7 hours ago
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By now, most of the world will have seen the exchange that has heralded the end of the postwar liberal order. But who would have thought that the whole thing would come crashing down with Trump saying these words: “All right, I think we’ve seen enough. What do you think? This is going to be great television. I will say that.”
I’m referring, of course, to the debacle at the Oval Office between two showmen-turned-statesmen, Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The meeting began cordially. the Ukrainian president was challenged for not wearing a suit, he US president said: “I think he’s dressed beautifully.” Trump praised a reporter from One American News for asking an obsequious question (“What gave you the moral courage and conviction to step forward and lead?”) and then, several minutes later, claimed that “I’ve stopped wars. I’ve stopped many wars. My people will tell you. I’ve stopped wars that nobody ever heard about.”
But after JD Vance stepped in to the conversation to lecture Zelenskyy on diplomacy, what began as a mostly convivial meeting quickly turned into an ambush. The US vice-president reprimanded Zelenskyy for not accepting diplomacy as a means to end the war in Ukraine, to which Zelenskyy responded that diplomacy had been tried many times before, but previous agreements had repeatedly been broken by Russia. Vance responded by saying: “I think it’s disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media.” Then Trump entered the argument.
“You gotta be more thankful,” Trump told Zelenskyy hectoringly. He repeatedly pointed his finger accusingly at the Ukrainian leader as tensions rose between the men in the room. “The problem is I’ve empowered you to be a tough guy, and I don’t think you’d be a tough guy without the United States,” he said. “Once we sign that deal, you’re in a much better position, but you’re not acting at all thankful. And that’s not a nice thing. I’ll be honest. That’s not a nice thing.”
This is Trump’s power politics on full display, a style of domination that demands subservience from every mortal or nation determined by Trump to be of a lesser order. Trump and Vance will tell you that they are only interested in pursuing such high-minded goals as diplomacy, cooperation, and negotiation, but their version of these pursuits turns diplomacy into capitulation, cooperation into coercion, and negotiation into surrender.
This is not the exercise of power merely for the sake of power either. This is plunder, a very public shakedown of the weak for the pecuniary benefit of the United States. It’s true that in an attempt to keep the United States on its side, Ukrainians began making offers to the United States on the country’s rare earth minerals in 2024 (though reports indicate that Ukraine delayed announcing these deals until after Trump took office, so that Trump could take the credit).
But these were far from done deals. Trump claims that the United States has sunk over $350bn into Ukraine’s war effort, money which mostly supports the American arms industry, and was now demanding rights to $500bn worth of Ukraine’s natural resources. “The American taxpayer now is going to get their money back, plus,” Trump said.
In reality, the American contribution to the Ukraine war effort is probably closer to $124bn according to the Kiel Institute, a German think tank that has been tracking wartime aid to Ukraine. Days earlier, Zelenskyy had also said that Washington was now demanding Kyiv pay back $2 for every dollar of future military aid delivered to Ukraine, an interest rate of 100%, Zelenskyy noted. (There are interest rates floated by banks, and there are interest rates floated by mobsters. It’s clear which side Trump is on.) “I’m not signing something that 10 generations of Ukrainians are going to pay later,” Zelenskyy said.
Zelenskyy left the White House early and without signing a deal on Ukraine’s minerals. Trump wrote on Truth Social that Zelenskyy “can come back when he is ready for Peace”, and the White House staff helped themselves to the food that had been prepared for the official lunch between Ukrainian and American presidents.
The whole exchange is about something larger than even the Ukraine war, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people and continues unabated. This exchange reveals how Donald Trump reserves his respect only for leaders of powerful nations, views the world not as made up of different nations and peoples but solely of transactions and deals, and holds in contempt those lesser nations populate by, as he sees it, disposable people.
Which brings us necessarily to Gaza. The week that this Oval Office fiasco took place was the same week that Trump reposted a garish, outlandish, and deeply offensive AI-generated video displaying “Trump Gaza”, a place depopulated of its Palestinian population and repopulated by casinos, nightclubs, bearded belly dancers, a gold statue of Trump himself, and Trump and Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu lying shirtless by a pool sipping drinks.
What Trump has been signaling loudly and clearly is that he gladly accepts and even encourages the acquisition of territory by force, a foundational prohibition in international law. The entire edifice of the liberal world order that was created out of the ashes of World War Two was built on the prohibition of the acquisition of territory by force. And while there certainly have been military movements against this principle – one thinks immediately of Israel’s occupied territories, for example, or Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of East Timor – the basis of international peace has long been predicated on mutual agreement on the inadmissibility of the use of force to grab land.
All that seems to be gone now. The rule of the powerful is all that remains. And in such a world, what’s to stop Russia from annexing more of Ukraine’s territory? Who will stop Israel from annexing not only the West Bank but southern Syria? Will a future Chinese invasion of Taiwan simply be bartered away for a favorable trade agreement to the United States and some gaudy resorts called Trump Shanghai?
Of course, the United States – with its oversized military, wealth and influence – is a central pillar of any international order, but it must not be allowed to dictate and direct this impending international disorder. Facing such prospects, every one of us will lose. As the postwar Western liberal order unravels, what’s becoming clear is that new arrangements – beyond the United States, and beyond Europe – are necessary.
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Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist
