‘America’s word is no longer good’: David Frum on the Ukraine-Russia peace plan and the rise of the extremist Right in America

Leading author, journalist, and thinker David Frum and The Hub’s editor-at-large Sean Speer discuss the Trump administration’s plan to end the Russia-Ukraine war and what it means for Ukraine, NATO, and other global alliances and America’s standing in the world. In the second half, they discuss the rise of extremist voices on the American Right. Frum talks about the growing influence of fascist ideas, properly defined, and calls for renewed defence of democratic principles. You can listen to free versions of this episode on Amazon, Apple, and Spotify. If you liked what you heard in the first half of the program and wish to subscribe to full-length editions of In Conversation with David Frum, please consider becoming a Hub Hero. Hub Heroes also get access to all our paid content on TheHub.ca. All these benefits are conferred for one year. Sign up now! Program Transcript This is an automated transcript. Please check against the transcript. SEAN SPEER: David, thanks as always for joining me. DAVID FRUM: Thank you. Good to talk. SEAN SPEER: David, our listeners and viewers know that amongst the reasons that you’ve opposed President Trump since he really entered politics is because of his predisposition to Russia and the significant risk that he ultimately would sell out Ukraine. That has been a bit complicated over the past several months. At moments, it looks like he’s indeed going to sell out Ukraine. At other times, he seems to signal support for Ukraine. But in recent days, it looks like your concerns have indeed proven true. Talk a bit about this 28 point plan and how you’re thinking about it today. DAVID FRUM: Well, let’s start from the very start with your point about how Trump seemed to be wavering. I’ve never believed that. I think that’s an artifact of the way people respond to reporting. And the way I explained this is we’ve had many dogs in our lives, but we, one of our most hilarious dogs was a Labrador retriever named Chester. And Chester was very good at hunting squirrels. But we once, Chester and I came face to face with a herd of deer in a Washington park. And this dog who was always ready to chase a squirrel, looked away and couldn’t see the deer. There were five of them, couldn’t see them. And I came home and told the story to Danielle and we had a chuckle over it. And she said, well, Chester thinks some things are just too big to see. And that phrase entered our lexicon, our family lexicon. I think that’s what’s gone on. The Trump Russia relationship is just too big for Americans to see. And so there’s been a tremendous premium because Trump is often very disconnected from day to day work, because he talks in this hazy, vague style, because he always, I think he actually sometimes has hearing issues. And so he, he responds to questions that he doesn’t quite hear with, we’re looking at it, we’re considering it, we’ll look at that very strongly as a way of keeping at bay information that he can’t process. People who do not want to face the too big to see fact about the Trump Russia relationship have glommed onto little hints to think, oh, he’s reconsidering it. But, and, and to, to, in their defense, it should also be said that because most of the national security apparatus is still run by people with traditional loyalties to alliances, to American democracy, a lot of, a lot of the lower level connections to Ukraine have bumped along. Not, well, not. Technical assistance is sometimes provided. Trump stops it where he can. His, his senior people in his Department of Defense stop it. Where they can. But a lot of things are happening without their attention. So there’s been this effort to posit a kind of big struggle. But whenever the President weighs in, whenever the top echelons weigh in, it’s always in one direction. It’s not a. There’s not hesitation. They are on Russia’s side, and they’re emerging from being an intermediary on Russia’s side to now being an outright ally of the Russian point of view. And this 28 point plan, which experts in both the Russian language and decryption point out, was originally composed in Russian. It was a series of notes that the Russians wrote, presented to Steve Witkoff, and Steve Witkoff added one or two corrupt elements for Trump’s benefit and, and then said, right, this is now the new American plan. And here we are with a demand from Vice President Vance and his friend who’s the Secretary of the army, that Ukraine surrender by Thanksgiving. SEAN SPEER: I read in the past day or so a line that stayed with me that the consequence of the plan will leave Ukraine smaller, weaker and more vulnerable. Talk a bit about the details of the plan and why our listeners and viewers ought to be concerned about it. DAVID FRUM: Well, first, the plan begins with a completely false estimate of what this war is about, that the Russian side has made it very clear that what they are after is the destruction of Ukrainian independent capacity. The basic rule of history is that. Population than some, but poorer than most. So it is essential, if you are a Russian with imperial ambitions, the subordination of Ukraine is the most important existential fact for you. It’s not about having this city or that city. It’s about actually controlling the entire landmass and its potential wealth, moving the locus of Russian power westward. So that’s what this has always been all about. And everyone who pays attention to this issue understands that. So the 28 point plan begins by positing that Russia just wants some territory. What? Well, a lot of people, why they should get it. But it is prepared to head over territories not only that Russia occupies, but territories that Russia does not occupy, many of which have been fortified. And so when people make these comparisons to Munich, 1938, Hitler wanted the Sudetenland in 1938, not only because that’s where the German speaking population of Czechoslovakia, as the country was then known, was, but also because that’s where the Czechs had built a ring of forts. Once you had the Sudetenland, you rendered the rest of the Czechoslovakia defenseless. And that’s sort of what the Russians want. They want to have a veto over the internal politics of Ukraine. No NATO, also implicitly no entry into the European Union, which is where all of this started back in 2014 when Ukrainians began to negotiate entry not into NATO, but into the European Union. Restriction of the size of the Ukrainian army. What business is that of Russia’s? As if Russia has some. Russia has nothing to fear from Ukrainian aggression, but Ukraine has a great deal to fear from Russian aggression. And you shrink the Ukrainian army by from 900,000 to 600,000 and forbid any foreign assistance to Ukraine, you’re just rendering the country defenseless. And that’s, that’s the Russian point of view. And that is, of course, the point of that is unfortunately, but of course, the point of view of the inner circle around President Trump. Do what the Russians want. SEAN SPEER: So let’s, let’s be blunt and direct. What would be the logical consequences of this plan being imposed on Ukraine? What does that mean for Ukraine in 2, 3, 5, 10, 10 years from now? DAVID FRUM: Well, let’s work. It’s not just for Ukraine. What it means for Ukraine is Ukraine becomes a Russian satellite. That Ukraine would have to align its foreign policy with Russia, its economic policy with Russia. And by the way, it would probably you would empower those in Ukraine, and there are some who wish to do that because you would completely give the lie to everyone who said Ukraine could have a European future, economically, a Western future. Ukraine would have been repudiated, humiliated, it would have lost. It would have no ability to reconstruct. There would be no flow of Western aid. All of that would would come from. They would be utterly dependent on Russia. They would become like Belarus, not a necessarily a formal part of the Russian state, but a essentially a Russian satellite and colony. Their politics, like Belarus would become more authoritarian and corrupt. But the consequences wouldn’t flow there because the message would go forth around the planet that an American security guarantee is worthless. The United States has been supporting Ukraine in one way or another since 2014, much more intensely since this fighting became so vicious in 2022 and it’s now Ukraine will have lost the war because the United States abandoned it. And it will have abandoned it not because of any exhaustion of the United States or any defeat, but because of the internal corruption of American politics that has brought pro Russian people to the highest levels of government. So if you’re Taiwanese, if you’re Danish, if you’re anybody, you have to think America is not our protector anymore. And so although the NATO headquarters would continue to exist and people would go to work there every morning, it would be over. Every US Led security arrangement would be over. And anybody who is in danger would understand that their choices are either acquire, like Israel, such military capacity that you don’t need an American guarantee, including potentially nuclear capacity. I mean, the thing that the South Koreans, for example, would have to think about, or make some kind of arrangement with the local hegemon who’s not America. If you’re near China, if you’re near Russia, make your deal with them. America is just not reliable. It won’t help you. SEAN SPEER: We’ll come to how Canada, Europe and others ought to respond to these developments in a minute. Before we wrap up this part of our conversation, but I want to get to something you raised earlier, David, which is the extent to which this represents a fault line even in the world of, at the lack of better term, America first or MAGA politics. Last Monday I was in Ottawa where I moderated a panel with a series of intellectuals who are adjacent to the Trump administration and write and talk about foreign policy issues. And, and my sense is that they understand Russia as part of a broader mix of hostile actors in the world like China, Iran and others. And yet, as you say, there seems to be a critical mass in and around President Trump, including Vice President J.D. vance, David Sachs and others who are championing this pro Russia position. Talk a bit about those tensions with on the American right in general. But, but even within the kind of Trump adjacent intellectual world in particular. DAVID FRUM: Well, again, there’s a too big to see phenomenon going on here. So in the first Trump term, there are people who are more or less traditional Republicans who made a series of tactical arrangements with Trump without liking him very much. And you see that many of the Republican senators, much of the Republican national security establishment, someone like HR McMaster who served as national security advisor, would not have been a pro Trump person, but country called, duty called. He went to work and he tried to make Trump as much like a normal Republican as he could. Jim Mattis, the same. Rex Tillerson, the same. And of course, probably all but a handful of the Republican senators the same in this second term, which Trump won much more clear cut, in a much more clear cut fashion than he won his first. He decisively won the primaries and then he won, not on a technicality of the electoral colleges he did the first time, but he actually won a plurality of the vote. Many of those traditional have made a much deeper accommodation to Trumpism, but they continue to. So they adopt they’ve internalized America first as their own slogan, but they have not completely abandoned Their loyalty to actual America. And so they try to push and pull Trump to be more like a normal Republican. Now some areas they’ve given up, for example, honesty in government. No, I mean, the President is stealing, he’s self dealing. I mean, it is, as I often say, Donald Trump is not just the most corrupt president in American history. If he were a Nigerian, he’d be a contender for the title of most corrupt president in Nigerian history. I mean, it’s, that’s, it’s billion dollars levels of corruption, but they’ve jettisoned that, they’ve jettisoned any sense of decorum and decency that the President can threaten to hang his opponents. And that doesn’t, I, I think they might interpose if he actually did try to hang his opponents, although he did try to hang James Comey and, and although the courts threw it out, there was no objection within the Republican world. Still, they’re trying to integrate Trump into something that already exists. Then there are the people who actually represent the thing that Trump is leading, the movement he’s leading. And they are pro Russian for ideological reasons, for corruption reasons, for a host of reasons. They want to deliver Ukraine to Russia and they will work very hard to do that as Vice President Vance is doing it. SEAN SPEER: Yeah. Which brings me to my final question in this part of the conversation, which is what do the rest of us do as we see this play out in real time? There’s reports, for instance, of meetings over the weekend in Geneva where some European players sought to intervene. What comes next? And what should other G7 leaders and other leaders around the world be doing to try to head this eventuality off? DAVID FRUM: It depends who you are and where you sit. I think this particular agreement will eventually collapse. It is too blatantly and obviously a Russian intervention stealthily shepherded into American politics by Vice President Vance and his friend, Secretary of the Army. And the Ukrainians have enough clout that they can resist this plan. But the idea that Trump is abandoning Ukraine, I think people need to see that. That has been a consistent theme of policy, with little pauses and interruptions and detours. But that’s been the policy since he came into office. And everyone around the world needs to say that means you cannot assume that an American security guarantee that you thought you had, you still have. And even if you’re pretty, if you, even if you’re Canada and the American security guarantee is still there that understand this is no longer a security guarantee of mutual respect and collective security. This is a colonial. The American view of Canada is it’s going to come into the American zone of influence. It’s going to be subordinated to the American tariff structure and America will protect it against third party threats, but not out of regard for Canada, but because Canada is regarded as an American protectorate in which America has exclusive economic rights. And therefore and others keep out. And the same will be true of Mexico. So that seems to be the thought about Venezuela as well. Greenland, make them protectorates of one kind or another and keep out others. But beyond that, North American Upper Caribbean zone, the world needs to understand you cannot. Trump was president twice. It was not a fluke. And he came back to office a second time worse and more aggressive and with broader support. And the likeliest successor to Donald Trump has these same ideas, only more so and with more work ethic and less blatant corruption. So this is a possible future and you have to plan for it. That means if you’re South Korea, you have to get yourself a nuclear bomb. If you’re Japan, you have to get yourself a nuclear bomb. If you’re the European Union, you have to find some way to convert the French nuclear force into a European nuclear force and integrate your foreign policy that what Trump has done is brought about a world in which it used to be that there was an American aspiration for a planet of collective security, except for some marginal. Except for China and other small authoritarian countries. But there was a broad west that was no longer westerly. It encompassed much of the planet. It was overseen by the United States, but it provided collective security and mutually beneficial economic arrangements. Trump resigns from that. He wants American protectorates, exploitive economic arrangements, and otherwise you’re on your own. And the United States under his leadership, and this is his vision and that of J.D. vance as well. There’s one big power among others, along with China and India and maybe Russia, a little less vicious than some, but also a lot less predictable than some. And everybody will have to make their own arrangements. So we are moving into a world of power blocks, more conflict, more violence, more nuclear proliferation. And Canada doesn’t have great options, or in fact, any options in this world. It has to negotiate. But then the future for Canada is that of an American protectorate under American economic domination, under unequal economic arrangements. And a force to abide by American security dictates whether it will or no. SEAN SPEER: I’m sorry, David. I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask. Do you think that the intellectual and political currents behind that abandonment of unipolarity and a much more aggressive and and less magnanimous United States are durable, that is to say, after 2028, irrespective of who wins. Is it the smart bet to assume that those conditions remain broadly in place? DAVID FRUM: I don’t think you should. I don’t think you predict that they will remain in place or that they will prevail, but anybody has to assume they’re a fact. So something that was once unthinkable is now thinkable. So when you’re making your security arrangements as Canada or the European Union or South Korea or Japan, there are things you used to know that you no longer know. You no longer know that America’s word is good. You no longer know that NATO is there. It might be there depending on who’s president, but you can’t predict that. And so you have to make your arrangements for not just best case scenarios, but intermediate and worst case scenarios. It’s very possible that J.D. vance was the next president of the United States, in which case Taiwan is Chinese. It’s very and South Korea is who will have to fight for its national independence against aggression from North Korea by and whoever backs North Korea. Maybe Israel will be within the zone of protection. But I mean, Vance is drawing a lot of his support from the people who really hate Israel and hate international Jewish communities. So maybe they know something about them. So everybody will have to make their own. But what the the goal is the overthrow of America as a guarantor of world security, the replacement of a system of mutual economic benefit with one of American exploitation and predation. And that’s one of the three most likely outcomes after any election. It may not be the single most likely, but it’s one of the top three. So you have to plan for it. SEAN SPEER: A sober way to wrap up the first half of this conversation on behalf of our free listeners and viewers, thanks a lot.