Trump Remakes the Security Order

U.S. President Donald Trump has long promised that he will end the war in Ukraine. If that remains the goal, there are two starkly different choices for achieving it. One is to enhance military assistance enabling Ukraine to regain territory currently occupied by Russian forces; the other is to lure the aggressor, Russia, to the negotiation table to stop the fighting. Trump has chosen the latter alternative.

The United States has not only engaged Russia in peace talks in Saudi Arabia without the participation of Europe or Ukraine, it has also demanded that Ukraine hand over territory to Russia and huge swaths of its natural resources and economic infrastructure to the United States. Trump has ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine. In addition, Washington insists that European countries spend 5 percent of their GDP on defense and take on the responsibility to defend Ukraine, as the United States prepares to reduce its military presence in Europe. Even though U.S. officials have signaled that they still support NATO, the Trump administration is now driving the most comprehensive remaking of Europe’s security landscape since NATO expansion in the 1990s—or, if the transatlantic rift deepens, since NATO’s creation in 1949.

Click here to read the full text in Foreign Policy.