The big collision began.
While President Trump’s national security team arrived in Europe this week, very little about their hard message were a surprise. But political and diplomatic leaders arriving in Munich on Friday for an annual security conference where the fault lines in the Western alliance are still exposed, it was the size and suddenness of the breach with the Trump administration which was shocking.
Unlike his first mandate, Trump began to impose prices before starting even superficial diplomatic negotiations, hitting allies and adversaries and erasing years of trade agreements.
While Mr. Trump signed decrees, his vice-president, JD Vance, arrived in Paris and told an assembly of leaders debating the future of artificial intelligence that America would dominate the industry, would do the The most advanced tokens on American soil, write the software there and define the rules. Europe could either get on board or deviate.
Then came Ukraine. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump’s new defense secretary Pete Hegseth told a meeting of the Allies in Brussels that Ukraine had to abandon his objective of resuming his entire territory in the war with Russia. In a few hours, Trump was on the phone with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, promising negotiations, but having already conceded the territory that Russia occupies and insurance to the Russian chief that Ukraine would never be in the NATO. Meanwhile, the Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is in kyiv to start negotiating American rights on rare Ukraine land metals.
The declarations of unilateral concessions have left European leaders and, of course, President Volodymyr Zelensky, from Ukraine, has indeed sidelined, to negotiations on the fate of the limits of Ukraine and, to a certain extent, the future of Europe. On Thursday, they started to repel the message of the new administration, recognizing, recognizing that to trigger the anger of Mr. Trump could leave them in a deeper frost.
“It is crucial that Ukraine is closely involved in all discussions on his future,” said Mark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO, before a meeting of the NATO defense ministers in Brussels, resembling A man who could not believe that he had to declare the obvious. John Healey, British defense secretary, said: “There cannot be negotiations on Ukraine without Ukraine, and the voice of Ukraine must be at the heart of everything.”
Mr. Zelensky, after having initially thanked Trump on social networks for having continued a peace agreement, said on Thursday that he would not accept any negotiated agreement without him participating. It is “important that everything does not happen according to Putin’s plan,” he said. “We cannot speak of Ukraine without Ukraine,” he insisted.
It remains to be seen whether the Trump administration takes into account the warning, ignores it or tries to forge an average path, giving Europe and Ukraine a sort of role of great-balance sheet in negotiations. But Thursday, Mr. Hegseth’s comments had created such a tumult among the European leaders whom he seemed to go back to find out if preventive concessions would be made to Mr. Putin.
“Everything is on the table,” said HegSeth, clearly indicating that it was Trump who directed negotiations and adding: “So I’m not going to stand up and declare what President Trump will do or will not do , what will be in or what will be released, what concessions will be made, or which concessions are not made. »»
The first indications of the management that the administration will arrive on Friday when Mr. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and a turn of the other officials of national security newly struck by Trump are wedged in the picturesque Bayerischer Hof , a luxury hotel has welcomed the conference from the Cold War. We are talking about a meeting with Mr. Zelensky.
But the fact is that Mr. Trump and his team have already presented the new American agenda, asked in advance. And in this new era of coercive diplomacy, there are many.
In interviews in recent days, US officials have indicated that they planned to press on European nations that, with regard to the defense of Ukraine after a peace agreement, the burden will be almost entirely on the forces European, with America supporting information and consultations, but no troops.
And they will insist on the fact that Mr. Trump does not joke when he demands that NATO nations double to triple their military spending, increasing the objective of the current 2% of their gross domestic product to 5%. (The United States spends 3.5% and the White House will not say if the United States would also comply with a new target.)
Changing the United States and the shock of objectives with its allies have been dizzying and are sure to be exposed in Munich.
While public statements will make the headlines, as usual, the most interesting conversations will take place in camera.
Among the most busy, there is the meeting of the newly sworn director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, whose embrace of the Russian discussion points alarmed European officials, and the director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, with the chiefs of Intelligence of the major allies, which were deeply engaged in the fight against the sabotage campaign of Mr. Putin across Europe.
The British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealander spying leaders – the so -called “five eyes” which constitute the tightest intelligence partnership, an outgrowth of the winners of the Second World War – will seek all the signs that Mr. Trump remains on Russia.
Three years ago, Munich Europeans publicly doubted the American and British evaluation that Russia was about to invade; Four days after the 2022 conference, Mr. Putin did exactly that. Over the past two years, the Munich rally has been filled with the way in which its illegal invasion has strengthened NATO and has widened its ranks.
During private meetings and on the main stages, American officials would reassure the world that Washington would stick to war “as long as it should be” and will judge “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine”. In secondary sessions, they were walking on the wording of promises that, one day, Ukraine would become a complete NATO ally, if there was a disagreement on what one day meant.
Mr. Hegseth actually rejected these conversations as a fantasy and empty principles he insisted for European leaders and Mr. Zelensky should abandon. On Wednesday, when President Trump held his 90 -minute call with Mr. Putin, it was the first direct conversation between an American president and his Russian counterpart in more than three years.
But there were few celebrations that a peace agreement could finally be seen in the distance. He was lost for anyone here in Munich that Mr. Trump’s phone call was led by himself – and that he appointed a negotiation team of four aids without saying a word on the involvement of Europeans or Ukrainians.
The message of Mr. Hegseth this week was that the recovery of land lost by Ukraine was “an unrealistic objective”. And the new calendar for membership of Ukraine NATO is, he argued, so far in the future, it could just as well never be.
But it was not only the blunt tone that European and angry European officials. It was also the fact that Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth seemed to tell Mr. Putin what he wanted to hear about the form of an agreement.
“Trump has already made public dealerships in Putin before the negotiations even started,” the German defense minister said on Thursday at a meeting in Brussels. “It would have been better to talk about possible members of Ukraine to membership of NATO at the negotiating table.”
And he warned that any peace could be false. “Putin constantly provokes the West,” he said, “it would be naive to believe that the threat would really decrease after such a peace agreement.”
In fact, the contours of a ceasefire have been clear for some time, and it does not seem by coincidence, a bit like the armistice which arrested the Korean War. Russia would effectively claim the land that its troops occupied, around 20% of Ukraine.
The big question is to know who would make the police of the new lines, and there, Mr. Trump insists that Europe must get up and that if the European troops were attacked, this would not constitute an attack on the forces of NATO that would require an answer.
Mr. Zelensky has already rejected the idea that Europe has fire power, or the will, to resist Mr. Putin without American help. But what he and European leaders really find it difficult to get used to, said a European diplomat high his illegal invasion.
“It is back to Thucydides,” he said, referring to the famous Greek columnist in the Peloponnese War who wrote: “The forts do what they want and the weak suffers from what they must.”
