As President Donald Trump decouples the United States from its closest allies to engage in what he calls peace “negotiations” with Russia, the haunting words of Winston Churchill come to mind.
In October 1938, after the great powers carved up a weaker country to bring about “peace for our time,” Churchill said what others dared not say of the victim: “Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken, Czechoslovakia recedes into the darkness.” He warned that “the whole equilibrium of Europe has been deranged.” And he inveighed against the self-congratulating statesmen: “Do not suppose that this is the end; this is only the beginning of the reckoning.” Later, with that reckoning raining down on London, Churchill declared, “I know the action of the United States will be dictated not by methodical calculations of profit and loss, but by moral sentiment.”
That America won’t return to the global stage until the transactional Trump exits the Oval Office. Between now and then, it seems likely that Ukraine will be broken; the free world and its cornerstone—the transatlantic community—will be eroded; and the international order the Greatest Generation gave us will be unraveled.
Blame
First things first: It’s unfair to blame the unraveling and erosion solely on Trump—or solely on America. Europe contributed its share to this tragedy.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, most NATO members stopped making meaningful defense investments. A decade later, when NATO was called upon to end Milosevic’s ethnic cleansing against Kosovo, only 10 percent of NATO’s European aircraft could conduct precision bombing.
After 9/11, when NATO was enlisted to stabilize post-Taliban Afghanistan, most European troops had to hitch a ride with the U.S. Air Force or rent Soviet-era transports to deploy. Italy wouldn’t permit its fighter-bombers to carry bombs. German troops were required to shout warnings to hostiles—in three languages—before opening fire.
In 2008, when President George W. Bush led a majority within NATO pushing to bring Ukraine and Georgia into the alliance, France and Germany blocked the effort. Some view that as a bullet dodged. But it was actually an opportunity missed—and a green light for Putin, who proceeded to invade Georgia and Ukraine.
Sins and Sledgehammers
As for U.S. contributions to the unraveling: Burned by Mogadishu, President Bill Clinton became so inward-looking that French President Jacques Chirac sneered during Yugoslavia’s civil war, “The position of leader of the free world is vacant.”
Bush’s “either you’re with us or with the terrorists” stance exacerbated already-existing fissures in the transatlantic community.
President Barack Obama pulled the plug on NATO-endorsed plans to deploy missile-defense elements in Poland and the Czech Republic; insisted on “leading from behind” in Libya; and time-limited U.S. air support during Libya operations.
When President Joe Biden ordered the pullout from Afghanistan, NATO allies were notified, not consulted. A European official called it “the biggest debacle that NATO has suffered since its founding.”
While most of the aforementioned could be classified as sins of omission or neglect, Trump has engaged in a concerted decade-long effort to undermine the transatlantic community.
Trump began taking a sledgehammer to NATO in 2016, when he called NATO “obsolete” and suggested he would come to the defense of NATO members under attack—an ironclad requirement of the North Atlantic Treaty—only if they had “fulfilled their obligations to us.”
In 2017, he deleted a sentence from his NATO summit speech reaffirming America’s commitment to NATO’s all-for-one defense clause.
In 2018, he threatened to pull out of NATO.
In 2024, Trump declared that Putin’s henchmen could “do whatever the hell they want” to allies that fail to meet NATO’s defense-spending targets.
Bookends
That brings us to 2025 and negotiations over Ukraine—negotiations to which Ukraine and America’s NATO allies have been uninvited.
As if they’re applying for hourly work, America’s closest allies have been reduced by Trump to filling out a questionnaire listing their capabilities, justifying their role, and committing to additional defense spending.
As for Ukraine, Trump has demanded 50 percent of recurring revenues from mineral extraction and the right of first refusal of Ukraine’s exportable minerals. In exchange, Trump offers no pathway to NATO membership, no promise to recover Ukraine’s stolen lands.
Trump’s gun-to-the-head diktat is a fitting, if shameful, bookend to what Putin demanded on the eve of his 2022 invasion.
Sympathizing with the aggressor, Trump says of the Russians: “They fought for that land and they lost a lot of soldiers,” adding, with a shrug, that the prospect of Ukraine regaining its territory “would…seem unlikely.”
In a stomach-turning display of moral emptiness, Trump says of the Ukrainians: “They have to make peace” (as if they wanted war); “that was not a good war to go into” (as if they chose war); and, most jarring of all, they “should have never started it” (as if repelling Russia’s war of aggression was an act of aggression).
This is worse than moral relativism. This is moral inversion—holding the victim at fault for daring to defend itself.
To be sure, we should strive for peace. Scripture teaches, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” But what Trump has set in motion in Riyadh isn’t a genuine or durable peace. A take-it-or-else deal premised on Putin’s talking points and forced upon Ukraine will only embitter its people and defer the reckoning.
Ending
Last summer, all 32 NATO members declared, “We will never recognize Russia’s illegal annexations of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea.”
It took Trump 23 days to break that promise.
Thus, European leaders ask, “Can we trust the United States?” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer calls what Trump has unleashed an “existential” question for Europe. French President Emmanuel Macron worries that Trump is careening toward “capitulation.” Germany’s new chancellor calls Trump “indifferent to the fate of Europe.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky concludes, “Decades of the old relationship between Europe and America are ending.”
Margaret Thatcher warned, “Europe separated from the United States would…be unequivocally a bad thing—bad for America, bad for Europe and bad for the world.”
And here we are. The consequences—whether they emerge in two months or two years—are dire.
First, there’s every indication that U.S.-Russia negotiations will reward Russian aggression—yet again.
Putin invaded and seized parts of Georgia in 2008—without significant consequences. He then
invaded and annexed parts of Ukraine in 2014—without significant consequences. He then tried to finish off Ukraine in 2022—thinking there wouldn’t be significant consequences.
That proved to be a miscalculation. But Putin’s miscalculation was a function of more than a decade of miscalculations—and what we might call “appeasement amnesia”—in the transatlantic community.
As America succumbs again to appeasement amnesia, Putin and his kind will set their sights on other targets. And tragically, those targets will know not to turn to America. As Ukrainian journalist Anna Murlykina laments, “When countries like the United States cease to be pillars, there is nothing to hope for.”
A second consequence: If Putin moves against the Baltics, or Xi against Taiwan, Trump’s undermining of NATO will leave America with fewer friends and fewer helping hands. Trump has weakened NATO at a moment when it’s more needed—in Europe, the Arctic, the Indo-Pacific—than at any time since the Cold War. If Trump thinks it’s expensive to deter our enemies today—with the NATO alliance intact—wait until it’s gone.
Third, America’s deterrent strength will diminish. Deterrence—what President Ronald Reagan called “peace through strength”—is less costly, more prudent and more morally sound than what Trump is trying: peace through shortsighted dealmaking, peace through shrugging acquiescence, peace through great-power diktats. Credible deterrence requires credible policies and credible words backed by credible force. Trump’s Ukraine gambit is undermining each of those.
Fourth, the already shaky nuclear nonproliferation regime will collapse. In 1994, Ukraine surrendered its nuclear arsenal in exchange for Russia’s commitment to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty. Failure to back up those words after the 2014 attack set the stage for 2022 and undermined the cause of nonproliferation. Ukraine serves as an object lesson of the deterrent power of nuclear weapons—and the danger of not having them. Allies like South Korea, adversaries like Iran and war-scarred nations like Ukraine are pondering that lesson. Indeed, without NATO security guarantees, Zelensky vows, “Ukraine will have nuclear weapons and that will be our protection.”
A world with more nuclear-armed states, a world with fewer allies, a world where strongmen dictate terms, a world where tyrants are undeterred, a world where aggressors are rewarded and victims are punished—that’s the world that awaits us.
