Trump betrayed Ukraine: will Europe step up?

The American president has pioneered a new form of diplomacy: betrayal by tweet. The mean-spirited, autocrat-indulging Donald J. Trump has in a Truth Social post called President Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator,” falsely accused him of scamming America out of billions dollars of military aid and demanded that he “better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.”

By “moving fast,” Trump presumably means Zelensky’s immediate agreement to the recently leaked plan that would hand the United States a $500 billion stake in Ukraine’s rare earth minerals. Zelensky has so far refused to accept a plan that would amount to a colonial sacking of Ukraine, already battered and brutalized by the Russian invasion.

In return, Trump has promised “peace.” The outlines of his peace deal are yet uncertain, though it is clear from the first round of talks between America and Russia in Riyadh that the Russians have failed to heed Trump’s calls for a rapid settlement.

Still, the Russians have basked in the limelight, offered free of charge. Here are the Americans: secretary of state Marco Rubio, national security advisor Mike Waltz, and Trump’s point man for the Middle East Steve Witkoff — all handshakes and smiles — parleying with Putin’s negotiating team.

Russia’s lead negotiator and Putin’s old warhorse Sergey Lavrov announced in the aftermath that “we not only listened but also heard each other.” Vladimir Putin has long sought to deal with the Americans over the heads of the Europeans and Ukrainians. Now he has his wish. Contacts have resumed. The Kremlin is promising a wealth of opportunities for US businesses willing to return to Russia. Trump, his antennae ever attuned to lucrative deals, can’t wait to wheel and deal, if only the “dictator” Zelensky, and his annoying European friends, get out of his way.

And so Trump has taken the cudgel to the liberal order which America helped build. What comes in its wake is a world of empires and spheres of influence, a world of compelling deals — compelling in the sense that the weak are compelled into signing away their freedom, their livelihood, and perhaps their very existence.

America’s European allies are still gaping in disbelief at Trump’s creative diplomacy. Some are wondering whether the “king” has lost it; others hoping in half-despair that there is a clever stratagem behind the madness, and that things will turn out alright in the end, even if Ukraine gets cannibalized in the process. Sober-minded observers worry that the vengeful and impulsive American president who is ever on the lookout for easy solutions to complicated problems, and has no patience for painstaking commitments, will simply surrender Ukraine to Putin.

The Russian president has been incredibly lucky. He gambled recklessly by invading Ukraine, and the war has since turned into a quagmire. But he is in the game for the long haul, and he now feels the wind is blowing into his sails — if not on the ground in Donbas where the Russians are still facing stiff resistance from battle-hardened Ukrainian troops, then at least on the global stage. He is back, recognized by America itself as an indispensable partner in building a brave new world.

Yet here is something that Trump, in his hubris and his belief in his ability to make deals that others can’t refuse, fails to understand: Putin has committed too much blood and treasure to his Ukrainian misadventure to settle for a ruined strip of land in Eastern Ukraine. He wants Ukraine at his mercy. He wants a prostrated Ukraine to send a signal to all of Russia’s weary neighbors that the czar is back, and he is not to be messed about with. Or perhaps Trump understands that and has already made up his mind to hand over Ukraine on a silver platter.

The Europeans have not yet decided what they should or can do. Still reeling from Vice President J.D. Vance’s bombshell of a speech at the Munich Security Conference and struggling to come to terms with the seemingly absurd idea that Trump’s values are more aligned to Putin’s than their own, they are just beginning to feel their way forward, as if in a haze, towards a European strategy for Ukraine.

Such a strategy would require a willingness to confront Trump over his foul Ukrainian deal, and that would in turn create risks. What if the American president slams the door on Europe, with all of its insecurities, its bitter quarrels and its well-deserved reputation for strategic procrastination, leaving it face-to-face with a resurgent angry Russia: what then? Unfortunately, that’s a question Europe is now going to have to answer.