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.
Europeans had plenty of warning that these kind of shifts on Ukraine and defence were coming. Trump has long viewed European governments, hard-right politicians such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán excepted, as spongers. He harbours irrational animosity towards the EU and has so far refused to speak to Brussels. His steel tariffs reflect this visceral disdain. So cries of shock and pain from the likes of Kaja Kallas, the EU foreign policy chief, and Britain’s defence secretary, John Healey, who insist they must have a central role in any US-Russia negotiation, come a bit late. They should have taken a tougher public and private stance with Trump from the start, to prevent him going off on a unilateralist tangent. Instead, Europe was, and still is, divided on how best to deal with both Trump and Ukraine, with some leaders, such as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, currying favour, and others, like Keir Starmer, biting their lip. This is vindication for France’s Emmanuel Macron, who has repeatedly called, largely in vain, for the EU to develop and fund its own collective, non-Nato defence force, arms procurement and manufacturing. That effort must be ramped up immediately.
The global ramifications of last week’s watershed American capitulation will be widely felt. China will be emboldened by this spectacular, self-harming rupture inside the western alliance. It’s probably fair to say an invasion of Taiwan, threatened by President Xi Jinping, has moved appreciably closer. Russia’s rogue allies, Iran and North Korea, will also relish western disarray. Is it too late to turn this around? Europe’s claims to be a global player have been torpedoed. America’s reputation as guarantor of peace, security and the UN-charter-based rule of law is shot. It’s a red letter day for the axis of autocrats and authoritarians everywhere. The Trump doctrine has been unveiled: might makes right, the weak go to the wall.
All options must remain open. Ukraine and Europe must be directly included in any ceasefire talks. Rowing back rapidly, Hegseth and the US vice-president, JD Vance, now seem to concede these points. But concerted pressure on Washington by all the western democracies must be maintained to ensure Kyiv survives flaky Trump’s patsy deals and a catastrophic precedent is avoided.
If the US-UK so-called special relationship is still worth anything, it is time to cash in. Britain must quietly work behind the scenes until this noisome, noisy American grasps a hard-earned truth: peace at any price is no peace at all.
• Simon Tisdall is the Observer’s Foreign Affairs Commentator
