\n<\/p>\n
It was well after 2 a.m., but an aide to Vice President JD Vance was trying to roust a senior Ukrainian official out of his bed in a Munich hotel. He wanted a face-to-face meeting to close a deal letting the United States extract valuable minerals in Ukraine, a priority of the new president, Donald J. Trump.<\/p>\n
It had to be done that night, the aide said, before Mr. Vance was scheduled to meet the next day with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine at a trans-Atlantic security conference. The Ukrainian protested that it was late and refused to leave his room, according to a foreign policy adviser briefed on the incident. The meeting the next day went ahead, though the proposal remained unsigned.<\/p>\n
The minerals deal, which was finally signed<\/a> on Wednesday, and the pre-dawn attempt to push it through in February, are a telling symbol of American statecraft in the second Trump administration. Exploitative, transactional, almost imperial in its demands, the deal encapsulates Mr. Trump\u2019s approach to the world in his first 100 days, a chaotic period unlike any in the post-World War II era.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n From the NATO alliance to the global trading system, Mr. Trump has swung a giant wrecking ball through the existing world order.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He has seemed, at times, heedless of the cost to the domestic and global economy, to trust in the United States or to the value of its most credit-worthy holdings. The dollar swooned and the yield on Treasury bonds spiked as investors fled American assets.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump has bluntly challenged the core principle of national sovereignty, hectoring Canada to become the 51st American state and threatening Greenland with an American military occupation. His across-the-board tariffs have halted a decades-long march toward free trade and open markets, driving up prices, paralyzing investors, chilling consumers and triggering a dangerous trade war with China.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer,\u201d the president declared in his inaugural address in January. \u201cDuring every day of the Trump administration, I will, very simply, put America first.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In his headlong rush to replace Pax Americana with America First, Mr. Trump has left the world fumbling to adjust to a new landscape, the contours of which are still in flux. To many foreign leaders, who grew up in a world cushioned by the postwar alliances and multilateral institutions created by the United States, the president\u2019s approach has landed with the <\/span>unsettling thud of a predawn visit at the door.<\/p>\n \u201cFor America\u2019s friends and allies, this is traumatic,\u201d said Malcolm Turnbull, who was prime minister of Australia during Mr. Trump\u2019s first term. \u201cIt\u2019s like discovering your spouse has betrayed you and has a secret life. Suddenly you discover that the U.S. has a thoroughly different agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Turnbull had his own run-in with Mr. Trump in 2017 over the handling of refugees. But this time, he said, is different. Untrammeled by advisers who curbed his most extreme impulses in the first term, Mr. Trump has moved with dizzying speed across multiple fronts. He is trading allies for adversaries in Europe, floating a far-fetched proposal to rebuild war-torn Gaza, and sending immigrants \u2014 in at least one case, accidentally \u2014 to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, beyond the reach of American courts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n And yet, the world is also responding. Recognizing that Mr. Trump\u2019s policies may no longer be simply the passing fancies of an aberrational leader, countries are making new commitments and seeking new alliances \u2014 in some cases, new leaders \u2014 the better to cope with an erratic, unreliable and inward-looking America.<\/p>\n A few are standing their ground, whether it is the patriotic resistance of Canadians and Greenlanders or China\u2019s tit-for-tat response to Mr. Trump\u2019s tariffs. Even Mr. Zelensky\u2019s foot-dragging on the minerals deal resulted in an agreement that provides Ukraine with a degree of American engagement in return for America\u2019s access to proceeds from Ukraine\u2019s reserves of rare earth minerals.<\/p>\n The late-night request by Mr. Vance\u2019s aide for a face-to-face meeting in Munich, officials familiar with the episode said, was part of a lengthy exchange of texts and calls over the deal between him and Ukrainian officials.<\/p>\n There are signs that firmness has an effect: In Canada, Prime Minister Mark Carney won an election victory this week with a stand-up-to-Trump<\/a> message. Mr. Trump has adjusted his tariffs against China to exempt key products, while he and Mr. Zelensky held, by all accounts, a good meeting before Pope Francis\u2019 funeral at the Vatican, two months after their spectacular bust-up in the Oval Office.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t know whether the shock-and-awe approach is going to be a permanent fixture of American foreign policy or a more fleeting phenomenon,\u201d said Wolfgang Ischinger, who served as Germany\u2019s ambassador to the United States from 2001 to 2006. \u201cSo, we\u2019re trying to hedge against the consequences of what has already happened and hedge against possible future developments.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n