In Washington, nothing happens by accident. And when it comes to President Trump’s latest high-wire act — arranging a face-to-face between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky — you can bet this is about more than just flags, photo-ops, and talk of peace. What’s unfolding is a masterclass in geopolitical leverage, domestic power consolidation, and the quiet burial of a foreign policy disaster inherited from the Biden era.
Let’s be clear: Trump didn’t come into office in January 2025 looking to babysit NATO or mop up Europe’s mess. But when you inherit a war that’s dragged on for nearly four years, bled billions from U.S. taxpayers, and turned Ukraine into a proxy battlefield for Brussels and Beltway hawks, you either take control of the board or get played off it. Trump, predictably, chose the former.
The optics are already working in his favor. A summit featuring nearly every major European leader — Macron, Meloni, Starmer, Stubb, Merz, von der Leyen, and NATO’s Mark Rutte — all assembled in the East Room like schoolchildren reporting to the headmaster. And make no mistake: Trump ran the room. He paused the meeting midstream to call Putin directly, then moved the core team into the Oval Office. That’s not diplomacy — that’s dominance.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz let the cat out of the bag when he told reporters the Putin-Zelensky meeting is happening within two weeks. Trump, of course, confirmed it, then casually added that he’ll host a follow-up “trilat” — Trump, Putin, Zelensky — in a location yet to be named. That’s not just brokering peace. That’s staking a claim as the only leader with the credibility and muscle to end the war. Biden could barely get a phone call returned. Trump gets Putin and Zelensky to the same table.
More important than the meetings themselves are the terms being floated. Security guarantees for Ukraine, coordinated by the U.S. but largely delivered by European nations, are the linchpin. Trump gets to look like the peacemaker while offloading the long-term costs onto NATO’s checkbook. Ukraine gets its guarantees — the kind it begged for during the Obama and Biden years — but under a framework that doesn’t drag the U.S. into another endless commitment. Putin, for his part, gets to walk away with a face-saving deal that acknowledges Russian interests without further escalation. Everyone gets something they can spin. That’s the art of the deal — in real time.
Behind the curtain, the personnel moves speak volumes. Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff are the ones coordinating with Russia and Ukraine. That’s not a peace team — that’s a power axis. Vance brings the populist legitimacy, Rubio the institutional cover, and Witkoff — the real estate magnate turned envoy — the backchannel muscle. This isn’t the foggy bureaucracy of Foggy Bottom. It’s a direct, disciplined playbook, run by people who understand leverage.
Trump knows the political capital a peace deal would bring. Not just in Europe, but here at home. Biden’s foreign policy legacy — chaos in Kabul, drift in Kyiv, and weakness in the China Sea — is a liability Democrats can’t scrub. If Trump walks out of a trilateral summit with a deal in hand, he doesn’t just end a war. He ends the narrative that Democrats are the party of diplomacy. He steals their crown.
Of course, the usual suspects are already murmuring concerns — about legitimacy, about process, about Trump sidelining the State Department. But those are the same voices who spent four years writing checks to Ukraine with no plan for victory and no appetite for peace. They’re not mad at the method. They’re mad they weren’t invited to the table.
This is still a developing story, and the road to a final agreement is long. But the direction is unmistakable. Trump is driving the process. Europe is following his lead. And Biden’s foreign policy holdovers are watching from the sidelines, reduced to spectators in a game they used to think they controlled. Welcome back to the new world order — Trump style.
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Author: rachel
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