Security Guarantees

A scripted Oval Office session goes wrong but reveals where the world is going

So practically everyone is talking about it and almost all opinions are basing themselves on the last ten minutes, amplified in every thinkable media channel, of what was a fifty minute press conference. And that should really have been a starting point so it is added at the bottom of the page so you can go through it if it is worth your time. Here is what I found:

It was quite a cordial meeting, scripted, press in attendance, Trump in good spirits, JD Vance and Marco Rubio on the couch and ready to chip in. Zelenskyy too seemed fine, although he realized that with the eyes of the world on him he needed to get some mileage before he was sandwiched into a White House deal. As such Zelenskyy dove into his justifiable hatred of Putin by highlighting the atrocities the Russians committed. That also went well without incident and he focused on Ukrainian prisoners and the 20,000 children kidnapped from Ukraine by Russia.

Yet the goal of the visit was that Ukraine and the USA would sign an economic deal - Trump once more boasting his dealmaking skills - which would create a foundation for the next steps: a ceasefire and settlement with Russia. Trump got what he wanted and he could wean Ukraine off America’s significant military support, bring some good news to his base while cementing a longer-term relationship that would be solely economic in nature. This is a standard Trump recipe, Gaza in the end will also be about financial incentives, jobs and development. No one knows yet how much and for how long it will last, but it looks and sounds good. Peace by making money, or something like that.

Yet, around minute twenty-five the most important thing happened, at least in my opinion. Zelenskyy made it clear that for any deal he needed security guarantees, but, and here is the caveat, European guarantees alone would not be sufficient. Any European guarantee should be backstopped by America according to the Ukrainian president. And that is exactly where Trump’s America is unwilling to go at present and that may also have been the turning point in the conversation which still continued in an amicable atmosphere until one journalist asks Trump about his alignment with Putin. It is likely that JD Vance saw that as the opportunity to wade in - maybe after fourteen minutes of quietly fretting about the security guarantee issue - by making a relatively obvious point around diplomacy. Whether Vance set a trap as many argue will remain debatable, but here is the point where Zelenskyy, tired and irritated, loses it and really goes off script and challenges Vance directly in a not so diplomatic way. And from thereon it spirals downwards; Vance escalating his frat boy routine, Trump wading in, Zelenskyy interrupting and the whole thing spins out of control to only end in disaster.

As you read this there is a European emergency summit in London to deal with the likely end of support by Americans for Ukraine. And thus Europe’s newfound position of having to go it alone and provide the security: the very scenario that Zelenskyy knows will not give him what he really needs. Europe is divided and the European public is loath to write cheques into an endless conflict.

But America could not care less. Marco Rubio in his confirmation hearing outlined the new direction of American restraint. And Sohrab Ahmari this week conducted an interesting interview with Trump’s new Defence Secretary, Pete Hegseth. And it explains, to some extent, how a newer and younger generation of American leaders with military backgrounds - JD Vance and Tulsi Gabbard among them - are a reactionary force against American hegemony:

He represents a generation of officers embittered by what used to be called the War on Terror, and is bent on ditching the bipartisan consensus that led America to take up regime change and nation-building.

Building borders and defensive walls is taking the place of protecting other nations and spending trillions on endless overseas engagements. The Vances, Gabbards and Hegseths make the claim that many of these adventures are deadly, costly and pointless, the Ukrainian meatgrinder being a case in point. A more isolationist America, a multi-polar world with Beijing and Moscow as distant partners is the emerging foreign policy doctrine for which Trump is only the messenger. That is what is driving the change and that is what informed the clash in the Oval Office last Friday.

This is not to say that the world should be throwing Ukraine under the bus. On the contrary. The free world should be committed to see this through and ensure that Putin’s aggression is stopped in its tracks and Ukraine somehow ekes a win out of this bloody stalemate. But under the current circumstances it cannot and those that could help deliver such a result - the US and Europe together - are unable to deliver that right now. Avoiding a Third World War is, and here Trump did make a valid point, one of them.

So in the end, it will come down to a negotiated settlement and provide that what Zelenskyy has asked for: security guarantees. Once the dust settles over this meeting and the Europeans have put their heads together it may well be that an arrangement can be made to work that will solidify some sort of deal with Putin. It will shift more of the burden to London, Paris, Berlin and a number of other European capitals. That is what Trump wants and it is unfortunate for one of the bravest men of our time that he is one of the first world leaders to bear the brunt of the Trump foreign policy doctrine and a newly emerging geopolitical dynamic. He and the people of Ukraine deserve better.

Enjoy: