In April 1966, Senator J.W. Fulbright, Chair of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, gave a remarkable and highly-publicized speech at Johns Hopkins University, condemning the U.S. role in the Vietnam War. Warning of "the arrogance of power", Fulbright argued that "we are not living up to our capacity and promise as a civilized power for the world". It turned out to be a momentous speech, enraging President Lyndon Johnson and providing a rallying point for U.S. critics of the conflict.
That arrogance was once again on display on February 28, 2025, as U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance proceeded to berate, bully, and interrupt Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a televised meeting at the White House. Complaining that Zelensky was "not acting at all thankful" for U.S. government aid to Ukraine, Trump was also irked that the Ukrainian president was not eager to accept his scheme to have Ukraine give the United States $500 billion worth of Ukraine's rare earth minerals without any security guarantees in exchange.
Nor was Trump's abusive behavior toward the embattled Ukrainian leader out of character. Only a little earlier that month, Trump had falsely called Zelensky "a dictator," falsely claimed that Zelensky had a "4% approval rating," and falsely accused Ukraine of starting the war with Russia.
The "peace" agreement with Russia that Trump expected Zelensky to accept had been hammered out in secret U.S. negotiations with Russia, from which Ukraine had been excluded. It was a diplomatic agreement much like the Munich Pact of 1938, in which the governments of Britain, France, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany met to deal with Hitler's demands for Czech territory and-- without consulting the Czechs-- agreed to these demands. The following year, Nazi Germany gobbled up the rest of Czechoslovakia.
Trump's lack of respect for Zelensky apparently results, at least in part, from the difference in power of their two nations. Lyndon Johnson had believed that the United States could simply not be defeated by Vietnam, which he dismissed as a "raggedly-ass little fourth-rate country". Similarly, not principle, but the power of their two nations was what mattered to Trump, who, in his February 28 confrontation with Zelensky, lectured him, stating: "You gotta be thankful. You don't have the cards. With us, you have the cards." Trump felt offended by Zelensky because the Ukrainian leader didn't accept what white supremacists, when addressing people of color, used to call "your place", which in Trump's view, was as an underling.
Trump never had any such problem with Putin who, in his view, is a fellow Master of the Universe. During his first term in office, Trump showed a remarkable fondness for the Russian strongman, accepting Putin's assurance that Russia didn't meddle in the 2016 election, despite evidence to the contrary produced by U.S. intelligence officials, a report by a bipartisan Senate panel, and an extensive investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller. Trump even shared classified information with the Russian ambassador and foreign minister. Explaining the Trump-Putin bromance, Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a national security official in the first two years of Trump's administration, remarked: "Trump views Putin as a strongman."
Trump's assumption that, along with Putin and a few other "strongmen", he is born to rule the world, flows not only from his position as president of the world's most powerful nation, but from deeper wellsprings. After all, he spent much of his life as a ruthless billionaire business tycoon, in a classic, no-holds-barred scramble for wealth and power. Not surprisingly, he emerged with an elevated view of his superiority to people of more modest circumstances. He was, of course, a "genius", Trump proclaimed repeatedly with characteristic hubris. Unlike so many others he dismissed with contempt as his inferiors, he possessed what he liked to call "good genes".
Overall, then, Trump's arrogance plays a major part in his domineering approach to the world. How else can we explain his recent glib talk of making Canada the 51st state, or of seizing Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Gaza? And there is also Trump's disdain for the United Nations, where all countries-- the large and the small, the powerful and the weak-- have pledged to work together for the common good.
Unfortunately, as Senator Fulbright understood, a more egalitarian, more cooperative world is out of bounds for those consumed by the arrogance of power.
Lawrence S. Wittner (https://www.lawrenceswittner.com/ ) is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).
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