WASHINGTON — Last week, President Trump abruptly shoved U.S. foreign policy off one of its cornerstones.
For nearly 80 years since the end of World War II, the United States nurtured a military alliance with the democracies of Europe, mainly to deter aggression from Russia next door.
The Biden’s administration’s support for Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 full invasion was only the most recent outgrowth of that principle. The United States and its allies poured aid into Ukraine not for sentimental reasons, but because they believed it was in their interest.
Last week, in the diplomatic equivalent of an earthquake, President Trump and his lieutenants walked away from Ukraine — and from the underlying principles, too.
“In the midst of a global fight between Western liberal democracy and authoritarian government … the United States has just switched sides,” Stanford democracy scholar Francis Fukuyama wrote.
Sound exaggerated? Consider the evidence:
Trump praised Russian President Vladimir Putin — who has outlawed dissent and is believed to have ordered the murder of prominent opponents — claiming “He wants peace.” Meanwhile, Trump derided Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “a modestly successful comedian” and a “dictator.”
Even more bizarrely, Trump charged that Zelensky was to blame for the war, saying “You should never have started it.” (It was, of course, Putin who invaded Ukraine, not the other way around.) It sounded like a new Trumpian Big Lie — a story invented to justify siding with Putin.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a list of U.S. concessions to Putin even before negotiations got under way, promising that Ukraine will never be allowed to join NATO and that Russia can keep all the Ukrainian territory it seized. He also warned that the United States might pull out of Europe completely.
Vice President JD Vance lectured the Europeans on their domestic politics, telling them the biggest danger to their security is not Russia, but immigration.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and extolled “the incredible opportunities that exist to partner with the Russians,” implicitly including business ventures that would require relaxing U.S. economic sanctions.
And Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent presented Zelensky with a demand from Trump that he pay the United States $500 billion, more than twice the amount of aid the U.S. has provided, and give American firms preferential access to lithium and other strategic minerals. It wasn’t clear what, if anything, Ukraine would get in return, but it apparently wouldn’t include what Zelensky wants most — a U.S. security guarantee against future Russian invasions.
Not surprisingly, Zelensky turned down the offer. Trump, who apparently forgot what it’s like to negotiate real estate deals, erupted on social media: “Zelensky better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.”
It all added up to a great week for Putin.
“If you had told me just three months ago that these were the words of the U.S. President, I would have laughed out loud,” Putin aide and former President Dmitry Medvedev wrote on X about the attacks on Zelensky. “Trump is 200 percent right.”
The question now is whether there’s anything Trump won’t concede to Putin — and whether there’s anything he would do to guarantee Ukraine’s independence.
A simple cease-fire won’t be enough. For Putin, seeking control over Ukraine wasn’t a momentary impulse; it’s his life’s work. He has already proclaimed the annexation of Crimea and four other Ukrainian regions. He’s never concealed his ambition to absorb the rest of Ukraine, or at least turn it into a Russian satellite.
If the unconquered 80% of Ukraine is to remain independent in the face of pressure from its powerful neighbor, it will need help from the United States and European countries.
But Trump has never endorsed a long-term commitment to Ukraine’s defense.
“What I think is most striking … is how little the administration has said about providing support for Ukraine,” said Russia scholar Stephen Sestanovich.
“Their focus is very much on the end of the fighting, with the possible implication that they see that as the end of American involvement,” said Sestanovich, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “They haven’t really thought about what it will take to get a settlement that lasts.”
Trump campaigned on ending the war and said he intended to act as a mediator between Ukraine and Russia, but so far he’s sounded more like Putin’s wingman.
That shouldn’t be a surprise. Trump has long expressed admiration for Putin, even though — or perhaps because — he’s a brutal dictator.
He often parrots Putin’s talking points about Ukraine; he’s been quoted as saying that Ukraine is not “a real country.”
And he’s long borne a grudge against the democratically elected Zelensky for refusing his demands to publicly investigate the Ukrainian business dealings of Joe Biden and his family before the 2020 U.S. election. That episode, in which Trump blocked $400 million in promised military aid for Ukraine, led to his first impeachment, in 2019.
All those factors have persuaded Charles Kupchan, another scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations, that an enduring peace agreement is unlikely.
“I’m skeptical that we’ll get a peace deal,” he said. “I think we might get a cease-fire, which then leads to a frozen conflict.”
And that would give Putin at least half a victory. He would keep the Ukrainian territory he has already conquered. He could continue his efforts to increase Russian influence over a weakened Ukraine. And he could seek sanctions relief from the United States, opening the way to deals with U.S. firms.
The lesson for other endangered democracies — the Baltic states, threatened by Russia; Taiwan, threatened by China; South Korea, threatened by North Korea — would be that you can’t count on the United States to back you up.
At least not if the president of the United States admires the strongman next door.
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