Donald Trump is an easy man to loathe—his lies, cruelty, vindictiveness, corruption, disregard for constitutional norms, and sheer recklessness are unprecedented in an American president. These qualities infect both his subordinates, many of whom are palpably unfit for their positions, and the congressional party composed largely of cowards and sycophants over which he presides. Both he and they are truly awful.

Focusing on all of those characteristics, however, is the wrong way to understand him, or even assess what he is doing. He is easy to caricature, and many have done so, turning him into a storybook villain reminiscent of J. K. Rowling’s Lord Voldemort or J. R. R. Tolkien’s Sauron. The truth is more complicated and more interesting.

You can see the tendency to caricature Trump at work in the reactions to his evolving Ukraine policy. Plenty of thoughtful, normally moderate observers have insisted that the president is, wittingly or not, a Russian agent, and that his hatred of Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is so bitter that he wants Russian President Vladimir Putin to win. They insist that his policy is, in fact, shaped not merely by respect for Putin but also by a kind of gangsterish affection for the Russian dictator, leading to the de facto alignment of American policy with that of Russia. Yet this view simply does not square with the facts.

The transfers of American arms to Ukraine that were authorized during Biden’s administration have continued, with two brief interruptions: one in March, following the Oval Office visit during which Vice President J. D. Vance and Trump himself berated a startled Zelensky, and another in June, when the Pentagon suspended those shipments. The first suspension lasted a week, and the latter a few days. In June, the Pentagon acted without Trump’s authorization, a testament to the absence of an orderly foreign-policy process. The White House quickly reversed that decision, and the arms continue to flow.

The United States has also hammered out a deal with NATO countries to purchase American hardware—particularly Patriot air-defense missiles and supporting radar and control units—to either transfer to Ukraine or replace their own systems, which the Europeans will then send to Ukraine. Trump has publicly committed to this arrangement, and even hinted at the transfer of more-advanced offensive weaponry. By all accounts, the process for doing this is under way, to the point that Ukraine has been moved ahead of Switzerland in the queue for Patriot sales.

As far as we know, intelligence cooperation between the United States and Ukraine continues. Meanwhile, the policy making on Ukraine seems to be more and more in the hands of Secretary of State and Acting National Security Adviser Marco Rubio, along with the reengagement of retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg as special envoy, both supporters of Kyiv. At the same time, Steve Witkoff, the erstwhile negotiator for everything, has been moved to the Israel-Palestine-Qatar account. Witkoff, a foreign-policy naïf, was notoriously, even inanely, accommodating of Russian views.

This is not the kind of robust yet imperfect support that Ukraine received from the Biden administration, but it is most definitely not consistent with the Trump-as-Russian-agent narrative. It is not consistent either with the depiction of Trump as simply a malevolent actor. Instead, one should treat his behavior as a kind of puzzle to be examined. And there are clues to untangle it.

One place to start is with what Trump says, which is the first place one should always go in looking to understand a politician’s views, even one who is a serial liar and fabulist. Trump has made it clear that he does not like war, even though he exults in having military strength at his disposal. The destruction of Ukrainian cities, which he has referenced in several press conferences and meetings, seems to bother him. Perhaps it is merely the natural response of a man whose business experience lies chiefly in erecting buildings to dislike seeing them in ruins. No matter—it is real.

Trump also does not like being a chump. His ever more annoyed references to Putin suggest that although he cannot bring himself to say as much, he knows that he has been played by the Russian leader, who has no desire to come to terms with Kyiv on anything other than the surrender of Ukrainian sovereignty. In parallel, Trump thinks that giving away arms to Ukraine, rather than having someone buy them, is a bad deal for the United States. If someone else pays for them, well, that is a different story.

We know, moreover, that Trump wants to be a peacemaker. His idea of a good peace deal is no doubt different from that of his critics, partaking more of The Art of the Deal than the Sermon on the Mount. Still, his various pronouncements and diplomatic initiatives, now and in the past—regarding the Middle East, with regard to North Korea and China, as well as on Russia and Ukraine—suggest that he conceives of peacemaking as central to his legacy. Besides, he has made abundantly clear his thirst for a Nobel Peace Prize.

None of this makes Trump a humanitarian (although the sight of certain kinds of suffering evidently bothers him), a friend of Ukraine, or a great leader. But it means that his motives, and the resulting policy regarding Ukraine, are more complicated and less damaging than many believe.

There is something to the argument that Trump’s second term, particularly its first 18 months, will be uniquely dangerous (thereafter, the midterms and a lame-duck period set in). He no longer feels hemmed in by old-guard Republicans, and his subordinates are slavishly deferential—he and they understand better than they once did how to operate the federal government.

Although that is true, Trump has also, in some respects, changed and is defining his policies in ways that are not entirely arbitrary. For example, in his first term, he mused about withdrawing from NATO; the mood music is very different now. That is in part because European leaders know how to butter him up and flatter him effectively. It is also because—and, again, this runs counter to the Voldemort theory of Trump—his policy broadsides have sometimes produced desirable results.

Trump has bullied most of America’s European allies into committing to a spending target of 5 percent of GDP: 3.5 percent for defense, and 1.5 percent for anything related to defense. They will not deliver fully, of course, but European defense spending is indeed on the upswing. His wild talk and people’s fear of his mercurial behavior, as well as a gradual European sobering up about the long-term Russia threat, have helped bump up their defense spending. The method is awful, the ultimate consequences of the rhetoric are pernicious, the damage to America’s reputation is unfortunate—but the results are the results. And they are not bad.

This is a better situation than many predicted. It could all go badly, of course, because Trump is nothing if not unstable and unpredictable. His strange coalition includes internationalists such as Rubio and nativist isolationists such as Vance (who, nonetheless, has chosen to vacation in the swanky English Cotswolds). Trump is subject to fits of pique and self-delusion. And the underlying problem of how to break Putin’s belief that he can continue to prosecute the war without endangering his own position remains. Still, although  Trump has some demonic qualities, in the case of Ukraine, at least, they are not in charge.

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