Don’t tear your garments now. Don’t bring theatrics or Greek tragedy screams. What about Ukraine? What about NATO? What about Europe’s values? Trump negotiating with Putin. Peace as surrender. This is a tragedy.
Please! Where were you when European ports continued unloading Russian gas while Brussels delivered speeches about energy sovereignty and resistance against the Kremlin? It’s not just that Putin financed this war through trade with Europe; the EU has been its best customer while playing the role of democracy’s great defender.
Now, Trump wants to end the war. Yet, instead of celebrating, the Eurocrats and progressive media cried out as if their wallets had been stolen in the middle of Rue de la Loi. They tell us this is a capitulation, that it is unfair to Ukraine, that all the blood spilled has been in vain.
As if anyone had believed this it would end any other way. So if this war were not the result of a Cold War poorly closed in 1990, whose cracks burst open a quarter of a century later. As if Biden hadn’t fueled the war machine without ever offering real guarantees to Putin, without ever proposing a viable political solution.
Trump is going to sign peace with Putin? Of course. Just like Nixon pulled troops out of Vietnam—an invasion started by Kennedy that the Democrats never knew how to end. For those with poor memory (or a master’s degree in European propaganda), let’s remember that Trump did not start the Ukraine war, but Trump will end it. And he will do it in his own way: without wasting time on pompous declarations or the bureaucratic language with which the EU justifies its own irrelevance.
While Brussels entertained itself with institutional statements and empty promises, Ukraine was bleeding out. They had no problem turning Zelensky into the Messiah of the West when he was useful, and now that the end is in sight, the same Zelensky becomes a problem.
Did anyone in Europe really think Washington would send soldiers to Kyiv? Those Americans would die in Donbas like in Saigon? Sure, sure. Just as they did in Georgia in 2008, when Russia took a good chunk of territory without anyone lifting a finger.
Trump has done what Biden never had the courage to do: acknowledge reality. And the reality is that Ukraine was never going to recover Crimea, that NATO membership was a pipe dream used to prolong the war, and that European borders have changed before and will change again in the future.
Kyiv could have chosen from the beginning a model like Finland’s after its war against the USSR or Austria’s in the 1950s. Even a divided Ukraine, like Germany was, would have been an acceptable middle ground, leaving the door open to a future reunification—difficult, but without bodies piling up on the front lines.
But no. Europe opted for the warpath. Because the EU has not been a defender of peace, but the best ally of conflict. They wanted a war to weaken Russia without sending troops, to showcase their great democratic morality from the comfort of their offices in Brussels and Strasbourg. And now that Trump wants to settle the matter, the same people who sold the war as inevitable tell us that peace is unacceptable.
They will say that if peace is signed now, everything will have been in vain. That the dead will have died for nothing. As if in Verdun, Stalingrad, or Normandy, soldiers thought about the profitability of their sacrifice. All wars end with a peace process, whether someone likes it or not. You cannot demand that the war continues just because the outcome is not the one dreamed of in Brussels.
This is the key: Trump has sidelined the European Union. He has left it out of the equation, like a foolish cousin excluded from an important family meeting. Peace is negotiated between Washington and Moscow, just like in the good old days of the Cold War. And the EU, which has spent decades boasting about its weight in the world order, is left watching, mumbling speeches about principles that no one cares about. Europe has become a sandwich between Trump and Putin, and Brussels has barely noticed.
Trump has sent a clear message: if you want an umbrella, buy one yourself. NATO is no longer the infallible shield of old Europe. The United States is now looking toward the Pacific, toward China, toward Taiwan. And in this new equation, Ukraine is nothing more than dead weight. Let it rebuild, do business, adapt. But do not expect a glorious ending because the script was never written for that.
Putin has learned a crucial lesson: in Europe, force is still the currency of exchange. Just ask Milosevic’s ashes. He has consolidated his conquests, challenged the international order, and emerged victorious. Meanwhile, in Brussels, they continue drafting statements of condemnation, as if words could alter reality. Europe has lost because it never had a strategy. Because he believed that with money and sanctions, it could disguise its lack of real power. Because it never understood that the world does not move by principles but by interests.
The end of World War II marked the fall of the British Empire. This predictable peace, unilaterally agreed between Trump and Putin, certifies Europe’s irrelevance in international affairs. And if anyone doubts it, just look at who will be at the negotiating table. There will be no blue flags with golden stars. Just two men dividing the world while Brussels continues to believe it is the great defender of democracy.
The war is close to ending. Trump and Putin have spoken. And in Brussels, only the echo of silence remains.
There is no turning back. No negotiation table for the EU, no grandiose speeches that can alter what is already a done deal. Putin has gained territory, Trump has gained prominence, and Europe… has lost even the right to complain.
The fantasies of global leadership are over. The illusion of being a strategic actor is over. Europe is, once again, a spectator of its own destiny, a mere bystander in the great global chess game. And when history is written again, Brussels will only appear in a footnote.
By Jorge Mestre.
This article was originally published in Ok Diario.
