Since the new US President Donald Trump took office for the second time, Europeans have seen a principle-less, bullying style and contradictory new administration. Changing ideas and making childish proposals on several issues and areas of the planet, the new president announced that he talked to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the two decided to put an end to the war in Ukraine without the participation of the Ukrainians and the Europeans.
The US president sent two inexperienced young members of his administration this week to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to deal with two old “wolves” of Russian diplomacy about the most serious post-WW II conflict in Europe. The Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, met with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, in office since 2004, and Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov, in office since 2012. The result of the meeting: the Russians obtained their first victory with a valuable symbolic impact.
In reality, the Russians mocked Trump and his delegation. His envoys not only met with US-sanctioned persons – sanctioned because they were acting against the interests of the USA – but weren’t able to treat their interlocutors as the primary source of the problem “War in Ukraine”. They only helped upgrade Russia from the status of a rogue state to one of a world power – on paper at least. Rubio’s intervention, as reported by the press, about “business” and “peace” was at a school level and revealed how inadequate for such a mission Trump’s team is. It is not a secret that the US delegation had no clear ideas about the subject.
Russians, for their part, asked what they wanted, and they also received promises for re-established diplomatic relations shortly. Trump also forgot what he said the previous weeks about Ukraine and started parroting the Kremlin narrative: the only responsible for the war is Ukraine, the EU and NATO.
Trump also started treating Volodymyr Zelenskyy as an enemy, calling him a dictator and demanding his removal from power, precisely as Putin did before the invasion. These contradictory reactions may mesmerise many psychiatrists, but we are talking here of the president of the USA. Apart from all these symbolic victories, Putin obtained the most valuable.
He tries to check if the inexperienced in how Russians work Trump will stop providing military aid to Ukraine in order to press Zelenskyy to capitulate to his demands: offer Trump 50% of his country’s rare metals and accept whatever Trump and Putin may agree.
Thus, Putin has now gained some more time to penetrate Ukraine further, targeting the rich in critical rare metals areas of its territory. This is how Putin is mocking Trump. When and if the two agree on the future of Ukraine, Putin will have more rich and rare metals territories under his boot.
The Art of Making America Small
Trump signed several executive orders on the first day of his inauguration. According to the analysts, many of them are unconstitutional and not applicable at all. He declared war on China and imposed higher tariffs on Canada and Mexico, only to angle his actions a few days later.
The US president said he would buy or occupy Greenland and do the same with the Panama Channel. He said he would buy Canada or force the North American state to join the USA. Then, Trump made a science-fiction-like proposal on the exploitation of the Gaza Strip and imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court because it declared “his friend Benjamin Netanyahu, a war criminal.”
Ultimately, he targeted South Africa and threatened to strangle its economy in order to protect the privileges of the Africaners (a community with deep racist behaviour and beliefs, representing 7.2% of the population and owning 80% of the South African land).
The envoys of Trump to the NATO summit, Pete Hegseth, and the Munich Security Conference, JD Vance, US vice-president, didn’t sweat to show their European allies that the new administration doesn’t care about the transatlantic alliance.
Moreover, the disrespectful US vice-president accused the EU of a lack of freedom of speech and press because the EU Digital Services Act puts rules on the actions of the big tech platforms. Vance also visited Germany and spent 30 minutes with the extremist right Alternative for Germany (AfD) representative, intervening in Germany’s elections.
Comments like these and Trump’s aim to improve relations with Moscow could jeopardise the transatlantic alliance between the US and Europe. Trump cannot understand that his irrational acts threaten the World with a long-term war in Ukraine. Trump’s acts deprive the US of its natural allies in Europe. The new US President leads his country to isolation, causing uncountable damage to the Western World.
