In his closing remarks at the end of this year’s Munich Security Conference (MSC), the outgoing chairman Christoph Heusgen broke down into tears. The event turned into an earthquake that has destroyed the trans-Atlantic partnership and killed off any hopes Ukraine had of constructive ceasefire negotiations.

“After the speech of US Vice President JD Vance on Friday we have to fear that our common value base is not that common anymore. I'm very grateful to all those European politicians who reaffirmed the values and principles they are defending. No one did this more than president Zelenskiy,” Heusgen said in a trembling voice, wiping tears from his eyes as he spoke.

The US delegation to MSC dropped multiple bombshells on Europe and Ukraine that have collectively smashed the aspiration of building a rules-based international system based on international law and values.

In the space of two days the rhetoric that Ukraine was on an “irreversible path” to join Nato was shown up as a sham. The EU was excluded from the Russo-US negotiation on the conflict that is due to start tomorrow in Riyadh, and Zelenskiy just announced this morning that Ukraine will not be represented either.

EU leaders are currently on their way to Paris for an emergency summit, called by French President Emmanuel Macron, but there is little they can do. US President Donald Trump has told the EU that they will have to accept the terms of any deal he agrees with Russian President Vladimir Putin – and take on the bulk of the burden of security any guarantees agreed. In short he is proposing to do a fast and dirty deal with Putin and make Europe pay for it as the US walks away from the whole imbroglio.

My old editor from the Moscow Times in the 1990s and now a Bloomberg columnist summed it up succinctly this morning: the MSC meeting has "left the trans-Atlantic alliance clinically dead."

US Vice President JD Vance’s speech "dripped with contempt for those in the room and offered a series of messages that are likely to alter Europe’s security outlook." Europe is "too weak to deserve consultation or a place at the table with the great powers that would conduct the talks, namely the US, Russia and potentially China." Proposals to bolster European defence by European Commission (EC) President Ursula von der Leyen are vital, “but too late by a decade."

"The last week has been more than a wakeup call for Europeans. It has realised their worst fears. Leaders and defence officials now know they’re on their own, that they can’t rely on the US to respect Nato’s Article V collective defence clause, and that Trump has no desire to include them in the deal he hopes to make," Champion said.

He added that everyone present during Vance’s speech, including Zelenskiy, is aware that "Europe is woefully ill-prepared" to "pick up the vast tab, including security guarantees" for Ukraine. The US is going to step away and Europe has neither the money nor the arms making industrial capacity to step into its shoes, as former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi pointed out in his report last autumn.

Europe is suddenly facing a major security crisis after Trump effectively whipped the Nato rug out from under its feet. French President Emmanuel Macron warned two years ago that Europe needs to build up its own defence capabilities and become a “third superpower” but was widely ridiculed at the time. Now his comments look prescient. He warned last year that the EU project might collapse in the next few years, and that suddenly looks much more like it could happen than it did only a week ago.

For too long Europe has sheltered under the US security umbrella but massively underinvested into its own defence and now that Trump is snapping the umbrella shut, member states are suddenly being drenched in the deluge of security problems. Worst still, Zelenskiy’s effort to keep hopes for a “just” peace will drown. He said at the weekend it would be “very difficult” to continue the military resistance without US support.

Middle East

I'm increasingly convinced that a Grand Deal is in the making where Trump will try and rope multiple crises and conflicts together. There is too much activity in the region. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) just brokered the release of Russian prisoner US school teacher Paul Fogel together with Russia’s Russia Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) boss Kirill Dmitriev, who is part of the Ukraine conflict negotiating team. Now the Russo-US summit is being held in Riyadh, the capital of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). MbS has also called a conference of leading Arab states to respond to Trump's proposal to annex Gaza and turn it into a beachside holiday resort.

Zelenskiy arrived in the UAE last night for an unspecified reason and Ukraine already has good relations with Qatar, which was going to host the second attempt as Russo-Ukraine ceasefire last August until Ukraine’s Kursk incursion killed those talks dead.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was in Israel yesterday to see Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (and deliver a consignment of 2000lb bombs), where he said Hamas must be destroyed and Iran was the cause of all regional instability. He has gone on to Riyadh for consultations a day before the Ukraine talks start. We have a piece on the site today from our Tehran bureau suggesting that the White House is proposing to open negotiations with Iran via the talks with Putin. And of course, Moscow is in intense talks with the new Ahmad Hussein al-Sharaa administration in Damascus, with which it has considerable leverage – another tricky situation for the US which has occupied the north of the country, from which Trump has said he wants to withdraw.

In recent years, Russia has made a lot of progress in building up its reputation in the Middle East as an “honest broker” and has considerable sway with many of the regimes in the region. If Trump wants to cut deals there, actually Putin could be a very useful partner. And with the extreme sanction’s regime on Russia, Trump has a lot of leverage over the Russian leader.

For its part, the Kremlin is clearly ebullient at the exclusion of Europe from the peace talks, struggling to contain its glee at Vance’s speech, which echoed many of the criticisms the Kremlin has made on free speech and faux democracy; special envoy to Ukraine retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg’s announcement that Europe would be excluded from the negotiations; and Nato General Secretary Mark Rutte’s admission that Ukraine was never promised Nato membership.

Of the four main negotiating points in the upcoming Russo-US talks on Ukraine – land, Nato membership, sanctions relief and arms controls – Trump’s team have already conceded the first two but are left with a very full portfolio of sanctions and restarting half a dozen Cold War-era arms deals, which is more than enough to work with. Trump has already said he would like to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world and Putin kicked off his relations with the Biden administration by renewing the START missile treaty in January 2021. (This expires in 2026, so now is the perfect time to start talks on its renewal again.)

America First, everyone else last

Trump is behaving like Boris Yeltsin used to when he was in power; making sweeping statements that would have enormous consequences if they were seen through, but often backing off once he had to get into the grass of implementing them. The trick with Yeltsin was to never listen to what he said, but watch what he did. It’s the same with the Trump administration: high officials make sweeping statements like ”we will send peacekeepers to Ukraine” only to be contradicted by another, often on the same day “of course we won’t send US forces to Ukraine.”

Since taking office, indeed on day one of taking office, Trump has begun to systematically dismantle the US’ engagement with the international community. The US has already withdrawn from these international institutions:

World Health Organization (WHO)

Paris Climate Agreement

United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC)

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)

And more…

US President Joe Biden hailed the International Criminal Court (ICC) decision which issued an arrest warrant for Putin’s arrest last year for kidnapping children from Ukraine. But rejected the warrant for the arrest of Netanyahu on war crime charges. Trump has gone further and is proposing to sanction the court and its judges who try to follow through. The ICC is the world’s court for enforcing the rules based order and by attacking it the US has gone rogue and already put itself outside the international order it claims to lead.

By the same token, rather than slapping more very effective oil sanctions on Russia, introduced by Biden in December, Trump has chosen to go after Mexico and Canada, key US allies, that will only serve to break up the international order further at a time when the US should be focusing all its diplomatic efforts on increasing unity in the West in an existential rivalry with the deepening Russo-China pact.

Trump has made some short-term gains that will make some money, but he is undermining America’s long-term position that can only harm the US economy. One of the upshots is to undermine the already wobbly confidence in the dollar, that the Global South will try and dump at the first opportunity. We have a piece today about how Latin America is going to boost mutual trade in local currencies as a result.

The lead premise of Trump’s “America First” syllogism comes with the subsequent premise of “Everyone else last”. Previously the US offered shelter under its security umbrella and “most favoured status” to its trade partners. Under Trump, he takes the US primacy as granted and is dealing with partners on a “screw you, I need to get paid” basis. For example, Zelenskiy has just put the mooted $500bn rare earth mining concession deal on ice, as the US side were “not offering any” and specifically, not offering Ukraine any security guarantees, as part of the deal.

The outlook for Ukraine and Europe

Zelenskiy is now facing a bleak future. Without US help, Ukraine goes into the talks with Russia with a weak hand. The Armed Forces of Russia (AFR) are making steady, but expensive, gains in Donbas and the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU)’s manpower shortage is becoming acute as conscripts desert in their droves.

Ukraine has enough money to get through this year and into next, and the EU will do what it can to keep up support, but the Ministry of Finance (MinFin) was already predicting that 2026 will be a difficult year before Trump was elected.

Moreover, none of Ukraine’s EU partners are willing to offer it true security guarantees, beyond the “security assurances” it already has of supplies of money and arms but not military interventions. What is emerging is that Europe is proposing to send peacekeepers instead to patrol a mooted demilitarised zone (DMZ) once the shooting stops. The US sent out a questionnaire last week asking everyone how many troops they could commit and as of yesterday only France and UK had signed up with a total of 25,000 against the 120,000 experts say are needed as the line of contact is so long. As of this morning, Germany and Sweden have also said they would send forces if needed. But as bne IntelliNews reported, the Kremlin has already said it will not accept Nato-backed troops on Ukraine’s soil in any form.

According to the Financial Times, the meeting in Paris today will focus on the possible deployment of troops to Ukraine, which are to be stationed behind the future ceasefire line, rather than on it. Politico, citing diplomats, added there will be talks on new anti-Russian sanctions, aid to Ukraine, the use of the Central Bank’s frozen assets that now is one of the few options left for funding the war and reconstruction.

But all these plans may come to naught. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday that he saw no reason for Europeans to take part in Ukraine truce talks, accusing them of wanting to "continue war" in Ukraine and saying they were irrelevant to the negotiations outcome.

"I don't know what they would do at the negotiating table... if they are going to sit at the negotiating table with the aim of continuing war, then why invite them there?" Lavrov told a press conference in Moscow.

The veteran foreign minister said Europe had "its chance" at resolving the conflict from 2014 -- when Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula and backed pro-Russian armed separatists in the east -- and that the bloc had failed.