Trump truth bombs rock Munich
ANALYSIS
Munich: As is his skill Donald Trump hijacked the agenda in Europe without leaving the Oval Office.
When he announced on Wednesday that he had phoned Vladimir Putin and that the Russian leader, during their 90-minute phone call, had agreed to meet to discuss ending the war in Ukraine, the outcry in Europe went into overdrive and verged on hysteria.
The European Union’s chief diplomat, former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said the US was giving Russia ‘everything that they want even before the negotiations.’
‘It is appeasement,’ she said.
The European Commission confirmed that it had not been consulted before Trump called Moscow.
Germany’s foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said of the call: ‘This is not how others do foreign policy, but this is now the reality.’
John Bolton, who fell out with Trump after serving as one of his national security advisers, accused Trump of surrendering to Putin, this cry was echoed by many in Europe who also accused the US of going over Ukraine and Europe’s head to cut a deal with Putin.
Trump, who met Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky twice last year, was heavily criticised for calling Russia first. Europe harbours deep suspicions that Trump has a personal liking for Putin and will sell out Ukraine.
These fears intensified when Pete Hegseth, the Defence Secretary, delivered two and a half minutes of truthbombs to fellow Defence Ministers at NATO headquarters in Brussels attending the Ukraine Defense Contact Group just hours before Trump’s bombshell.
He told them that the US wanted the war to end and that Ukraine would be forced to give up on some of its victory goals, including reclaiming Crimea, which Putin annexed in 2014.
‘Returning to Ukraine's pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective,’ he said.
‘Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering.’
He then went on to say that Europe would be responsible for keeping any peace, that there would be no US boots on the ground in Ukraine and that any future peacekeeping would not be covered by NATO’s Article 5 collective defence treaty.
He said that the US expected a ‘division of labour’ and for Europe to no longer depend on America for its security.
‘The US is prioritising deterring war with China in the Pacific, recognising the reality of scarcity, and making the resourcing tradeoffs to ensure deterrence does not fail,’ he said.
In short, the US has no longer got Europe’s back.
Hegseth’s other point – that the US wanted the peace to be durable and not be a repeat of the Minsk agreements which failed to stop Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine – was largely overlooked in the shellshocked, then angry reaction.
In the German city of Munich, it all set a dark mood on the eve of the annual Security Conference which begins on Friday. It is likely to be one of the most consequential Munich Security Conferences in decades with the world order changing materially and fast.
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