CNN
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The American century in Europe is over.
Two geopolitical thunder on Wednesday will transform transatlantic relations.
Donald Trump’s call with Vladimir Putin brought Russian leaders out of the cold as he planned to end the war in Ukraine and agreed to exchange presidential visits. Meanwhile, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegses went to Brussels and told European allies to “take ownership of the continent’s traditional security.”
The basin highlights Trump’s “America First” ideology and his tendency to view all issues and alliances as dollar and cent value propositions. It also highlights his freedom from a founding advisor immersed in Western foreign policy myths.
Hegseth recommended it to NATO, but the basics have changed.
The American intervention won two world wars that began in Europe, and then guaranteed the freedom of the continent in the face of Soviet threats. But Trump said in his campaign trajectory he may not defend alliance members who have not invested sufficiently in defense. Thus he revives the multi-year point that he most eloquently posed by Winston Churchill in 1940.
Trump said on Wednesday, “We have a small thing called the ocean,” as he returned to grounds that many presidents have been wary of foreign entanglements from the beginning of the Republic.
It has long been clear that the second Trump administration would place new demands on American European partners. NATO Executive Director Mark Latte told the European Parliament last month that Europeans must come up with more cash for the military. “If you don’t, you’ll get a Russian course or go to New Zealand,” he said.
But Hegseth was still jarring. He officially made Trump’s demands for Alliance members spend 5% of its GDP on defense, saying the US will prioritize widening conflicts with China and border security against Europe. “The US no longer tolerate unbalanced relationships that promote dependency,” said the new Pentagon chief, who was wearing a starry pocket square.
The tough new approach isn’t like Trump’s fantasy about chasing away the Palestinians of Gaza to build a “Middle Eastern Riviera.” This is a rational response to changing political reality. The biggest generation that fought World War II and produced a president who understood the dangers of the vacuum of power in Europe is gone. Americans who have adult memories of the Cold War against the Soviet Union are at least in their mid-50s. And the US’s most powerful competitors are in Asia, not Europe. So it’s fair to ask if the continent has yet to take over self-defense 80 years after the Nazis’ defeat.
Successive American presidents and European leaders have failed to rethink NATO for the 21st century. Looking back, the Transatlantic Alliance has remained so badly exposed to the most transactional nationalist US president since the 19th century.
In a recent interview with SiriusXM’s “Meggin Kelly Show,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio proposed that the US should be a “backstop” rather than a “front-end” of European security. And he condemned the great European powers. “When you ask those people, why can’t you spend more on national security, their argument calls for us to cut our welfare programs and cut our unemployment benefits. ” Rubio said. “That’s the choice they made. But are we subsidizing it?”
The treatment of Trump in allies like Canada and Mexico, as well as his treatment of calling for Denmark to hand over Greenland, shows his neglect to multilateral US foreign policy. He has always praised Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping for their wise and strength. It is clear that he considers them to be the only valuable interlocutors to another great power, the strict leader of America.
“Trump’s agenda is not about European security. He believes the US should not pay for European security,” says founder and founder of Cogitopraxis, a strategic consultant at The Hague. said CEO Nicholas Dungan. “This is not a new era of transatlantic relations, but a new era of global power relations that replaces the intentional institutional structure of a liberal international order.”
This new US-European reality will come through Ukraine.
Trump said negotiations to end the Ukrainian war would begin “quickly” after a call with Putin, which has been frozen in the West since the illegal invasion of sovereign democratic Ukraine three years ago. .
Ukrainian President Voldymir Zelensky was not included in the surprising signs of Kiev’s government. Zelensky was at the heart of everything the Biden administration had done in the war. Trump called Zelensky on Wednesday, but the US president has already spurred fears of cooking a resolution in support of Russia. When asked by a reporter whether Ukraine would become an equal partner in the peace talks, Trump replied “an interesting question,” and replied “I said it wasn’t a good war,” and then thought carefully. It looked like there was. Putin’s boundary that conflict is the fault of a country that has been brutally invaded by its authoritarian neighbours.
Hegseth is just as dull. He set the US starting point for negotiations: Ukraine was unable to return to its pre-2014 border before the Crimean invasion, unable to join NATO, and the US military was unable to They say they will not be able to fulfill part of the security forces to ensure peace. Peacekeeping forces must consist of European and non-European troops, meaning they will not be covered by NATO mutual defense clauses. That is, if there is a conflict with Moscow’s army, the United States will not bail out.
Former President Joe Biden also remained silent about Ukraine’s path to NATO membership. And Trump’s insistence that European peacekeepers will not wear NATO uniforms will be viewed as an equally wise move by many observers to avoid dragging the US into conflict with Russia.
However, Wednesday was also the best day for Putin since the invasion, as it wiped out many of Ukrainian aspirations. Heggs insisted that he simply distributes realism. And he has a point. No one in the US or Europe thought that they could turn the watch back to 2014.
Still, by removing such issues from the table, Trump is the highest-ranking contract maker as envisaged, and negotiations that could have been used to win concessions from his old friend Putin stolen the chip from the Ukrainians. At the moment, Trump does not seem to dispute that Russia holds unprovoked loot of invasion. This is not surprising. Because, like Russia, there are presidents in the United States who believe that great powers have the right to expandism in areas with influence in their regions. But rewarding Russia with a positive settlement would set a disastrous precedent.
US Russia’s call with Saudi Arabia’s Putin and future summits have said Trump will happen soon, but this could be a hint that he is not only cutting Zelensky out of the deal, but also cutting Europe.
In a statement, France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain, the European Union, the European Commission, as well as the UK and Ukraine, warned that “Ukraine and Europe must be part of the negotiations.” And they warned Trump, who appears to want a peace deal at any cost.
Former Swedish Prime Minister Karl Bild is worried about the cozy call between Trump and Putin. “Of course, what bothers us, we have two big guys, two big egos. I believe they can manipulate all the problems themselves,” he says, Richard of CNN International. He told Quest. Bilt evoked the most awful historical similarity possible. This is the British settlement of Adolf Hitler that allowed the Nazis to annex the Sudetenland. “In the European ear, this sounds like Munich. Like two big leaders who want to have peace in our time, they are a distant country that they barely know. We are preparing to make a deal on the head of that particular country. Many Europeans know how that particular film ended.”
Trump’s detailed strategy remains unclear. The dashingness of many Zelensky’s aspirations means that Kiev’s agreement on Putin Trump’s deal cannot be taken for granted. And after his steady profits on the battlefield, we are not sure that the Russian leader is as desperate for a quick reconciliation as Trump, who has longed for the Nobel Peace Prize.
However, the framework for possible settlements has been the topic of personal conversations in Washington and the European capital for months, even during the Biden administration. As Hegseth revealed, Ukrainian hopes to reclaim all the lost land is unrealistic. What emerges is a solution along the German division line after World War II, with the territory occupied by the Russians on the rest of the Ukraine on the other side of the hard border. Ukraine is frozen and remains democratic. Perhaps the western edge of the western part will be allowed to join the European Union, as in the former West Germany. However, this time, the US military will not be safe for freedom.
“The US position on Ukraine today should be surprised by anyone in Europe. That’s what European insiders have been telling me from records behind the scenes for two years: like Western Ukraine and West Germany. In Eastern Ukraine and East Germany, in this case – yes, NATO no,” Dungan said.
Such a solution would recall a cruel historical irony. Putin watched in despair from his post as a Dresden KGB officer as the Soviet Union dissolved, but with the help of America, he may be on the verge of creating a new East Germany in 21st century Europe.
