The Thing About Zelensky

As I suggested yesterday, the world globalist consensus doesn't know quite what to do with President Zelensky. Leading up to February 24, the conventional wisdom across the board was that Russia would reach Kyiv within days, and the humane option was to offer Zelensky and his circle rides out on C-130s. When he refused to do this, it took policymakers by surprise and created an instant bien pensant consensus in favor of Ukraine, without a whole lot of reflection on what this might imply. Witness just this tweet from last night:

At fundraiser tonight, @POTUS blasted GOP for potentially scaling down aid to Ukraine. “It's a lot bigger than Ukraine. It's Eastern Europe. It's NATO. It's real serious, serious consequential outcomes. They have no sense of American foreign policy."

— Mike Memoli (@mikememoli) October 20, 2022

But wait, up to late February, American foreign policy was to offer Zelensky a ride out, wasn't it?

The Associated Press reported that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected an offer to be evacuated from the U.S. government. Zelenskyy's reply, according to a senior American intelligence official: "The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride."

At least, we may infer that a ride was what the US officially offered, and a "senior intelligence official" was aware of the reply. I would say that this almost immediately put the US foreign policy establishment in a bind -- in the wake of the disaster in Kabul, they couldn't risk a repeat, at least not so soon. This was the start of a pattern whereby Zelensky could use his charisma and his underdog status to force policy decisions on Western politicians that they were in fact reluctant to make. Months later, the US president has done an effective 180, accusing Republicans of not being with the program:

It's a lot bigger than Ukraine. It's Eastern Europe. It's NATO. It's real serious, serious consequential outcomes. They have no sense of American foreign policy.

But this isn't the only area where Zelensky has been forcing changes. Consider dcevelopments over Iran's new involvement in the Ukraine war vis-s-vis former US Iran policy:

During his initial presidential campaign in 2007-08, Barack Obama repeatedly declared his intention to improve US-Iran relations, and he followed through after taking office. However, President Obama took a different approach than his predecessors. Previous US-Iran engagements maintained the US-stated intention of changing the nature of the Islamic regime in Iran, seeking global improvement on a host of issues, and kept the threat of military force ever-present. . . . Obama sought to assure not only the Iranian people but also its leadership that Washington’s intention was not to alter the nature of the Islamic Republic, but to engage the leadership in Tehran through dialogue and multilateralism. He narrowed the topic to encouraging a behavioral change on the specific issue of nuclear fuel enrichment. The US president’s policy approach to Iran’s nuclear question is the best-applied example of what is now known as the Obama Doctrine.

In 2018, Trump backed out of the Obama nuclear deal, but Biden's somewhat vague intent has been

to get Iran to return to compliance with the technical nuclear aspects of the agreement. The second is to commence additional negotiations on three areas beyond the JCPOA: Iran’s ballistic-missile development, its malign activities in the region, and extending timelines on some aspects of its civil nuclear activities.

But now the US is officially acknowkedging that Iran is directly supporting the Russian side in the Ukraine war:

The White House confirmed on October 20 that Iranian military personnel are in Russian-occupied Crimea, Ukraine, to assist Russian forces in conducting drone attacks on Ukrainian civilians and civilian infrastructure. US National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby told reporters that “a relatively small number” of Iranian personnel are in Crimea to train Russian personnel in the use of unfamiliar Iranian-made drones. Kirby emphasized that “Tehran is now directly engaged on the ground and through the provision of weapons that are impacting civilians and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, that are killing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure in Ukraine” and warned that Russia and Iran will continue to lie about their partnership.

At minimum, this makes the Biden foreign policy prospect of a grand deal on the Middle East brokered with the concurrence of Iran even more remote, but with the radical shift in the balance of power illustrated by the Russian collapse in Ukraine, if Iran comes in on the Russian side, this also lowers its world standing. From the Jerusalem Post:

Iran’s increasing role in backing Russia has increased awareness of Iranian threats. This illustrates that although the Islamic Republic was involved in human-rights abuses in Iraq and Syria, backing Hamas, the Houthis and Hezbollah, and carrying out attacks all over the Middle East, threatening the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, US forces, Turkish forces in Iraq and others, it is Iran’s role in helping Russia that has tipped the scales against itself.

. . . Iran’s crackdown on protests and its decision to grow closer to Russia, at a time when the West is angered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, appears to be a final straw regarding any appeasement of Tehran. Now, it is clear that Iran’s threats won’t remain in the Middle East and that working with it hasn’t helped. Instead, it empowered Tehran to work with Moscow, which is using Iranian-style weapons to kill civilians in Ukraine.

These developments can all be traced back to Zelensky and his leadership in the war. He's actually had wide-ranging impact on global policy, and I have an inkling that most globalists haven't been very comfortable with him. He's an extremely skilled actor with Ukraine's interests primarily, if not exclusively, in mind, and where these conflict with globalist interests, he won't hesitate to resist, which he's shown he can effectively do.