Just over a month into Donald Trump’s second term, one misconception has already been dispelled: that of a president driven by a purely transactional relationship with the world, conducting diplomacy as a business like any other, a self-proclaimed champion of deal-making applying the same tactics as in real estate. The White House’s treatment of Ukraine over the past six weeks has shown otherwise.
Since the resumption of direct talks with Vladimir Putin without prior conditions on February 13, Washington has been reshuffling the cards. The betrayal represented by the brutal “pause,” on Monday, March 3, of US military aid that is crucial to enabling Kyiv to arrive at peace negotiations in the best possible position, when the time comes, is the latest example of a strategic choice. It comes after a refusal to recognize the aggressor in the war that has been bloodying Ukraine for over three years, at the United Nations on February 24, and the humiliation inflicted on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, guilty of not resigning himself to capitulation, in the Oval Office of the White House on February 28.
Meanwhile, the US-Russia rapprochement is progressing swiftly. Following talks between the two countries’ top diplomats, Marco Rubio and Sergey Lavrov, on February 18 in Riyadh, two high-level delegations met for six hours on February 27 at the residence of the US consul in Istanbul, Turkey, to discuss the strengthening of bilateral ties and the possible restoration of Washington-Moscow flights. Two days later, the Pentagon decided to publicly announce the suspension of cyber operations against Russia for the duration of these bilateral negotiations.
Stab in the back
There should no longer be any doubt about the Trump administration’s goal: It is to play the Russian card and subdue Ukraine, leaving the Europeans to deal with the consequences of this reversal. In Trump’s vision of the world, yesterday’s allies have become adversaries, as confirmed by the trade war relaunched on March 3 against historic partners Mexico and Canada, who are being treated no more gently than the US’s rival China.
The Europeans, who are also being threatened with tariffs, will similarly not have a grace period to allow them to organize themselves to compensate for the American withdrawal. They have already begun to do so, with the London summit on Sunday and the drafting of a French-British plan for a truce in Ukraine.But, far from encouraging the development of that plan, the decisions taken over the last few days in Washington show that Trump wants to precipitate matters in Ukraine, notably by challenging the legitimacy of the Ukrainian president and instilling the idea of his resignation at precisely the moment when the leaders of European countries are rallying behind him.
This is yet another stab in the back for Europe. Trump knows perfectly well that his European allies are not in a position to provide the equivalent of US military aid to the Ukrainians in the short term. On the eve of the extraordinary European summit convened on Thursday by the president of the European Council, Antonio Costa, he has brutally backed them into a corner, clearly believing them to be incapable of rising to the double challenge of security and trade.
Source: Le Monde
