Trump and Zelensky’s tense meeting: What it says about the United States

In the final ten minutes of President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance's infamous conversation in the Oval Office with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelesnky, a question was posed to the vice president.

“As a new president in 2019, I signed with him a cease-fire deal alongside Macron and Merkel,” Zelesnky said. “All of them told me that he will never go. We also signed a gas contract with him. But after all of that, he broke the ceasefire. He killed our people, and he didn’t exchange prisoners. We signed the exchange of prisoners, but he didn’t do it. What kind of diplomacy, JD, are you speaking about? What do you mean?”

Zelesnky is referencing a 2019 agreement between him and Russian President Vladimir Putin to implement a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine by the end of the year. The agreement, brokered in Paris with the help of French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, forced the two sides to pledge the disengagement of military forces by the end of March 2020.

By February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Zelensky’s factual recounting of past diplomatic negotiations with Putin had little impact on Vance. He simply responded by telling Zelensky that he “should be thanking the president (Trump) for trying to bring an end to this conflict.”

While only a portion of an almost hour-long recorded conversation, this exchange is a microcosm of the Trump administration's new approach to foreign policy.

It is hard to say whether Trump actually holds any coherent vision of America’s role in the world. Much of Trump’s interest in the Ukraine-Russian conflict has to do with his desire to win a Nobel Peace Prize, an award he thinks may validate his own inflated sense of being the world’s best “dealmaker.”

Trump may not have a cogent view of the world or America’s place in it, but the populist right-wing theory of realism dictating his foreign policy certainly has visions of what America ought to be.

Realism is a school of thought in international relations that views world politics as an enduring competition amongst self-interested states solely interested in vying for power. The theory positions states as rational actors, navigating a system shaped by power politics, national interest, and a pursuit of security and self-preservation.

The theory has become a hallmark of Trump’s Republican party. Modern Republicans no longer view America as a nation with an ideological foreign policy but merely another power vying for preservation in a shifting world order. Rather than liberating Europe from fascism or combatting the communist domino effect in Southeast Asia, a modern Republican would rather the United States’ diplomacy focus only on self-reservation.

In this administration, this school of thought has a few faces to it.

Trump made a surprisingly conventional pick with Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, but other foreign policy cabinet picks followed suit with his tendency to select from the less conventional.

Two names come to mind—Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense and Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. The two are symbolic of an evolving Republican party.

In recent weeks, Hegseth has dodged questions about who started the war in Ukraine, proclaiming he is uninterested in discussing “the characterization of we know who invaded who.”

Gabbard has recently talked glowingly about Trump’s relationship with Putin, calling them “leaders of two great countries who are very good friends and very focused on how we can strengthen the shared objectives and shared interest.” She has also consistently criticized Zelensky, even to the point of questioning his commitment to peace in the region and has repeated Russian state talking points about Zelensky’s alleged corruption. She has repeatedly expressed sympathy for Russia’s position in the conflict.

“This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns,” Gabbard said.

This world view begins fitting pieces of the Oval Office puzzle together. Rather than offer steadfast support for an ally under attack like Ukraine, the U.S. should offer an olive branch to Putin and Russia. Regardless of differences in ideology, Russia is a great power – they have a stockpile of nuclear weapons, the last thing the U.S. would want to do is sever diplomatic ties with Russia.

According to the realism theory, Trump should waste no time or resources defending a nation like Ukraine that cannot offer the U.S. any immediate strategic or economic gain, hence Trump’s bilateral agreement allowing the U.S. to invest in Ukraine’s critical minerals in exchange for military aid that Zelensky has said he is willing to sign.

Trump and his modern Republican party are adopting this outlook at the peril of the U.S. and, crucially, the entire world.

U.S. global hegemony, or more simply, the dominance of American military capability, economic capability and cultural capability, has been flawed but unequivocally prosperous. Since the end of World War II and the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO), an international organization spearheaded by U.S. military funding, Europe has seen unparalleled peace relative to the centuries prior. Adopting a realist approach means dismantling a U.S.-driven world order and, crucially, giving leeway to competing powers like Russia and China.

While conflict reared its ugly head in parts of Eastern Europe during the dissolution of Yugoslavia, large-scale conflict lay relatively dormant until Putin’s 2022 invasion.

America has utilized soft power, the ability to influence without force or coercion, across Europe and the world to ensure economic success and peace. European states have focused less on security and military spending, while the U.S. has enjoyed immense economic prosperity on the back of free trade on the continent.

However, the end to a 21st century of peace and comfort in most of Europe has signaled one thing – ideology still matters.

At the expense of Russian oligarchs, Putin invited Western economic sanctions when he invaded Ukraine. He set aside economic interest in the name of reassembling the Soviet Union, fulfilling his dream of uniting Russian speakers and constructing an empire capable of competing with the U.S., all while disassembling a people and sovereign nation.

By embracing the perspectives of realists, America is retreating from responsibility and ceding power to its ideological enemies.

While Trump has recently resumed aid to Ukraine, his administration still seems keen for peace on Russian terms. Trump and his foreign policy apparatus have placed little to no pressure on Putin to make any major concessions thus far, including giving back any conquered territory since 2022. Trump and Putin’s meetings have been far too friendly.

America’s tepid response to Russian military aggression is likely to have severe consequences for European security. Russian-backed separatist groups waged war in Georgia in 2000. The country annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, and its leader has intimated interest in securing influence over the Baltic states Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

As Putin’s dictatorial shadow grows over eastern Europe, Ukraine now knows one thing for sure—it can not count on the U.S. for unconditional support.