Extract from Eureka Street
- Sergey Maidukov Sr.
- 21 August 2025
Images of Donald Trump’s recent meetings with Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin offered the world a stark lesson in contrasts. Zelensky was received in Washington with the bare minimum of ceremony, obliged to endure a lecture heavy on Trump’s self-praise and light on substance. Only days earlier, Putin was welcomed in Alaska with pomp, red carpets, and even the intimacy of Trump’s private limousine. The contrast was telling, and troubling.
Trump has shifted positions on Ukraine with whiplash speed: from boasting he could end the conflict in 24 hours, to castigating President Zelensky; from months of indulgence toward Putin, to sudden threats of sanctions. His impulsive and sometimes contradictory positions on the war in Ukraine might be mistaken for an example of split consciousness at work.
While Zelensky was expected simply to endure Trump’s self-praise, the leaders of five European countries — who had travelled to Washington to support him in a remarkable display of unity — together with the European Commission and NATO, sought to stress the importance of long-term security guarantees for Ukraine. They hoped to place a cease-fire agreement at the centre of the discussion.
At first, leaders felt encouraged by Trump’s suggestion that the United States might provide some form of security guarantee for Ukraine. But he offered no specifics: no promise of financial aid, no hint of American troops in a European-led security force. He only promised to “think about it.”
During meetings with European leaders, the U.S. President interrupted discussions to call Putin directly, seeking his views on a possible trilateral format with Ukraine. For the allies gathered in Washington, this approach to diplomacy signalled a reversal of decades of bipartisan American policy.
Regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Trump has been remarkably consistent in one respect: his belief that Ukraine would be expected to surrender territory to Russia in exchange for ending the war. On this, the U.S. president stands closer to Moscow than to Kyiv.
The heart of the problem is not only Trump’s preferences, but his conception of foreign policy itself. He does not seem to see it as the steady pursuit of national interest over time, but as an extension of his personal grievances at home. If Biden publicly and unequivocally supported Ukraine, then Trump tends to lean in the opposite direction. If NATO represents the international order built by his predecessors, then he must denounce it as obsolete. The long game of credibility, that allies and adversaries alike must believe America keeps its word, is sacrificed to the short-term satisfactions of score-settling.
History shows why this matters. Franklin Roosevelt led America into global war, and Harry Truman did not renounce it as “Roosevelt’s war.” Lyndon Johnson deepened U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and Richard Nixon did not pretend that the conflict ended with his predecessor. The continuity of foreign policy across administrations, however fraught, has always rested on one principle: the word of the United States belongs to the state, not to a single man.
'What he does not grasp is that Ukraine has become the test of something larger: of whether the United States still regards its commitments, its alliances, and its leadership of the democratic world as durable obligations, or merely as bargaining chips in a partisan feud.'
Trump’s approach ruptures that tradition. By declaring the war in Ukraine to be Biden’s problem alone, he absolves Putin of responsibility and teaches the world to treat American commitments as temporary and reversible. That is a distortion of history and an invitation to aggression.
His hostility to NATO underscores the danger. For seventy-five years, U.S. presidents from Truman to Biden preserved and strengthened the alliance as the backbone of Western security. Trump’s repeated threats to withdraw, his mockery of allies as freeloaders, and his insistence that American guarantees are conditional have destabilised the alliance more than any external pressure. By undermining a pillar of U.S. security policy, Trump sent a message not just to Europe but to Moscow: American commitments are temporary and reversible. Putin could hardly ask for a greater gift than a United States that undermines its own coalition.
The damage extends beyond Europe. By indulging strongman leaders and disparaging allies, Trump has eroded trust in America’s global leadership. A recent Pew survey across two dozen nations found only a third of respondents trusted Trump to do the right thing in world affairs; nearly two-thirds said they had little or no confidence. These were numbers once associated not with Washington but with Moscow.
Regardless of what some pundits claim about Trump’s unpredictability being an asset, superpowers cannot afford such unpredictability in the long term.
What emerges is not a coherent strategy but a pattern of impulsive and contradictory gestures: promising to end the war in 24 hours, then castigating Zelensky; months of indulgence for Putin, followed suddenly by threats of sanctions; lavish hospitality in Alaska, following half-hearted commitments in Washington. For European leaders, the message is clear: U.S. policy under Trump is unpredictable, personal, and unreliable.
The consequences are profound. America’s word — the foundation of its alliances, its deterrent power, and its claim to moral leadership — is being degraded. Allies who can no longer trust American commitments will hedge; adversaries who doubt American resolve will press their advantage. The erosion may be gradual, but once credibility is squandered, it is not easily rebuilt.
Trump sees Ukraine as a problem to be disposed of, preferably at someone else’s expense. But what he does not grasp is that Ukraine has become the test of something larger: of whether the United States still regards its commitments, its alliances, and its leadership of the democratic world as durable obligations, or merely as bargaining chips in a partisan feud.
The world is watching that choice closely. And it is not only Ukraine’s future at stake, but America’s. Ukraine has been and will continue to be a measure of American reliability, and if the United States cannot be counted on here, then allies might reasonably infer that nowhere is safe. What Trump risks squandering is not Biden’s legacy, but America’s word, and that is the only currency great powers cannot afford to lose.
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