How to get the significance of Donald Trump’s bitterness towards Europe? You have to look at the complicated dance between Russia and the United States.
U.S. President Donald Trump, left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin shake hands at the beginning of a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki, Finland, 16 July 2018. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
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When I was growing up as a young boy in New York City in the 1950s, sirens would blast during school hours. We would all immediately duck under our school desks and cover our heads with our hands.
The Soviets were coming!
After a few minutes, the teacher would tell us to march into the corridor where we would huddle, silently fearful of an attack.
The Soviet Union was a federation of 15 states across Europe and Asia that was tightly controlled by a central Communist Party in Moscow. It included the Russian Republic, and what is now Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Estonia. Its animosity towards the United States and vice versa was the basis for the “Cold War” which lasted from the end of World War Two to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990.
The hot times of the Cold War
This animosity brought the two countries nearly to the brink of nuclear war. In 1962, the U.S. intelligence community learned that the Soviet Union had sent missiles to Cuba and were in the process of constructing more launch sites. The potential power of the missiles would allow them to target all the continental United States.
A showdown between President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Kruschev resulted in a backing down of the Soviets and an establishment of a “hot line” between the White House and Moscow.
The Soviet Union broke in the late 1980s when Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev instituted “perestroika” — instituting transparency and openness in government. The Soviet Socialist Republics became independent states and some, such as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania eventually joined the European Union.
But once Vladimir Putin rose to power, the chill returned. Although Putin did not promise to bury the West as Khruschev had done, Putin’s autocratic, aggressive style left no doubt that the post-Soviet Russian Federation would not be part of an inclusive, European security architecture. With Putin, Cold War 2.0 heated up.
It is easy to forget that the United States and the Soviet Union were allies during World War II.
A nation non grata
When France hosted ceremonies marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in June 2024, Russia was not invited even though 11 million Soviet soldiers died fighting Nazi Germany. It is estimated that 27 million deaths occurred in the Soviet Union during the War.
The Allied alliance with the Soviet Union did not last long after that war. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill warned of an “Iron Curtain” descending over Europe. U.S. President Harry Truman vowed that the United States would contain communism wherever in the world it spread, a policy that became known as the “Truman Doctrine.“
Thus, the seeds of distrust between the United States and the Soviet Union ideologically and geopolitically were sowed soon after the historic Yalta Conference in which Churchill, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Soviet leader Josef Stalin met in the Crimea in February 1945 to work out a reorganization of post-war Europe.
Their cooperative attempts to peacefully do that were unsuccessful. The Grand Alliance between the United States, the Soviet Union and Great Britain against a common enemy lasted only four years. The ensuing hostility became so intense that in 1948, the Soviet Union — which controlled East Germany —
blockaded the parts of Berlin controlled by the West.
The United States had to airlift supplies to the people who lived there. Eventually, the East German government built a wall that separated the people of east and west Berlin.
Cold War 2.0
While the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991 brought a formal end to the Soviet Union and the Cold War, recent Russian aggressions have led to what many consider a Cold War 2.0. Russian troops attacked Georgia in 2008, resulting in Abkhazia and South Ossetia breaking away from Georgia.
Russia invaded Crimea, which was part of Ukraine, in 2014, and today occupies roughly 20% of Ukrainian territory.
As proof of the growing antagonism between Russia and the West, Sweden and Finland joined NATO, Georgia and Ukraine were promised future NATO membership and severe sanctions were levied against Moscow. Various international organizations suspended Russian membership. The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Putin in March 2023.
All these tensions seem to be changing under President Trump. The Cold War 2.0 could be coming to an end in Washington. The United States voted with Russia at the United Nations on a resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In a meeting that shocked the world, Trump invited Ukrainian President Zelenskyy to the White House to sign a partnership deal involving war aid for mineral rights but then berated Zelenskyy in front of the world’s cameras and sent him packing. Trump subsequently announced he would stop arms shipments to Ukraine. In contrast, he has praised Putin. This marks a tectonic shift in U.S.-Russian relations.
Trump’s end game
What is on Trump’s mind? While the superficial answer is that he wants peace and an end to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, his strategy might be much larger.
There are indications that he envisions a sort of Yalta 2.0, a coalition or meeting between Trump, Putin and People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping. Instead of reorganizing Europe it would establish global spheres of influence.
The ostensible purpose would be to end tensions between the United States, Russia and China. Perhaps Trump even pictures a Nobel Peace Prize.
How has this tectonic shift in U.S.-Russia policy played out? Militarily, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had ordered a halt to offensive cyberoperations against Russia, ostensibly as part of a deeper re-evaluation of all U.S. operations against Russia.
Politically, various Republican politicians who had been anti-Russia are changing their tune. In 2022, Lindsay Graham, an influential U.S. senator from the state of South Carolina, led a bipartisan resolution condemning Russia and Putin for human rights abuses, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Now he says former U.S. President Joe Biden is responsible for the war, Trump has the right policy towards Russia and Zelenskyy should resign.
What’s going on now in U.S.-Russian relations is not just a flip-flop. It is a historic shift. Trump’s new policy has left almost all his European partners shocked and stunned. That’s a true anti-diplomacy move.
Three questions to consider:
• What do historians mean by the “Cold War”?
• Why is much of the world shocked by Donald Trump’s warm relationship with Vladimir Putin?
• If you were the leader of a neutral country, what would be your approach to working diplomatically with Donald Trump?
Daniel Warner earned a PhD in Political Science from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, where he was Deputy to the Director for many years as well as founder and director of several programs focusing on international organizations. He has lectured and taught internationally and is a frequent contributor to international media. He has served as an advisor to the UNHCR, ILO and NATO, and has been a consultant to the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense of Switzerland as well as in the private sector.