Donald Trump booted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky out of the White House on Friday, after the president engaged in a verbal sparring match, on national TV, with the US commander in chief and Vice President J.D. Vance.
During the meeting, Trump accused Zelensky of “gambling with World War III” and later wrote on Truth Social that Zelensky “disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office.”
Prior to meeting with Zelensky, Trump met with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, following face-time with French President Emmanuel Macron, over the past week, as he worked toward fulfilling a key campaign promise to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
The gatherings unfolded against a backdrop of nearly 200 drones launched by Russia at Ukraine.
Friday’s White House meeting will do little to reassure either European leaders or Zelensky — whom Trump publicly accused last week of being a “Dictator without Elections” — worried that Trump is surrendering Ukraine to Putin.
After all, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, during his visit last month to Brussels and Munich, ruled out Ukraine returning to its prewar borders — along with membership in NATO, and the deployment of US troops to its territory.
Many on both sides of the Atlantic are questioning Trump’s strategy. What kind of “Art of the Deal” is he playing here, seemingly handing victory to the Russian former KGB operative who has waged the bloodiest war in Europe since World War II? Hold your fire.
Trump — as Trump does — is thinking big. “If you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big,” said the author of the book “The Art of the Deal” when it debuted back in 1987.
Here’s the strategic game that the commander in chief is likely playing.
First and foremost, Trump wants to cut US losses in Ukraine, which he worries could easily turn into another Afghanistan — at least price-tag wise.
Some $2.2 trillion was spent during America’s 20-year Afghanistan operations, but victory failed to materialize. Once the US withdrew in 2021, the Taliban quickly returned to power.
Trump wants to conserve US combat power for what he believes is the real threat — China. The Pentagon has depleted its weapons stockpile to dangerous levels via its arming of Ukraine.
With limited capacity, it will take America’s military-industrial complex between five to 18 years to replace many of our most critical munitions.
Should China invade Taiwan tomorrow, the US would likely fail at an intervention. Our military “lacks both the capabilities and the capacity” to deter or win such a war, according to the 2024 Commission on the National Defense Strategy.
Most worrisome, the US would run out of armaments in three to four weeks — or even just a few days — depending on the particular weapon system.
Trump seeks a geostrategic realignment to amp up US and NATO’s combat readiness to fight successfully across multiple theaters of war. The Trump effect is already being felt in Europe as the UK and Germany have promised to boost their defense spending.
The Biden administration’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — endless sanctions on Moscow and freezing its assets abroad — resulted in a Russia-China-Iran-North Korea axis, which has increased the probability of a multifront war.
And this is a conflict the US is unlikely to win.
Which is why Trump is eager to shift responsibility for Europe’s Russia problem onto the Europeans. He wants NATO members to boost their annual contributions to 5% of GDP — from 2%.
Several NATO countries, including Europe’s richest, Germany, fail to even achieve that 2% figure, despite complaining for a decade about the Russian threat.
Boosting European contributions to NATO not only could make the alliance a more formidable force against Putin — or another despot — the resulting build-up could also better deter future wars. Additionally, it would allow America to refocus its military strategy toward China.
Trump also wants to restore the primacy of the US dollar as the leading currency of international trade and reserves as part of his effort to ensure US geopolitical dominance. The confidence in the US dollar has eroded among US adversaries and allies.
Having witnessed the US trying to choke Russia with sanctions, non-Western nations with authoritarian tendencies are rethinking the wisdom of maintaining their foreign holdings in dollars.
To restore dollar dominance, Trump likely wants to break up the BRICS alliance — or at the very least, disrupt its plans to establish a communal currency, similar to the Euro, to challenge the US dollar.
The BRICS coalition of major emerging economies was established in 2009 and originally comprised Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
The BRICS alliance has been growing, and now includes Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt, Argentina and the United Arab Emirates — non-Western nations eager to end the dollar’s dominance.
“De-dollarizing” the world economy could have dangerous consequences for the US and Trump appears committed to reversing the process. Last week, Trump issued a threat to the BRICS nations: “If they want to play games with the dollar, they’re going to be hit with a 100% tariff.”
It is no surprise that Trump chose Saudi Arabia as the location for the US-Russia meeting to launch Ukraine peace negotiations.
The Saudis were invited to join the BRICS in 2023 but are still considering the offer.
Trump is likely dissuading Saudi Arabia, the world’s second-largest oil producer, from joining the BRICS, in order to keep Riyadh’s trillions in petroleum transactions in dollars.
Trump loves to build stuff and make big deals.
“Deals are my art form,” he wrote all those years ago in “The Art of The Deal.” “It is how I get my kicks.” The master of deal making said on Friday that Zelensky “can come back when he is ready for peace.” In the meantime, Trump will concentrate on achieving his true foreign policy legacy: securing America abroad — while he rebuilds the nation at home.
Rebekah Koffler is a strategic military intelligence analyst, freelance editorial writer and the author of “Putin’s Playbook.” She hosts the podcast “Trump’s Playbook” on her channel Censored But Not Silenced. @Rebekah0132