If a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine, which is associated with great expectations, takes place, it will solidify tectonic shifts and a departure from decades of established American foreign policy doctrine — one that has seen the United States as a defender of a global order based on values and principles, and Russia as a violator of those rules.
A reexamination of the US's long-standing security alliance with former allies and like-minded countries is now inevitable.
“People are not sure whether the United States will stand by its allies and friends,” says Kristina Berzina, director of Geostrategy North at the German Marshall Fund. “Russia has made it clear that it sees the United States as an adversary. It has portrayed its war in Ukraine as a war against NATO. And yet, Trump and his officials are using very mild rhetoric or even encouraging Russia, offering it unprecedented economic opportunities.”
"Deeply offensive" to Europeans
The shift in American policy occurred in just a few days, starting with a phone call between Trump and Putin on February 12, which effectively ended American efforts to keep the Kremlin internationally isolated after its illegal invasion of Ukraine three years ago.
The phone call was followed by a meeting of high-level delegations in Saudi Arabia led by Russian and American foreign ministers Sergei Lavrov and Marco Rubio, the first direct meeting since the start of the war. It was a meeting between the aggressor state and the state that once provided the most military assistance to Ukraine, but without the presence of representatives of Ukraine and its European allies.
Kristina Berzina emphasized that holding the summit in Saudi Arabia, instead of in neutral countries like Switzerland, shifted the discussion on European security outside the old continent.
"I think many Europeans are deeply offended by being ignored," Berzina said. "It's one thing to be in a room and have a discussion, but it's another thing to not be invited at all."
Trump accuses Zelensky of Russia's invasion of Ukraine
The summit was followed by a war of words between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump blamed Zelensky for the Russian invasion and called him an “unelected dictator,” ignoring the fact that holding elections is difficult when many citizens are on the front lines and unable to vote, while the country itself is struggling to survive.
On the other hand, Zelensky stated that Trump "unfortunately lives in a bubble of disinformation", alluding to the similarity of Trump's statements with the Kremlin's propaganda narratives.
There is no indication that the Putin-Trump meeting could make room for other leaders, further underscoring the worsening relations between the United States on the one hand and Ukraine and Europe on the other. This situation, as Pavel Bayev, a senior fellow at the Center for the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, points out, should force Europe to find its own way to take care of its own security.
"It all comes down to the fact that Europe must take greater responsibility for strengthening its security and that European security is actually a matter for Europeans themselves. Much more effort needs to be put into it," says Bajev.
Uncertain outcome
The abrupt shift in American foreign policy has shocked U.S. allies. But Trump's distrust of Ukraine and Europe, as well as his favoritism toward Russia, while surprising, is not entirely incomprehensible, according to Max Bergman, director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
“There are many theories about why the new US administration is now cooperating with Russia – from Trump’s business ties to Russian oligarchs and money laundering, to Russian interference in the 2016 election and helping Trump, to Trump’s simple preference for autocratic leaders like Putin,” Bergman says. “But what is certain is that Trump has always been consistent in his favoritism towards Russia and his disrespect for NATO.”
Despite this goodwill, the first summit between Trump and Putin may not necessarily produce the results Trump wants.
“There is a very clear difference between how Trump sees the war – as something pointless that needs to be ended as soon as possible – and how Moscow sees it, as an existential conflict, in which Russia’s core security and survival interests are at stake,” explains Bayev of the Brookings Institution. “That gap is very visible, and I see no willingness on the part of Moscow to change its strategic approach to the war in Ukraine.”
A chance to undermine American power
Beyond the deal Trump is seeking with Russia to end the war in Ukraine, the US president could find that closer cooperation with Moscow brings limited strategic benefits to the US – if not direct harm.
"I don't know why we would want to strengthen our main enemy," Bergman says. "The US has no economic benefit from cooperating with Russia. Maybe something in terms of minerals, but when it comes to the prospects of importing oil and gas from Russia, which makes up half of the Russian economy, we are market competitors."
A deal on Ukrainian raw materials is reportedly on the table. Zelensky rejected the Trump administration's initial proposal, under which Ukraine would hand over rare earth deposits worth about $500 billion to the United States in return for aid provided after the outbreak of the war – further evidence of Trump's negotiating logic known as political "transactionalism" that does not recognize multilateral constraints.
Bergman expects that Putin will use the opportunity provided by the Trump administration to further weaken American global power.
“I think Russia would move quickly to create chaos in the world so that the United States would not have a chance to restore order in the next four or five years, with a new administration,” Bergman says. “It would be a very dangerous and unstable global environment in which the existing international order – based on the principle that other countries should not be attacked – would be completely undermined.”
Losing the trust of America's allies
If alliances are the key to American global power, then weakening them would also weaken American effectiveness on the world stage.
“If Trump appears to be selling out Europe, as some fear, what will he do with Japan? Or Taiwan,” Kristine Berzina asks. “The US has had enormous global power thanks to its pull, which has forced many allies to fight and die alongside the US in the Middle East. That power will disappear if America’s allies no longer trust the US.”
Whether the Trump-Putin meeting will mark a permanent loss of trust in the US is not yet clear, but it could become a historic moment in which the American leader finds more common ground with autocrats and their regimes around the world, leaving a leadership vacuum on the global stage, based on values.
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