At Ankara summit, tantrums aside, Trump finally awakens to Ukraine’s tech brilliance

When dealing with President Donald Trump at a NATO summit, the European allies resemble desperate adults hovering around an unruly child who is clutching fireworks and matches.

So it was a relief that, despite his usual juvenile tantrums and threats at this week’s Ankara, Turkey, gathering — and his erratic behavior toward Iran — the president mostly kept his powder dry.

Indeed, POTUS had an unprecedented adult moment with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump finally recognized Kyiv’s stunning technological prowess in the production of drones that can now reach deep into Russia (some adviser must finally have convinced him that Ukraine had winning cards the United States lacked).

Trump actually heaped praise on Zelensky, in stark contrast to his shameful efforts in the past to humiliate the Ukrainian leader, saying he was “courageous” and had done “an amazing job” on the battlefield.

The president finally granted Zelensky’s years-old request to let Kyiv produce American Patriot missiles — the only available Western weapons capable of stopping the ballistic missiles Russia is using against Ukraine.

However, that’s the end of the good news.

The U.S. president’s ill-informed, incompetent, and, frankly, juvenile behavior on foreign policy, combined with his visible aging, presents a clear and growing danger to U.S. security. With his garbled and error-filled speech, his omnipresent ego, and his constantly shifting positions, he has become a global embarrassment.

Trump’s ineptitude helps our adversaries, from Tehran to Moscow to Beijing to Pyongyang.

Nothing shows this more clearly than Trump’s belated shift on Ukraine. Mind you, I offer two cheers for the dawning light, but how can anyone count on follow-through when the president changes his positions like he changes shirts?

Even if Trump keeps his word on the licensing of Patriot technology, setting up the complex production process is a lengthy operation that would probably take at least a couple of years (he hasn’t even bothered yet to notify the U.S. producers of Patriot interceptors, RTX and Raytheon).

Similar licensing of Patriot missiles was only granted before to Germany and Japan, and it has taken them each years to scale up. I am confident that savvy Ukrainian techies can do so faster. But they need those interceptors right now, when Vladimir Putin is raining down ballistic missiles on Ukrainian cities because he knows they have no defense.

European allies, who need their own Patriots to defend against Russia, are willing to risk giving Kyiv more if the United States will pledge to backfill their needs quickly. Trump has made no such pledge, claiming they are in short supply in the U.S.

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That is true, but do you know why? The U.S. and Gulf allies have wasted years’ worth of U.S. production of Patriot interceptors during the Iran war. They used hundreds, possibly thousands, of Patriots that cost $2 million to $4 million each to shoot down $30,000 Iranian drones.

Trump keeps hinting that the U.S. is interested in Ukrainian drone technology, but has still not taken up Zelensky’s offer to trade Ukrainian drone skills and wider joint production in return for Patriots.

POTUS claimed in Ankara that U.S. drone producers are building new factories for interceptors that will be up and running quickly “in the not-too-distant future.”

Bluster, bluster, bluster.

Lockheed, which produces the most advanced interceptor, the PAC3, has publicly announced its goal of producing 2,000 of these marvels a year … by 2030. That is a tiny fraction of what is needed.

Yet, this week, still short of drones and drone interceptors for the U.S. military, Trump announced at the Ankara summit that the ceasefire with Iran is ending. He appears to be plunging into a renewal of the Iran war. He is stuck in a trap of his own making because he relied only on his gut before entering the conflict.

POTUS never imagined that Tehran would respond to his attack alongside Israel by closing the Strait of Hormuz, even though he was warned by his military and civilian advisers. Then he claimed, totally contrary to the facts, that he had concluded a “peace deal” and started paying off the ayatollahs with billions in advance by letting them sell oil again. Now he is threatening a new war, which he clearly doesn’t want and for which he doesn’t have the proper weapons.

Trump knows he cannot win from the air. And, unless he is ready to invade Iran or occupy parts of that country indefinitely — which would be a disaster — he has trapped America into accepting some form of Iranian control over the strait.

That is why, in Ankara, with the rage of a spoiled child, Trump cursed the Iranians (whom he had praised only weeks ago) and pouted: “I’m not sure I want to make a deal. Let’s just finish the job.” This is not the language of a leader. This is the insincere threat of a 6-year-old throwing food at the wall to see if it sticks.

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What is so terrifying about Trump is not his threats, which our allies and adversaries alike now tend to ignore, but his total incapacity to think in strategic terms. He talks big — “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon” — but has no strategy on how to achieve this.

And even when recognizing Ukraine’s achievements, he insisted that “President ​Putin wants [this war] to end. I will tell you that very strongly.” If he really believes this, at this late date, he definitely lives in an infantile fantasy world.

As a result, there is a huge risk that he will drag America into an uglier quagmire in Iran.

And he will throw away the chance that he, himself, helped create by pushing Europe to rearm: the opportunity to work with a stronger Europe and bolster NATO’s role positively to counter Russia, China, and Iran.

Lost in fantasy, he drives America’s allies away.

Ukraine will try to stay on his good side, but will proceed to revolutionize unmanned warfare in cooperation with Europe, and possibly, eventually, with Washington.

And U.S. adversaries like Iran will choose whether to take advantage of Trump’s childishness or try to assassinate him in revenge, helped by his own fecklessness. Fear of that latter possibility was what made the Secret Service insist Trump fly back from Ankara on the original Air Force One, rather than use one of his vanity projects, the upgraded luxury gift plane from Qatar, which had not been secured sufficiently to protect against possible attack.

Trump had insisted at first on luxury over security. Even when it came to his own safety, the child in him could not be curbed.