Washington – Last week, President Trump abruptly pushed the US foreign policy from one of his cornerstones.
For almost 80 years at the end of the Second World War, the United States promoted a military alliance with the democracies of Europe, mainly to prevent the aggression of Russia next door.
The support of the bidet management for Ukraine after the full invasion of Russia in 2022 was only the latest result of this principle. The United States and their allies did not convert to Ukraine for sentimental reasons, but because they believed that this was in their interest.
Last week President Trump and his lieutenants went away from Ukraine in the diplomatic equivalent of an earthquake – and also from the underlying principles.
“In the midst of a global struggle between Western Liberal Democracy and the authoritarian government … the United States has just changed pages,” the Stanford Democracy scholarly scholarly Francis Fukuyama wrote.
Sound exaggerated? Consider the evidence:
Trump praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, who banned Dissens and is assumed that he ordered the murder of prominent opponents – and claimed that he wanted peace. In the meantime, Trump mocked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a “modest successful comedian” and “dictator”.
Even bizarre was Trump that Zelensky was responsible for the war and said: “You should never have started with it.” (It was of course Putin who entered Ukraine, not the other way around.) It sounded like a new Trumpian -sized lie – a story that invented to justify the MP with Putin.
Defense Minister Pete Hegseth announced a list of US access to Putin, even before the negotiations were committed, and promised that Ukraine should never join NATO and Russia can keep the entire Ukrainian territory that has confiscated it. He also warned that the United States could get out of Europe.
The Vice President JD Vance has succeeded in European domestic politics and informed them that the greatest danger to their security is not Russia, but immigration.
Foreign Minister Marco Rubio met with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and, “the incredible opportunities that exist to work with the Russians, implicitly, in which he requires business activities, including the relaxation of the economic sanctions of the United States.
And Finance Minister Scott Bessent presented Zelensky from Trump that he pays the United States 500 billion US dollars, more than twice as high as the help provided by the USA, and enable American companies to have preferred access to lithium and other strategic minerals. It was not clear what, if at all, Ukraine would get in return, but apparently it would not include what Zelensky wants – a US security guarantee against future Russian invasions.
It is not surprising that Zelensky rejected the offer. Trump, who apparently forgot what it is like to negotiate real estate transactions, broke out on social media: “Zelensky is better moving quickly or he will no longer have a country.”
For Putin everything was a great week.
“If they had told me three months ago that this was the words of the US president, I would have laughed out loud,” wrote Putin Aide and former President Dmitry Medwedev about the attacks on Zelensky. “Trump has 200 percent right.”
The question now is whether Trump does not admit Putin – and whether he would do something to guarantee the independence of Ukraine.
A simple ceasefire is not enough. For Putin it was not a current impulse to look for control over Ukraine. It is his life's work. He has already announced the annexation of the Crimea and four other Ukrainian regions. He has never hid his ambition to record the rest of the Ukraine or at least transform it into a Russian satellite.
If the 80% of Ukraine, which are not conquered, should remain independent in view of the pressure of its strong neighbor, she will need help from the USA and European countries.
But Trump has never supported a long -term commitment to defend Ukraine.
“I think the most striking … is how little the administration said about the support of Ukraine,” said Russia scholar Stephen Sestanovich.
“Your focus is very much on the end of the fights, with the possible implication that you see this as the end of American engagement,” said Sestanovich, a scholarship holder of the Council for Foreign Relations. “You didn't really think about what it will need to get a settlement that takes.”
Trump campaigned for the end of the war and said that he intended to act as an intermediary between Ukraine and Russia, but so far he sounded more like Putin's wing man.
That shouldn't be a surprise. Trump has expressed long admiration for Putin, although he – or maybe because he – is a brutal dictator.
He often pages Putin's topics about Ukraine; He was quoted that Ukraine is not a “real country”.
And for a long time he carried a resentment against the democratically chosen Zelensky this episode, in which Trump blocked 400 million US dollars in promised military aid for Ukraine, led to his first office in 2019.
All of these factors have persuaded Charles Kupchan, another scholar of the Council for external relationships, that a permanent peace agreement is unlikely.
“I am skeptical that we will get a peace business,” he said. “I think we could get an armistice, which then leads to a frozen conflict.”
And that would give Putin at least half a victory. He would keep the Ukrainian area that he has already conquered. He was able to continue his efforts to increase the Russian influence on weakened Ukraine. And he was able to strive for a sanction relief from the United States and opened the way for the treatment of US companies.
The teaching for other endangered democracies – the Baltic states threatened by Russia; Taiwan, threatened by China; South Korea, threatened by North Korea – would be that they cannot count on the United States to support them.
At least not if the President of the United States admires the strong man next door.