Moment of Truth

In Anchorage, President Donald Trump abandoned the Europeans, marking the end of a seventy-five–year era in transatlantic relations — that of America’s indefinite and cost-free protection of Europe.

In Alaska, Trump not only offered international rehabilitation to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin — indicted by the International Criminal Court after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 — but also walked away from the commitments he had made to the Europeans for resolving the conflict.

Just two days before the Anchorage summit, European leaders, during a videoconference convened by Chancellor Mertz, had laid out five conditions Trump was expected to defend in his talks with Putin. The two main ones were: first, an immediate ceasefire; and second, that any territorial concessions be negotiated directly by Zelinsky himself, with any armistice or peace agreement tied to robust security guarantees for Ukraine.

Only weeks earlier, Trump had threatened Putin with “severe consequences” if he refused a ceasefire, issuing a fifty-day ultimatum later cut to ten days (set to expire on August 8). That ultimatum included particularly harsh “secondary sanctions”: the main importers of cheap Russian oil — India and China — would have been hit with 100% tariffs on their exports to the United States.

All of that has now vanished.

Trump dropped both his ultimatum and his call for a ceasefire, apparently persuaded by Putin that a peace deal was preferable, on the grounds that such an agreement would be far more solid than a ceasefire, fragile by nature. Thus, no more ceasefire, no more threats of sanctions.

What remains are territorial concessions. According to leaks in the American and British press, Putin proposed freezing the front line where it stands, in exchange for Ukrainian forces withdrawing from the part of Donetsk they still control.

In other words, Russia would keep most of the Donbass, offering only minor concessions in the Sumy region.

At Anchorage, while Trump avoided making commitments on behalf of Ukraine, he nonetheless declared publicly in a Fox News interview on his return flight that he advised Zelinsky to accept such a “deal,” since Russia is militarily stronger.

Likewise, Trump said he expects Europeans to “step up a bit” — in other words, to back this territorial compromise.

Plainly put, Trump — eager to end the conflict, dreaming of a Nobel Peace Prize, and focused above all on China — is ready for a peace agreement that would essentially ratify Russia’s territorial gains, bind Ukraine to neutrality (permanently shutting NATO’s doors), and include as-yet-undefined security guarantees.

And if such a “deal” were rejected by Ukraine and its European allies, Trump would simply wash his hands of it, leaving the failure to the other side of the Atlantic.

For Europeans, such an outcome is a nightmare — but one entirely of their own making.

Drawn into a proxy war against Russia in April 2022 under Joe Biden — for moral, even moralizing reasons, however legitimate — without weighing the strategic consequences, Europeans now find that America has suddenly shifted course.

Unlike Biden, Trump wants no part in this war. He does not want to fund it, nor contribute directly with arms shipments. American weapons, Europeans will now have to buy and pay for themselves before sending them on to Ukraine.

As for the Ukrainians, they will have to repay years of American aid through exploitative contracts on their raw materials.

Openly scorned in both Washington and Moscow, Europeans are left stacking up videoconferences in a futile attempt to influence a situation completely beyond their control.

And all the more so because, in recent weeks, they have done little but bow to America’s emperor, abandoning even the appearance of dignity.

At the last NATO summit in The Hague this June, the Alliance’s secretary general, Dutchman Mark Rutte, went so far as to call Trump “Daddy,” while the Allies unanimously agreed to raise their military budgets up to 5% of GDP — an utterly unrealistic figure given the state of European economies.

Weeks later, the same Europeans watched Commission President Ursula von der Leyen travel to a Scottish golf course — owned by Trump — to accept, on their behalf and without protest, outright American extortion: multiplying U.S. tariffs fivefold, from 3% at the start of the year to 15%, without a single retaliatory measure from Europe.

The tech giants will therefore continue to reap enormous profits in Europe, paying neither taxes nor tariffs.

When genuflection becomes the norm in European politics, one can only be stunned to hear President Macron still speaking of “European geopolitical power” from his holiday retreat.

My old mentor Raymond Aron wrote in Peace and War Between Nations (1962): “Men know that in the long run, international law must submit to fact. A great power that wishes to forbid conquests by a rival must arm itself, not proclaim in advance its moral disapproval.”

Faced with the risk of Americans and Russians deciding our future without us, it is high time European leaders spoke truthfully to their citizens.

Either they face the reality of the balance of power in Ukraine — financing its reconstruction and preparing forces capable of contributing to its security against future Russian threats — or they continue chanting incantations, powerless over reality, leaving Ukraine no choice but to endure.

Meanwhile, all will travel to Washington, gather around Zelinsky, and pray for “Daddy” to come to the rescue…

August 17, 2025
Pierre Lellouche