How JD Vance is displaying ‘primitive, savage and evil impulses’ that Freud warned about

What a difference a week of weird international diplomacy can make! Donald Trump has trashed any trust in dialogue and paused military aid to Ukraine. Putin can’t believe his luck. A pariah state, Russia, and an emerging rogue state, the US, are combining to try to destroy a European country’s sovereignty.

The cruel, mob-like ambush of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky – orchestrated by the White House but also possibly the Kremlin and clumsily enacted by Trump and his Vice-President, JD Vance – should be a wake-up call to those who believe ethics have no part to play in reshaping the international order.

It seems clear it was designed to lay the groundwork for cutting off military aid to Ukraine. This attempt to humiliate Zelensky into accepting the terms of a surrender agreed by Trump and Putin, but without discussions with Ukraine or any security guarantees, is a moral outrage.

US President Donald Trump and Vice-President JD Vance lambasted Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky doing a press conference in the Oval Office of the White House (Picture: Saul Loeb) | AFP via Getty Images

Political brutalism on public display

Vance, determined to provoke a fight, suggested Zelensky had shown disrespect to Trump and America. What followed was an astonishing display of an unhinged and enraged Trump creating a political crisis that the UK, other Nato members and the EU are now having to deal with. Ukraine should not be experiencing military aggression on the battlefield and political aggression in the White House.

Some Americans have taken to the streets in support of Ukraine, with their anger reinforced by suggestions that the rammy was stage-managed. A journalist from Russian state media was initially allowed in to cover the meeting, while the Associated Press, Reuters and others who have long reported such events were barred.

Trump’s attempted extortion of Ukraine over its rare earth minerals failed. He lost the deal. His temper exploded. A rarely seen political brutalism was on public display.

In 2001, I visited the White House to meet President George W Bush, and went to the Lincoln Memorial, the Reflecting Pool on the Washington Mall and Arlington Cemetery. These are incredibly special political places with a sense of history and pride. They are revered by millions of Americans. But today the best of the US is being sacrificed on the altar of not “America First” but “Trump’s Ego First”.

The danger of allowing morality to die

Nato and the EU must face up to the new international order, but cannot bend the knee to Trump. Instead Europe must recognise that defence, security and rearmament are now its priorities. It also needs to recognise its strengths and take itself more seriously.

Keir Starmer has gained many plaudits for his handling of Trump and rightly so. This week has seen the Prime Minister working with the EU and the US to secure Ukraine’s future. A vision of an ethical approach, amidst the carnage, may seem remote, idealistic and naïve, but when Trump is such a threat it is worth at least making an effort to explore alternatives.

We are in danger of allowing morality to die if we continue to surrender ethical principles. In a prophetic 2016 Guardian article, headlined Welcome to the Age of Anger, Indian writer Pankaj Mishra said intellectual assumptions of the Cold War and “its jubilant aftermath” were no longer a reliable guide. Instead, he wrote: “It is a moment for thinkers such as Sigmund Freud, who warned in 1915 that the ‘primitive, savage and evil impulses of mankind have not vanished in any individual’, but are simply waiting for the opportunity to show themselves again.” This was evident in JD Vance’s performance last week.

In this period of acute global anxiety, the ideas of a great and thoughtful Scottish politician, the late Robin Cook MP, also come to mind. As Labour’s Foreign Secretary in 1997, he famously talked about an “ethical foreign policy”.

For Cook, morality was about values and principles and how they apply to human actions and, in his case, how this impacted on foreign policy. His view was built around human rights but, caught between idealism and realism, his efforts made little progress. Despite the new dangers posed by Trump, Cook’s philosophy is still one whose time is yet to come.

Trump embracing Putin’s Russia

The EU must face up to an American administration that voted with Russia to defeat a UN resolution on Ukraine and accused the EU of being “formed in order to screw the United States”. Starmer’s attempted bridge-building between the two will be difficult.

The US presidents immortalised on Mount Rushmore, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, must be turning in their graves at what Trump is doing to their country.

But the European Union, if it can achieve a unity of purpose, and a UK freed from delusion and exceptionalism can help build an alliance big enough to cope within this turbulent world, with or without Trump. It is sad, alarming and unfathomable to think we are about to rearm to protect against Putin’s Russia, which is now being warmly embraced by our special friend America.

One of the EU’s Founding Fathers, Robert Schuman, said in 1950 that Europe would not be “made all at once or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity.” We must accelerate this work in progress and build that solidarity.

Europe’s cultural legacy is that of the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment, of remarkable progress and the pursuit of human rights. But we have also endured cataclysmic wars and the near-destruction of the Continent.

We must not return to those days and neither should Trump. That’s why Ukraine matters. It should be a member of the EU and could eventually become a Nato member. The world can’t operate based on the whims of a US president wrapped up in his own demons.

Europe and its allies must pursue pragmatism and be prepared to build a different world order, however difficult that may prove to be.

Henry McLeish is a former First Minister of Scotland