\n<\/p>\n
After five weeks in which President Trump made clear his determination to scrap America\u2019s traditional sources of power \u2014 its alliances among like-minded democracies \u2014 and return the country to an era of raw great-power negotiations, he left one question hanging: How far would he go in sacrificing Ukraine to his vision?<\/p>\n
The remarkable shouting match that played out in front of the cameras early Friday afternoon from the Oval Office provided the answer.<\/p>\n
As Mr. Trump admonished President Volodymyr Zelensky and warned him that \u201cyou don\u2019t have the cards\u201d to deal with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and as Vice President JD Vance dressed down the Ukrainian leader as being \u201cdisrespectful\u201d and ungrateful, it was clear that the three-year wartime partnership between Washington and Kyiv was shattered.<\/p>\n
Whether it can be repaired, and whether a deal to provide the United States revenue from Ukrainian minerals that was the ostensible reason for the visit can be pieced back together, remains to be seen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
But the larger truth is that the venomous exchanges \u2014 broadcast not only to an astounded audience of Americans and Europeans who had never seen such open attacks on each other, but to Mr. Putin and his Kremlin aides \u2014 made evident that Mr. Trump regards Ukraine as an obstacle to what he sees as a far more vital project.<\/p>\n
What Mr. Trump really wants, one senior European official said this week before the blowup, is a normalization of the relationship with Russia. If that means rewriting the history of Moscow\u2019s illegal invasion three years ago, dropping investigations of Russian war crimes or refusing to offer Ukraine long-lasting security guarantees, then Mr. Trump, in this assessment of his intentions, is willing to make that deal.<\/p>\n
To anyone listening carefully, that goal was bubbling just beneath the surface as Mr. Zelensky headed to Washington for his disastrous visit.<\/p>\n
Secretary of State Marco Rubio \u2014 once a defender of Ukraine and its territorial sovereignty, now a convert to the Trump power plays \u2014 made clear in an interview with Breitbart News that it was time to move beyond the war in the interest of establishing a triangular relationship between the United States, Russia and China.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to have disagreements with the Russians<\/a>, but we have to have a relationship with both,\u201d Mr. Rubio said. He carefully avoided any wording that would suggest, as he often said as a senator, that Russia was the aggressor, or that there was risk that, if not punished for its attack on Ukraine, it might next target a NATO nation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThese are big, powerful countries with nuclear stockpiles,\u201d he said of Russia and China. \u201cThey can project power globally. I think we have lost the concept of maturity and sanity in diplomatic relations.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Trump makes no secret of his view that the post-World War II system, created by Washington, ate away at American power.<\/p>\n Above all else, that system prized relationships with allies committed to democratic capitalism, even maintaining those alliances that came with a cost to American consumers. It was a system that sought to avoid power grabs by making the observance of international law, and respect for established international boundaries, a goal unto itself.<\/p>\n To Mr. Trump, such a system gave smaller and less powerful countries leverage over the United States, leaving Americans to pick up far too much of the tab for defending allies and promoting their prosperity.<\/p>\n While his predecessors \u2014 both Democrats and Republicans \u2014 insisted that alliances in Europe and Asia were America\u2019s greatest force multiplier, keeping the peace and allowing trade to flourish, Mr. Trump viewed them as a bleeding wound. In the 2016 presidential campaign, he repeatedly asked why America should defend countries running trade surpluses with the United States.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In the five weeks since his second inauguration, Mr. Trump has begun exercising a plan to destroy that system. It explains his demand that Denmark cede control of Greenland to the United States, and that Panama return a canal that Americans built. When asked how he could seize sovereign territory in Gaza for redevelopment in his plan for a \u201cRiviera of the Middle East,\u201d he shot back, \u201cUnder the U.S. authority.\u201d<\/p>\n But Ukraine was always a more complicated case. Only 26 months ago, Mr. Zelensky was feted in Washington<\/a> as a warrior for democracy, invited to address a joint session of Congress and applauded by Democrats and Republicans alike for standing up to bald aggression by a murderous foe.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance had signaled for months that in their minds the American commitment to Ukraine\u2019s sovereignty was over. Three weeks ago, Mr. Trump told an interviewer that Ukraine, a former Soviet republic that had embraced its independence, built close ties to Western Europe and sought to join NATO, \u201cmay be Russian someday.\u201d<\/p>\n To the shock of America\u2019s allies, Mr. Vance traveled to the Munich Security Conference two weeks ago and said nothing about assuring that any armistice or cease-fire would come with security guarantees for Ukraine, or about Russia paying any price for its invasion.<\/p>\n