity, and geopolitical ignorance. President Donald Trump, with all the finesse of a bull in a china shop, berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, snarling, “You’re gambling with World War Three.” As if barking at an underling, Trump accused Zelenskyy of ingratitude, reducing a nation’s existential struggle to a petty transaction.

It was a show for the rest of the world to know what happens when America does a regime change in a country and installs their own puppet leader. And, that leader is asking for a little bit too much in the face of losing a war against Russia, that the deep state America and the Western Europeans instigated with the eastern expansion of NATO.

When Zelenskyy tried to respond, “I’m not playing cards,” Trump snapped like a schoolyard bully, “Right now, you are playing cards.” Vice President J.D. Vance chimed in with his own fabricated accusation, falsely claiming Ukraine had never thanked the U.S. for aid. The scene spiraled from state visit to a scolding sideshow in minutes. A press conference was scrapped, a signing ceremony scrapped. And naturally, Trump went online to pour gasoline on the wreckage, accusing Zelenskyy of disrespecting “the cherished Oval Office” and expelling him until he was “ready for Peace.”

What the world saw wasn’t leadership, it was a tantrum, a full-blown ego-stroking meltdown disguised as diplomacy. This kind of behaviour doesn't just degrade U.S. credibility, it incinerates the foundation of global cooperation. In Trump’s warped worldview, diplomacy is little more than theatre, and foreign leaders are extras in his authoritarian stage play.

Let’s be clear, strong-arming allies, humiliating wartime leaders, and peddling false narratives on social media isn't just irresponsible, it’s dangerous. It turns international relations into a circus act and reduces peace to a PR stunt. In fact during the scolding Trump said, this will make for great news and social media. This brand of US militarism bluster masquerading as strength is precisely the mindset that dragged America into disasters like Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Vietnam, etc., where arrogance paraded as moral clarity and left chaos in its wake.

We're watching the erosion of norms in real time, the open contempt for multilateralism, the glorification of isolationism, the outright disdain for diplomacy. History has seen this script before. Empires, bloated by excessive pride, implode under the weight of their own illusions. Thucydides saw it coming thousands of years ago, arrogance on the world stage rots a nation from within.

This wasn’t a communications breakdown, it was a deliberate demolition of basic decency. Trump didn’t flub a meeting, he set fire to it for sport. Zelenskyy wasn’t defiant, he was dignified in the face of mockery. In fact, the president of Ukraine should have said nothing. The American Administration would have nothing to say, they would have been checkmated. And America? It was left looking less like a global leader and more like a playground for authoritarian despots.

Diplomacy demands more than blasting ideas via traditional media and social media sites, and threats. It requires moral courage, the strength to listen, to restrain, to build peace via global assurances of economic and trade, and no sanctions, rather than bully.

If we keep mistaking tantrums, imposing punitive tariffs, economic sanctions to starve people of nations, we won’t just lose influence, we’ll lose the very principles that once gave our democratic light of the free world, influence, and meaning.