Are Dems’ Foreign Policy Criticisms Justified, Or Just Plain Old Groupthink?

Starkly portrayed in the 1954 novel “Lord of the Flies,” a group of young boys valuing conformity over critical thinking descends into savagery when stranded on an uninhabited island.

But while far less horrific groupthink instances occur daily at work, at school, and at family gatherings, more notable historical examples include the sinking of the Titanic, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Watergate scandal, and the space shuttle Challenger tragedy.

Yet a more current example of groupthink’s self-deceptive imperative to demonize opposition, promote in-group moral superiority, ignore conflicting viewpoints, and foster group consensus at the expense of rational thought is clearly displayed in Trump Derangement Syndrome.

So consumed by such actions, Democrats have continually damaged their own interests by an unwillingness to move to the sensibly moderate and more electable center.  And because their unifying yet self-destructive lunatic fringe behaviors have now continued for almost a decade, it should more accurately be labeled as groupthink idiocy.

Infected with animus for anything Trump, progressive attacks against the president are as predictably constant as soundtracks from grade B movies.

As such, criticism focuses on his go-to policies concerning border security, tariff equality, voter ID requirements, law and order restoration, and reducing governmental waste, fraud, and abuse.

But, as obviously necessary, and though the left once supported many of those same measures, a more recent groupthink idiocy against Trump involves his efforts to broker peace in the Russia-Ukraine War raging since 2022.

However, despite dealing with KGB thug Putin, who likely has far more to lose from immediate peace than in continuing hostilities, Trump has already been roundly criticized by progressives for his attempts to end the carnage.  Yet, without comment or even the slightest in-party critique, his Democrat predecessor made little to no effort to do the same.

Predictably, leftist second-guessing of Trump’s efforts to initially resolve the conflict is commonplace, even though no critic actually knows what was said behind closed doors in his Alaska summit with Putin or in their phone exchanges before and after that meeting.

But no matter, a small but representative groupthink sampling of such idiotic criticisms would include Foreign Policy magazine headlining that “Trump’s strategy is all carrots, no stick.” And the British left-wing publication Independent labeled Trump’s efforts as an “abject failure,” and that his “amateurish” team is “inept at facilitating meaningful peace negotiations.”

But that’s not all. Former Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst said Trump has put “pressure on the victim” to make concessions, and “no pressure on the aggressor.”

And Democrat Sen. Chris Murphy from Connecticut was even more critical in describing the Putin-Trump Alaskan summit as a “disaster,” that “Putin got everything he wanted,” and that “Trump’s goal was to keep Putin happy.”

And ever the Trump critic, Russian collusion hoaxer Sen. Adam Schiff claimed that Trump is only “feigning indignation” with Putin, that the autocrat “has Trump’s number,” and sees him as “a child who can be easily controlled and manipulated.”

That said, it seems that in claiming to read the minds of both world leaders, Murphy and Schiff are better suited to audition as mentalists on “America’s Got Talent” than serving as impartially introspective U.S. senators.

Yet not surprisingly, such groupthink idiocy continues, even though legacy media criticism for Biden’s missteps was largely absent when, just 12 months after taking office, he emboldened Putin’s attempt to annex Ukraine.

Simply put, the Kremlin began massing troops on Ukraine’s doorstep in March of 2021, a mere eight weeks after Biden was inaugurated.

Ten months later, after watching the build-up for almost a year, yet refusing to give lethal weapons to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, he offered Putin a green light to attack by suggesting the West’s response to a Russian invasion would be limited following a “minor incursion” into Ukraine.

Later that month, he backpedaled on that weak-kneed and inflammatory comment by saying that “Russia will pay a heavy price” if it invades Ukraine. But that threat became “talk-is-cheap” clear when Russian troops crossed into Ukraine four weeks later.

And clearer still, it wasn’t until 70 days before leaving office in 2025, a full 33 months after the conflict began, that Biden finally approved repeated Ukrainian requests for long-range offensive weapons.

Thus, at the simplest level, Trump is trying to rectify the geopolitical mess Biden left behind. But as is often implied, unringing a bell is never easy.  And that is especially so when dealing with a dictator unfettered by oppositional media and democratic elections.

Moreover, one needn’t be a foreign policy expert to realize that Putin is playing the long game to win the war through Ukrainian attrition, making peace concessions, and then reneging on them. In Putin’s calculus, there are likely no other options.

Ending hostilities now, without “saving face” by gaining considerable territory as compensation for an estimated one million Russian troops killed or wounded in battle, would be suicidal in signing his own death warrant.  As French President Emmanuel Macron so aptly said, the “ogre at our gates … for his own survival … needs to keep eating.”

Thus, ultimately, the only thing Putin is likely to understand is naked self-interest. As such, whatever Trump once optimistically or perhaps naively believed, without threats of a massive American infusion of lethal weapons to Kyiv and/or secondary sanctions to crush the Russian economy, a Putin peace epiphany is unlikely.

Accordingly, after giving Putin every chance to walk back from the brink of a self-imposed disaster, Trump’s most recent “better late than never” comments now reflect that conclusion. That is, with the support of the European Union and NATO, the president now believes that Ukraine can regain all of its territory “in its original form” without making any territorial concessions.

And that realization is not groupthink idiocy.  It’s groupthink idiocy believing otherwise.

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