Ukrainian President Zelensky’s meeting with the US President Donald Trump and the vice president JD Vance in the White House on February 28, 2025, proved to be the watershed event for reshaping US’s foreign policy options.
Critical analysis of the unprecedented and disastrous outcome of the meeting reveals interesting facts.
On one hand, President Trump under the pressure of his electioneering slogans to end Gaza and Ukrainian wars, had successfully negotiated the Hamas-IDF ceasefire and desperately wanted an earliest possible end to the Ukrainian crisis as well.
While on the other hand, European countries in general and the Ukrainian President in particular were skeptical about the direct meeting of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on 18 February 2025, excluding the European leaders.
The meeting between the top Russian and US officials categorised two-pronged agenda: (i) to improve their mutual relations; (ii) and to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine.
European leaders and the Ukrainian President felt that despite being the principal stake holders, they were not made part of the negotiations process and were left out.
European leaders were also skeptical about the shifting goal posts of the US about their share in the NATO.
President Trump had earlier demanded the NATO partners to increase their contributions from 2% to 5% of their respective GDP in the overall spending for NATO.
Moreover, there have been loud thoughts amongst the strategic community of USA that ever since formation of the NATO, USA has been the major contributor and spending American tax payers’ money to make up resources and spearhead operations of NATO all across the world.
They are of the view that such a lopsided spending of money on one hand, afforded European partners to concentrate more towards socio-economic and infrastructural development of their countries while on the other hand, it had adverse effects on the socio-economic well-being of the American public.
Remarkably, it can also be argued that the arrangement also immensely benefitted the US military industrial complex in the research, innovation and production of military hardware domains.
Interestingly, President Trump had also taken major exception of US’s earlier stance towards NATO’s open-door policy that resulted in expansion of NATO from original 12 in 1949 to 32 in 2024.
While criticizing President Zelensky’s desire of becoming a NATO member, President Trump said ‘Ukraine may never become a member of the Alliance, and this has always been obvious’. He also noted that ‘the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO was one of the reasons for the war in the country’.
According to the European media, Trump’s stance has not only validated Russian stance that, ‘NATO’s expansion within its neighborhood was a direct threat to the Russian sovereignty and chief reason for starting the war’ but may also bolster Russia for repeating similar actions in future.
President Trump had also been skeptical about effectiveness of sanctions against Russia and stated that ‘Europe had not come up clean to affect sanctions against Russia’ as they have been benefiting Russia by buying its energy products.
Close observation of the reaction by various leaders can help to dead reckon the likely future of the global geopolitics. Interestingly, almost all the European leaders rallied behind the Ukrainian President.
French President Macron issued a warning for the Europe that it has to remain ready in case United States do not “remain by our side” in the Ukraine-Russia war. While taking the debate to the non-conventional domain, he went on to state that ‘France will consider extending the protection of its nuclear arsenal to its allies”, which itself is a dangerous proposition. Similarly, European Commission President Ursula called it a “watershed moment” for Europe.
At an extraordinary meeting of the European Council in Brussels, the EU leaders rushed to agree to spend USD 862 billions to ensure Europe’s security. Both Russia and China have expressed serious concerns about Europe’s stance.
Since taking to the office, President Trump has fundamentally changed transatlantic relations, suspended all military aid and intelligence sharing to Kyiv and cast doubts about application of Article 5 of collective defence.
Recently, President Trump has stated that the US may abandon its commitments to the security alliance (NATO) as the member countries were not spending enough on defense. He went on to say that “I think it’s common sense, if they don’t pay, I’m not going to defend them”.
Fact of the matter is that owing to the largest US contributions in funds, technological superiority, multi-domain real time intelligence gathering, superior and safe communication networks, qualitative military hardware, ability of mass production, strategic airlift and outreach, robust and fail-safe command and control system, space and cyberspace capabilities and reliable nuclear triad, undoubtedly makes USA a bedrock of the Western security architecture.
Without the US presence, NATO would be reduced to sub-optimal intra-regional organization and far easier to counter. Although non-US Western organisation (termed as the European Defence Union by the European Commission President Ursala in July, 2024) would still have two nuclear states however, its geopolitical, geo-economic and geostrategic foot-print would be marginalized as it would not have any of the global powers.
Present day America is under the debt burden of USD 35 Trillion which is rising @ USD 01 Trillion every 100 days against the GDP of USD 29 Trillion. President Trump has dispassionately unfolded his transactional relationship even with the oldest and closest Western allies and also imposed higher tariffs against the friends and partners.
His definition of America First and Make America Great Again has put the burden of maintaining relationship on the allies and partners. He has already decided to part ways with World Health Organization (WHO), UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and Climate Agreement on the pretext of scrutiny.
His ultimatum to the NATO members to either spare hundreds of billion dollars or prepare to defend at their own, has raised serious questions about the future of NATO.
US actions imply that post-World War-II world order is coming to an end and newer Global order is taking shape in which new alliances are in the offing, countries to recalibrate their priorities and realign themselves with newer partners.
The Author is a retired Air Officer from the PAF and currently Serving at the DHA Suffa University (DSU), Karachi
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