Breaking News: Donald Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine has emboldened Vladimir Putin and pulled the rug from under Nato allies….Read More

The ramifications of the president’s appeasement of Russia will be felt widely, not least in the alliance he recklessly undermined

In Graham Greene’s 1955 novel, The Quiet American, Alden Pyle, a CIA agent, reckons he has all the answers to conflict in colonial era Vietnam. Pyle’s ignorance, arrogance and dangerous scheming, intended to bring peace, result instead in the deaths of many innocents and ultimately his own. In today’s too-real, nonfiction world, Donald Trump is Pyle. Except he’s The Noisy American

He thinks he’s a great deal-maker. He never stops trumpeting his brilliance. Yet his North Korea “deal of the century” was a fiasco. He handed Afghanistan to the Taliban on a plate. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu runs rings around him. Now Trump-Pyle proposes another rubbish deal – selling out Ukraine. America’s very own surrender monkey is Vladimir Putin’s useful idiot. No matter how officials spin it, Trump’s concessions, made before ceasefire talks with Russia even begin, are calamitous, primarily for Ukraine but also for Europe’s security, the transatlantic alliance, and other vulnerable targets, such as Taiwan. As stated, Trump’s giveaways – accepting the loss of sovereign Ukrainian territory to Russian aggression, denying Nato membership to Kyiv, withholding US security guarantees and troops – are shameful appeasement, amounting to betrayal.

It was Putin, remember, who launched an unprovoked, murderous full-scale invasion three years ago. But Trump suggests that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukraine’s brave, battered people are somehow to blame. He even regurgitates Kremlin calls for fresh elections in Kyiv. Such hypocritical cant from a regime that routinely subverts other countries’ polls is beyond sickening. But Trump the duplicitous dupe willingly buys it. Putin surely cannot believe his luck. By chatting chummily on the phone for 90 minutes, praising Russia’s “genius” tyrant for his “common sense”, and inviting him to a Saudi summit, Trump rehabilitated a pariah and pulled the rug from under Nato allies. Putin gave nothing back. He thinks he’s winning, on the battlefield, politically and diplomatically. He’s right. Worse, Moscow continues to demand that any lasting deal address “structural issues”. These include Ukraine’s disarmament, non-aligned status, the “denazification” of its

leadership, and even its existence as an independent state, which Putin abhors. Russia wants to re-order Europe’s security architecture, shorthand for weakening, dividing and pushing back Nato.

Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary and Pyle clone, gave Putin a big assist last week, insisting that European security was no longer Washington’s “primary focus”. Europe (including Britain) must pay more for its defence – he proposes 5% of GDP – and “provide the overwhelming share of future lethal and nonlethal aid to Ukraine”. US troops in Europe could be cut, he suggested. All this raises a wider question about the transatlantic alliance under Trump’s malign reign. The Americans have shattered Nato’s united front on Ukraine. They have broken their word. They have undermined Zelenskyy and leading supporters – Britain, Germany’s Olaf Scholz, Poland’s Donald Tusk and Kyiv’s allies in the Baltic republics and Scandinavia, all of whom put their trust, wrongly, it transpires, in US leadership.

What, then, is Nato for? By prioritising China and the Indo-Pacific over the North Atlantic area – while threatening to emulate Putin and invade sovereign countries such as Canada, Panama and Danish Greenland – Trump undercuts Nato’s raison d’être and shreds the global rulebook it was created to uphold. He previously threatened to quit the alliance. Maybe he should. It could force Europe to take charge of its own destiny.