WP: Trump and the End of the geopolitical ‘West’

Photo: AP

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 Zelensky, writes ‘The Washington Post’.

“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 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.”

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.”

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.”

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.

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