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| President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky meet in the Oval Office on Friday, Feb 28. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) |
| It was the outburst that could be a hinge point of history. We’re still gauging the smoldering fallout of the Oval Office clash on Friday that saw President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance angrily confront Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. What had started out as a set-piece marking a deal over Ukraine’s mineral wealth that would tighten Trump’s support for Kyiv in potential negotiations with Russia turned into a debacle, as Trump and Vance berated Zelensky over his perceived weak bargaining position and supposed lack of gratitude for U.S. assistance. The deal was called off and the Ukrainian delegation left the White House early. Zelensky later flew to Europe, where rattled leaders on the continent rallied around him. In Washington, Trump loyalists — Republican lawmakers and right-wing media — cheered the public airing of grievances and denounced Zelensky. The sticking point in the spat seemed the Ukrainian president’s desire for clear U.S. security guarantees that would help deter Russia, which launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, from violating a future ceasefire.
Those guarantees are not forthcoming from Trump, whose administration has already sought to initiate a thaw with the Kremlin and voted against a U.N. resolution last week that called out Russian aggression in Ukraine. “Time is not on your side on the battlefield,” said White House national security adviser Michael Waltz, recounting to reporters what he told Zelensky in the aftermath of the Oval Office blowup. “Time is not on your side in terms of the world situation and most importantly, U.S. aid and the taxpayers, tolerance is not unlimited.” The argument, my colleagues noted, has “laid bare the deepening rift between Europe and the Trump administration and Republican Party, jeopardizing U.S. aid for Ukraine, the end of war in Europe, and the prospect of a renewed relationship between” Trump and Zelensky.
And it goes deeper than that. Under the previous Biden administration, the war in Ukraine was a galvanizing moment for what can be described as the geopolitical “West” — the nations and institutions that have shaped the transatlantic alliance for decades. The United States surged aid to Ukraine’s defense, but also helped coordinate Europe’s response. NATO bolstered its capabilities and expanded its membership. The European Union welcomed millions of Ukrainian refugees and mustered vast sums in financial aid for Kyiv, as Western leaders championed their shared values in the defense of Ukraine’s sovereignty and embattled democracy. That support may continue, but possibly without Trump, who has never placed much stock in the United States’ traditional partnerships. He casts the European Union as a threat to American interests and NATO as a club of delinquent junior partners. “Today, it became clear that the free world needs a new leader,” Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top diplomat and a former Estonian prime minister, said Friday. “It’s up to us, Europeans, to take this challenge.” “Now is the moment to stay calm, but not carry on,” Camille Grand, a distinguished policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and former top NATO official, wrote on social media. “The US Ally has now officially decided to take a stance inconsistent with our traditionally shared interests and values. This might be temporary or lasting but this will have profound and enduring consequences.” In Moscow, this apparent rupture is welcome. Speaking to reporters over the weekend, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted the “rapidly changing [U.S.] foreign policy configurations” under Trump, who, while extending an olive branch to Russia, has also set about bullying U.S. neighbors and preparing a new trade war with Europe. The dramatic shift, Peskov added, “largely coincides with our vision.”
For Ukraine, the news is grim. Zelensky may struggle to redeem himself in the eyes of Trump, who expected the Ukrainian leader to play the role of supplicant in a grand diplomatic bargain arranged over his head. As European leaders called for calm, analysts speculated an irked Trump could suspend military transfers to Ukraine. A shortfall in munitions for critical U.S.-made air defense systems, among other armaments, would be disastrous for a country that faces constant Russian bombardments and airstrikes. European countries, including major powers like Britain and Germany, are seeking to fast-track increases in defense spending to help Ukraine. On Sunday, as he hosted Zelensky and other leaders on the continent, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer “called on other European governments to grow their militaries and to join a ‘coalition of the willing’ in taking up the slack in Ukraine,” my colleagues reported. But there may be much more slack to take up if the Trump administration makes good on its longer-term plans to draw down U.S. forces in Europe as part of a broader strategic pivot to the Indo-Pacific. “I just worry that, given, frankly, President Trump’s mercurial nature,” Nigel Gould-Davies, a former British diplomat and senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told my colleagues, “how much confidence really can Europe have in any degree of American protection and defense.” Trump and Vance may delight in shocking Europe, but their counterparts across the pond are coming to terms with the collapse of a united West. “Trump’s rhetoric melds with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s,” wrote Le Monde columnist Alain Frachon. “In less than two weeks, concessions to Moscow have piled up. Even if they had already been in the pipeline since Joe Biden’s administration: No Ukraine in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); no NATO forces to monitor a possible ceasefire; necessary territorial concessions from Kyiv.” Trump’s wrecking ball approach to diplomacy offers rich opportunities for others. “China is certainly happy to see the way things are unfolding,” said Wen-Ti Sung, a lecturer at the Australian National University’s College of Asia and the Pacific, to the Australian Financial Review, a daily newspaper. “Trump’s firing on all cylinders, against friends and foes alike diplomatically, is rapidly humanizing China’s own wolf warrior diplomacy.” The irony, noted some analysts, is that the Western alliance system has been a major bulwark in the United States’ ability to project global power for decades. Trump, in his pursuit of a narrower vision of American interests and seeming alignment with strongmen elsewhere, is turning an epochal page. “Just a month since Trump’s swearing in ceremony and America is hurtling towards strategic autonomy ... from itself,” quipped Kabir Taneja, an Indian foreign policy analyst, on social media last week. “Must be one of the greatest times to be China right now,” he added. | ||||||||||||||||||