If Donald Trump had not been democratically elected to become US President again, I would be tempted to compare him, a convicted felon and psychopath, with the behaviour of a Mafia boss.
Hardly in office, he not only started dismantling the US democratic political system and turning it into an oligarchy of the ultra-rich, but he also publicly claimed Canada to become the 51st state of the US, disputed Denmark’s sovereignty over Greenland and demanded control over the Panama Canal. On 12 February 2025, Donald Trump confirmed that he was directly negotiating with the Russian President over Ukraine. (President Zelenskyy would be “informed”…!). His defence secretary Pete Hegseth stated in Brussels that a future NATO membership of Ukraine would be out of the question and a return to the borders of 2014 (i.e. before Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its starting the hostilities in Ukraine’s South-East) would not be “realistic”. He also publicly ruled out that the US and NATO would guarantee Ukraine’s future security. The European members of NATO would have to take care of it themselves.
The consequences for Ukraine and the European NATO members
If this is indeed the US position on Ukraine, this would mean:
- The Trump administration no longer adheres to international law, which prohibits wars of aggression and demands the “inviolability” of international borders;
- It is ready to accept Putin’s criminal war of aggression and its results – the hundreds of thousands of dead, wounded or displaced persons and Russia’s annexation of some 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory;
- If the US would accept such an outcome of the war, it would resemble the fate of Finland after WWII: The Finns had bravely fought against the Soviet troops in the Winter War of 1940, but finally had to accept the loss of Karelia and the resettlement of some 400.000 of its citizens. Finland had to conclude a ‘Friendship treaty’ with the Soviet Union and had to stay outside the East-West confrontation. Its only option was to seek neutrality.
- If Trump refuses to guarantee Ukraine’s future, he would leave it at the mercy of Putin’s Russia, since the European NATO members would not be able to credibly deter a future Russian aggression.
- Trump and his yes-men, totally inexperienced politicians whose only qualification is absolute loyalty, like Vice President Vance, seem to be ready to abolish the more than 70 years of trans-Atlantic partnership with Europe.
- By calling President Zelenskyy a “dictator”, an incredibly stupid statement, Trump seems to take revenge of the fact that Zelenskyy had not helped him in 2019 against Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, in order to prevent Biden becoming president a year later.
- With this completely baseless statement – since a country fighting for survival cannot hold democratic elections, as the UK experienced in 1939-45 – Trump just follows the malicious Putin textbook.
Trump’s strategy?
This leaves me with the impression that we are facing a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ between the acting megalomaniac US president and the Russian mafia boss and war criminal. Trump seems to have decided that the US no longer wants to be actively involved in European affairs and instead to focus exclusively on Asia-Pacific affairs and the rivalry with China. In the longer run it could also mean that Trump would seek a US – Russian rapprochement, with Putin as his ‘junior partner’, to fight China’s quest for supremacy. Not to forget: Russia’s relations with China have never been ‘wholeheartedly friendly’ but rather a “community of convenience”.
Back to the 19th century – and what about EU-rope and the UK?
If I am not mistaken, we are witnessing the beginning of a ‘brave new world’:
- The world order since 1945, based on the rule of law and international institutions, will be gone.
- We are returning to the ‘great power games’ of the 19th century with the claims for the ‘survival of the fittest’.
- We Europeans have to blame ourselves that we have not managed to turn the EU, a major economic player, into a meaningful political and military actor. What an irony that it had to be left to the megalomaniac real estate businessman turned US President to unveil this reality.
- The UK will have to decide whether it wants to become Trump’s vassal in his great power game or to opt for strengthening Europe to become a meaningful united political and military actor.
