The Latest from The Bulwark Is Refreshing
- john raymond
- Aug 16
- 3 min read
Tim Miller’s latest commentary may be late to the realization, but it is nonetheless refreshing to see his outrage sharpened against the betrayal that unfolded in Alaska.
For a long time, analysts willing to connect the dots have warned that President Trump and Vladimir Putin were staging a script whose endgame was always to coerce Ukraine into concessions, then recast its resistance as obstruction. The last week—bracketed by Trump’s “progress” pronouncements and capped by his Hannity interview declaring “it’s up to Zelenskyy now”—has made that script visible to all.
Miller admits to shock at the grotesque carve-up proposals, revealed in the Financial Times and echoed by Trump’s own words. But those demands—Ukraine ceding Donetsk and Luhansk, freezing Russian lines in the south, and accepting constraints on its sovereignty under the euphemism of “root causes”—were never hidden.
They were foreshadowed in administration leaks, previewed by Marco Rubio’s talk of “territorial disputes,” and finally laundered by Trump himself when he spoke of “give and take” on boundaries. That Miller only now recognizes the depth of the inversion—that the aggressor is cast as the peacemaker while the victim is cast as the obstacle—reveals how corrosive the administration’s framing has been.
Yes, Miller is not a war analyst. Yes, his métier is the political talk circuit, not the study of asymmetric warfare. But his rage is still useful. To hear someone like him, whose career has been built inside the Beltway’s commentary bubble, now call Trump’s behavior “sick” and “grotesque,” is a necessary jolt. It expands the circle of opposition. It puts sharper language into the discourse. And it reminds audiences who might otherwise dismiss geopolitical analysis as too abstract that what is happening is simple: the United States is actively trying to pressure a democratic ally into dismembering itself at gunpoint so that an autocrat can pocket a “peace.”
That Miller should have seen this sooner is beyond doubt. The writing was on the wall a week earlier: Trump telegraphed a shift from ceasefire to “peace agreement” as his precondition; Putin signaled that “root causes” were on the table. Anyone who took Trump at his word, or failed to anticipate the pattern of moral inversion, fell into the same trap that captured so many in 2018 at Helsinki. The lesson is plain: when Trump and Putin perform friction, it is kayfabe—an act designed to generate the illusion of progress when they later announce a pre-cooked “understanding.”
So yes, Tim Miller is right to be furious. But his fury must now mature into foresight. It is not enough to react to the betrayal after the fact. The next time Trump and Putin prepare the stage, the duty of any serious commentator is to assume the worst, to see the inversion as the plan, not the accident, and to warn accordingly. The cost of late recognition is not just credibility; it is the narrowing of Ukraine’s options, and the strengthening of Putin’s leverage.
Miller’s voice, angry and belated though it is, helps break the normalization of Trump’s betrayal. The task now is for him—and all who speak publicly—to stop being surprised, and to start being prepared.
For if the last week has proved anything, it is that when Trump tells you he is about to “make a deal” with Putin, you should believe him.
And then you should ask: at whose expense?
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