‘Trump now understands Putin is lying’, says former US diplomat Kurt Volker

Diplomacy has never been needed more, with war raging in Ukraine and conflict in the Middle East. Kurt Volker is one of America's most experienced diplomats. His counsel has been sought everywhere, from the White House to Europe and beyond. Volker joins me for a special edition of Roundtable where we talk in-depth about everything from President Trump's stance on NATO following the Ankara summit, US support for Ukraine, the US-Israeli war on Iran, of what it's really like to work with President Trump. Hello and welcome to Roundtable, I'm Enda Brady. Today I'm joined by the former American diplomat Kurt Volker. He spent decades shaping US and European security policy, working with President Trump during his first term as the special representative for Ukraine negotiations. And under President George W. Bush, he was US ambassador to NATO. I'm delighted to welcome Kurt Volker now to Roundtable. Kurt, great to have you with us. First of all, just give us your assessment on that recent NATO summit in the Turkish capital. I think that the NATO summit was really quite successful. I know a lot of people were worried about Trump blowing up the alliance, but really it was quite the opposite of that. You had President Trump leaving the NATO meeting, saying there was a great deal of unity. I don't think I've heard him use that word before in reference to NATO. He said there was a great deal of unity, there was a lot of love in that room. He clearly wanted this summit to be a success for a variety of reasons. One of them, because of the host, because he wanted President Erdogan of Turkey to feel that this was a success. He didn't want to rain on that parade. Also, as you know, we've had quite a difficult time in this war against Iran. And I think President Trump didn't want to have problems in Europe at the same time that he's dealing with the problems with Iran. He actually wanted to garner some European support, which I think he did. I was also very pleased to see, as President Trump was, the numbers on defense spending. European allies have really stepped up a lot since President Trump first took office. The Secretary General of NATO calls this the Trump trillion, because it's about a trillion dollars that have been spent per year, additionally, since the first year President Trump was president in 2017. So that's significant. Some of that is going into defense industry, which will produce capability for the long term, not just short-term procurement. And President Trump also made a very significant statement or two with President Zelensky of Ukraine. First thing he did was, when they sat down together, he said, I like this guy. We have a good relationship. I know that sounds simple and obvious, but it's a very important signal for the far right in the US, for the MAGA movement, that it's OK to support Ukraine. And then he did something else, which is to say he would allow Ukraine to produce Patriot missiles under license. That is a very big decision. It's going to help everyone. It's going to help Ukraine, of course, with its air defense. It's going to help ease the strain on these systems around the world. Gulf allies, Israel, European allies, the United States, and so forth. So overall, a lot of very positive things out of the summit. And, Kirk, can I just ask, you mentioned President Erdogan and Turkey, eh? This was a significant moment, wasn't it, when there was so much pressure going into the summit in Ankara that people were very, very worried, and yet Trump, out of what he said was respect for Erdogan, it all came together. Yeah. Well, that's exactly right. People were very worried. We can't forget that. There's this destructive factor that Trump brings with him everywhere he goes, and people are concerned that something will go wrong. But in this particular case, he said himself that he wanted this to be a success for Erdogan. He claimed, and I think this is somewhat disingenuous, but he claimed he may not even have gone to the summit if it wasn't President Erdogan hosting. I think that's just his way of trying to flatter Erdogan. But nonetheless, it was clear that he wanted to make this a success. For those who follow this closely, and I count myself among them, I was not at all surprised. I was telling people a few weeks out this was going to be a good summit because of these reasons. But in fact, it did play out exactly that way, that Trump wanted it to be a success. And, Kirk, do you feel it was a good summit for Ukraine that Zelensky came away happy? Absolutely. And the very first thing to remember is that President Zelensky was invited. Putin was not, of course, but President Zelensky was. So as much as Putin or others, even Erdogan, sometimes like to portray Turkey as kind of a neutral mediator or a safe place for negotiations, the fact that Zelensky was invited to the NATO summit by Erdogan, welcomed at the meeting, strong support from NATO, both in the messaging, in the defense commitments to Ukraine in terms of equipment and training. The meeting with President Trump, that was very positive. I think it was a very successful meeting for President Zelensky. Kirk, what's your take on the kind of revolving door in Ukraine? They lose a defense minister, they get a new prime minister. What's going on there? What do you see is happening? Yeah, this, in my mind, is a bit problematic. They're in the midst of a war. They do have to pay attention to corruption scandals and issues. They do have to make sure that the people running things have the confidence of the president. But they also need to have some stability, both for the public and for the performance of the armed forces. I think the defense minister, Fedorov, has done an excellent job in helping the Ukrainian armed forces improve their technological edge. He is a tech guy himself. They have really improved the drones, counter drones, electronic warfare, missile industry development. A lot of things have been happening that have been good. So you wonder, why is now the time to replace the defense minister? What was your take on Trump saying that Ukraine, under license, can start making Patriot missiles? How big is that, Kurt? I think that's huge. That is a brilliant decision. One that, if you had let the bureaucracy churn on this for several weeks, they would have come up with all the reasons why it's impossible. But President Trump, I think, saw the issues very clearly. Ukraine is out, or was out, of Patriot missile interceptors, which they need to protect the civilian population. Russia knew that Ukraine was out of these interceptors and deliberately targeted the civilian population. Massive missile attacks in Kyiv, in the Odessa region, against port facilities, against civilian infrastructure. And for drones and slower flying things, Ukraine has good air defenses. But for the missiles, they really had nothing. And the United States needs these Patriot interceptors as well for our own forces in the Middle East, in the war against Iran, for the Gulf allies, for Israel. Our European allies need them, and we are simply not making enough of them. And the U.S. has not been able to ramp up production very quickly. Ukraine will be able to ramp up production much more quickly. And giving them the license to do so, I think, will solve a lot of problems for a lot of people. For the Ukrainians, for the U.S., it'll provide revenue for the defense industry. It will ease the global demand. So overall, this is a very important decision. It's also, I should add, a very important signal to Vladimir Putin. Putin was hoping that he could derail the NATO summit, that he could again convince Trump that he really wants peace, and Zelensky has to give him something. And I think Trump is tired of hearing that from Putin. Putin is not taking any steps to end this war, and he's attacking civilians. And Trump sees these pictures of the damage in Kyiv, the apartment buildings, the children that are killed, and so forth. And I think he's tired of it. Kurt, you read my mind. I wanted to get on to Putin. The relationship between Trump and Putin does seem to have changed significantly. What's behind it? Well, I think that President Trump initially believed that President Putin would be reasonable, that he would accept a good deal, that he would want peace. He'd want to see young people no longer being killed. He would want to get sanctions lifted. He would want to make money. And President Trump tried to put together a good deal that Putin should have accepted. And instead, Putin is not motivated by any of those things. He's motivated by rebuilding the Russian empire and subjugating Ukraine as part of that. Something that Trump didn't fully understand at the beginning of his term. But the more he's dealt with Putin, I think the more he has realized that Putin is lying to him. And as he said once, tapping him along, pretending that he's offering progress or offering deals, when in fact he's not. And I think President Trump has increasingly seen Putin as in a aggressive and weak position. And Ukraine as in a more, a stronger position, really. They have gotten stronger in four years of war. They're taking the fight to Russia with long range attacks, energy refining capacity, oil export capacity, logistics that support the Russian forces in the field. Ukraine is doing very, very well on their own. And Russia is not doing as well. And I think this has all covered President Trump's view of Putin now. So what's your honest assessment of what Putin does next? Because Russia's losing 30,000 soldiers a month. That is unsustainable. And the economic side of it as well. Is there an off-ramp here soon for Putin? Putin doesn't want an off-ramp. He wants to achieve his goal of re-establishing a Russian empire and bringing Ukraine into it. So he's going to keep trying. He is willing to inflict a lot of suffering on the people and the economy of Russia. So I think that he's going to keep going for a while. But there will come a point, I don't think we're there yet, but there will come a point when the money runs out, that he is, from oil and gas sales, he is not getting enough money in to pay for the war that he's waging. And there'll come a point where he doesn't have the manpower. He's losing, as you say, 30,000 people a month on the field. He can't recruit that many to replace them with. And that's going to dwindle the Russian armed forces over time. My best guess is that Putin wants to try one more time to freeze the Ukrainians during the winter. He wants to take out the energy grid, see if that can force the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian economy to buckle. It's not going to work. But I think he's going to give it another try. And then when it doesn't work, and we're sometime in the new year, then he may find that Russia actually needs a ceasefire if he wants to keep the Russian state afloat. And that, I think, is where we are headed. We'll never have a peace agreement with Putin. To have one would require Putin to accept that Ukraine is a sovereign independent state, that Zelensky is the legitimate leader of that state, and that there's an international border between Russia and Ukraine. Putin will never agree to those things. So the best we're going to get is an end to the fighting, a ceasefire, which then becomes as long and durable as we can make it. Kurt, talk to me about President Trump. I'm intrigued to know, what's he like? What's it like working for President Donald J. Trump? Well, I've only met him about four times, and that was during the first term. He is super high energy. He talks all the time. He knows what he wants to say. He is always pushing people for the things that he wants. It's very hard to get a point across. But if you're persistent, and you know what you're talking about, and you are holding your ground, he'll at least hear you. I think that in the first term, he was more open to that. In the second term, he seems to basically have taken a lesson from the first term. I think he feels in the first term that he was thwarted a little bit. He didn't get to do everything that he wanted to do. The deep state held him back. And so in the second term, he's made a lot of changes. He doesn't have the level and the competence of people around him that he had in the first term. It is much more him calling all of the shots and giving direction, and he wants people to be loyal and execute what he says. That's very different from the first term. And I think that accounts for why there have been many more unintended consequences in the second term. In the first term, you had people who were anticipating and mitigating any consequences and helping him, in a way, be successful, even though he felt he was being restrained. In the second term, it's all President Trump. And I think that has had some successes, as we've seen, but he's also had some very serious unintended consequences. Kirk, you will be aware that there are some people in Europe every day ticking off the weeks until Trump is gone. Does the MAGA movement end with Trump, or have we got this to look forward to for decades? Yeah. The one thing you can be sure about in politics, especially American politics, is everything always changes. There is no permanence to anything. It was not that long ago people were talking about a blue wave that was going to be demographically overwhelming the United States, impossible for the Republicans to win elections. We had the Tea Party movement, which seemed to destroy the Republican Party, and then take it over. And then you have the MAGA movement, and people are saying, oh, now MAGA is taking over the Republican Party. Things will constantly change. And I think President Trump is a rather unique figure because he is incredibly charismatic, incredibly energetic and aggressive in the way that he does things. He is a deeply flawed person, and yet people forgive him those flaws because they are impressed with his energy and his charisma. He has shaped this MAGA movement. He has defined what America first means. In fact, he himself says, MAGA is me. He says that, you know, whatever I say MAGA is, is what it is. So that is the nature of it. I don't think there's another leader in the United States that would carry this movement without President Trump or other than President Trump. And I also think that people know that there are a lot of excesses that we see in the way things are going right now. Lack of expertise, personal or business ambition and gain. President Trump has made a trillion dollars while in office or something like that. It's an enormous, no, I'm sorry, billion dollars while in office, something like that. It's amazing that this is happening and people are accepting it because it's President Trump. But I don't see this continuing in the same way after he finishes his term. Well, that leads me to my next question, Kurt. Who comes next? I don't know if you're a predictions guy, but everyone in Europe is itching to know. Is it J.D. Vance? Is it Marco Rubio or A.N. Other? Yeah, it's far too early to say. I think the results of the midterm elections will impact that. It looks as though the Republicans are not going to do very well in these midterm elections. Inflation has been stubborn, especially gasoline prices high because of the war against Iran. We've been involved in a lot of foreign adventures, and that's not what people thought they were getting when they voted for President Trump the second time. So the Republicans look like they will not do well. If that's the case, then people start casting about, well, what is going to do well in the next presidential election? J.D. Vance is in the poll position right now for the Republicans, but that may not be true a year from now. Marco Rubio almost equal in popularity to J.D. Vance right now among Republican voters. That may not be true a year from now, we'll see. And it could be that there'll be someone who is not in the political mix right now who can come forward and say, look, we need a break. We need an alternative. We need something different than where we've been going. And the Democrats are just crazy, so you need me. That kind of pitch could actually work after the midterm. So we'll simply have to wait and see. You mentioned the war in Iran. Are you surprised there doesn't seem to be any grand exit strategy here for the United States? I'm surprised there's not a victory strategy. If you're going to launch a war, you should have a plan to win. And I think we had a very simplistic idea at the beginning. We'll decapitate the regime and then they'll just collapse. Well, that didn't happen, and I think predictably didn't happen. Then the Iranians felt free to launch strikes and to fight back. They've attacked the Gulf states. They've attacked Israel. They have closed the Strait of Hormuz. And they have a much easier time than we do, because denial is a lot easier than control. So they just need to hit one ship and they're denying the use of the strait because everyone's afraid that theirs might be next. Controlling the strait and keeping it open, as we're trying to do, very, very difficult. The only way this really gets resolved, in my view, is a regime change in Iran that treats its people better, that treats its neighbors better, gets along with them, and that is peaceful. We do not have that regime now, and we won't as long as the current regime is in power. And we're going to end up with a standoff with Iran, sometimes violent, for a long time. And it seems to me that should be unacceptable. We should be making plans for a regime change in Iran, but that is not something a President Trump or the administration seem prepared to do. Kurt, how has he managed to square it with his Republican support base, having told people no more pointless foreign wars, no more loss of life, no more American dollars being spent on warfare for no reason. And yet here we are. Yeah, well, he keeps claiming that the war is over. And he keeps claiming that the Iranians have been defeated and they're begging for negotiations and they want this to stop. And so he keeps telling people that don't worry, you know, this is all over. The reality is what we see with our own eyes, which is that, no, the Iranians are doing exactly what they have been doing for 47 years and are going to keep doing it. And I think President Trump wants to get through the midterms. He doesn't want the war against Iran to color them any more than it already has. And then I think after the midterms, he's going to have to make some decisions about what we really do. Kurt, I just want to get your opinion on European security. Obviously, Trump has put the screws on European leaders and countries to spend more money. Do you think he's done us a favor ultimately? Absolutely, yes. Many, many U.S. presidents, going back to Reagan when I started, have urged Europe to do more on defense. President Bush, when I served in the National Security Council, was pushing them to do more on defense and even lowered the target. It had been 3% of GDP. And he said, let's just say 2% and maybe people will really do it. And they didn't. President Obama at the Wales summit got all of NATO to agree formally. It's going to be 2% of GDP. And nobody did it. President Trump, supported by President Putin's aggression. But President Trump has pushed and pushed and gotten allies to actually spend more. And it is making a difference. And I think NATO is stronger because of it. Kurt, you mentioned your previous boss, George W. Bush, when he was president. What was the main difference between working for Bush and working for Trump? Oh, it's night and day. President Bush, first off, is a person who is deeply committed to values. He's a very decent person. He treats people well. He's a very honorable person. He has dignity. Then he also has tremendous expertise. He reads all the time. You would do briefing memos for President Bush. They were due the day before the meeting or the phone call. He would read everything. And then you'd go meet him, debrief him. He'd be quizzing you about what was in the memo to see if you really believed it. He was really on top of everything that way. It was not his public image at the time. He had this Texas drawl that he liked to use, or maybe couldn't change. But that was deceptive because he was very, very sharp. President Trump is sharp, but in a very different way. Everything is instinct for him. He reads situations. He reads people. And he goes with his gut feeling without reliance on knowledge or expertise, I would sometimes have to say. And Kurt, just from the outside, looking in on Europe, how do you think we're doing? We get a lot of tough love from this American administration, J.D. Vance in particular, who says he loves countries like Britain and he enjoys holidaying here in the United Kingdom. And yet the rhetoric doesn't match up. How do you think we're doing in Europe overall? You know, I think that Europeans get lost in their own emotions sometimes. They can't stand Trump so much that they react to that rather than considering what is the actual situation and what do we need to do. And if they could drop the emotionalism and focus on the to-do list, I think they'd realize that things are not so bad, actually. Europe does need more defense. They are creating more defense. Europe should exercise more leadership over the security of the continent, and it is beginning to do so. Russia really is a threat to Europe. They have to be deterred. Ukraine is a critical part of deterring Russia in the future and needs to be brought into the European fold. These are all things that Europe is gradually doing. They're just mad at Donald Trump, but it's not about him. It's about what the situation is and what really needs to be done. Kurt, final question, and thank you so much for your time on Roundtable today. A lot of speculation in Europe and worry that Putin will eventually attack one of the Baltic nations. Do you think that really might happen? I don't think so. You always have to be prepared. NATO needs to have that possibility firmly in mind. We need to have the forces in place, the delegated decision-making in place and the messaging in place to deter Putin from that kind of attack. He needs to know that it would be devastating for Russia. There would be a massive collective response if he were to attack a NATO ally. We need to be very, very clear about that, and I don't think he'll really do it. I think what we're hearing lately, the idea that he might do this as a way of escalating or widening the war against Ukraine, I think that is being fed to us in intelligence channels by the Russians to get us to worry about it and to get us to back down in support for Ukraine. I don't think it's the real Russian intention, and I don't think they believe that it would advance their interests at all to do that. Kurt Volker, I could talk to you all day, but the clock has beaten us. Thank you so much for your time. And remember, you can see more discussion and debate on our YouTube channel. Search for Roundtable TRT World. But for now, from me and the Brady and all the team here, goodbye, and thank you for watching.