The truth is, Trump’s idea of a bad deal may be very different from Europe’s if he’s negotiating on behalf of his version of America — and not in the interests of Ukrainian and European security.
James Nixey, Russia-Eurasia director at the Chatham House think tank in London, said Trump and his team did not appear to be negotiating with Putin from an “oppositional” stance.
“The reality is this current crop of Republicans regard Russia and Ukrainians as sort of equal,” he said. “There is a way of dealing with Russia which is not militarily or aggressively and that’s to give Russia all it wants. And maybe they’re quite prepared to do that.”
If, as European officials increasingly fear, the transatlantic alliance is fatally wounded, how bad could it get?
Putin has ambitions to go far beyond Ukraine and to extend Russia’s territorial control over a swathe of Eastern Europe, including the Baltic countries which were formerly part of the Soviet Union, Nixey said.
As for the U.S. relationship with Europe, Trump has already floated the idea of potentially using military force to gain control over Greenland, a mineral-rich Danish territory strategically located in the Arctic. That outlandish idea raises the prospect of a possible armed conflict between two founding members of NATO.
Trump’s second term is barely one month old. In his inauguration speech on Jan. 20, he declared the United States would be “a growing nation” that “expands our territory” again. “Nothing will stand in our way because we are Americans,” Trump said. “The future is ours, and our golden age has just begun.”
Stefan Boscia, Jan Cienski, Nicholas Vinocur and Jamie Dettmer contributed to this report.
