Introduction
On 24th of February 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine and started a conflict which will be remembered through the years as an aggressive action that has brought back war to the European continent. After 3 years of slow but constant stabilization of the conflict with decreasing hopes to establish negotiation tables, Trump’s arrival in the White House in January 2025 seemed like a political earthquake. Since the electoral campaign Trump has promised to be able to set an end to the Ukraine-Russia conflict and, once president on 20th of January, he has implemented a series of executive orders that underline a turning point for US politics and for the global system. This change should be also analyzed from a foreign political point of view; indeed it is leading to a shift in the balance of power within international relations with allies and competitors. February 2025 has been proving this shift; in less than 3 weeks the transatlantic alliance and the balance of Ukraine war has been overturned by the new authoritarian Trump approach.
Although we are living in a world already ruled by disinformation and manipulation, ASSEDEL wants to make order on the facts line, retracing step by step all the causes which have led to a rift within the transatlantic alliance and Ukraine supports.
Munich Security Conference
From 14th to 16th of February the Munich security conference (MSC) took place. It is known to be the world’s leading forum for debating international security policy. MSC’s aim is to provide official and non official diplomatic initiatives to address the world’s most pressing security concerns.
On the eve of the conference Trump announced a long phone call with Russian president Vladimir Putin outlining a potential peace deal with Russia. Therefore the EU representatives expected the US vice president JD Vance’s speech to face issues such as: the following steps of United States’ negotiation with Russia and Ukraine, the future role of US in Europe, EU defence spending and a partial withdrawal of US troops by the continent.
Surprisingly JD Vance spoke about “Share Values” claiming the following:
“The threat that I worry the most about Vis Vis with Europe is not Russia , it is not China , it is not any other external actors. What I worry about is the threat from within, the retread of Europe from some of its most fundamental Values shared with the US”.
More specifically he criticized 3 main themes of EU politics:
- Firstly, he complained about freedom of speech being in retreat throughout the whole European continent like in Romania where the government, according to the EU commission and the national constitutional court, has denied the result of the election due to Russian disinformation actions. Moreover, he condemned the alleged censorship made by the previous US administration on Social Media against misinformation. Furthermore, the Vice president stated that:
“Real democracy must be strong enough to resist” and “our citizens are not as brittle as the EU fears and allowing them to speak their mind will make them stronger”.
- In second place, JD Vance also criticized the EU’s unwillingness to rein in out of control Migration
- Lastly, he blamed the FDP (German liberal-democratic party) refusal to cooperate with the far right claiming: “there is no room for firewalls”
Therefore, the US vice president’s speech has sent shockwaves through the continent condemning European democracies to have set an authoritarian path that directly harms democratic principles such as freedom of expression.
ASSEDEL is still trying to understand how protecting the population and national institutional proceedings from propaganda attacks, which promote mostly disinformation and hatred, could endanger our democracies. Moreover, ASSEDEL wants to underline that our constitutional charters state and preserve our rights, such as freedom of speech, until these ones harm the rights of others, spreading and encouraging hate speech and discrimination against other parts of civil society.
Ukraine war: US decision over the heads of EU and Ukraine
Another breaking point within the transatlantic alliance, as already anticipated, is about the future negotiation with Russia to put an end to the Ukraine-Russia conflict. Indeed, Trump’s administration announced a private meeting between the US and Russia’s delegation without the presence of the EU and Ukraine. The summit, which took place in Riyadh on the 18th of February, has raised several complaints by the excluded actors such as Zelensky and other European leaders who immediately claimed:
“No decision about Ukraine without Ukraine” and “No decision about EU without EU”.
In the meantime of the US and Russia’s Vis Vis, the French government, ruled by Emmanuael Macron, invited other European leaders to two extraordinary summits in Paris on the 18th and 19th to align the EU position on Ukraine and to face issues such as Security and Defence EU investment.
These meetings have underlined how much the European deficit of defence spending is affecting the EU leadership within international relationships. Therefore, Europe is actually facing the incapability to put a peacekeeping force into the field, due to the 2% defence spending target never reached, proving what president Zelensky has pointed out:
“Currently, Europe can not guarantee Ukraine security without the US”.
However, Ukraine’s relationship with the US has been living in a seesaw phase. On the one hand, US criticism of the shared democratic values with UKR and the intolerance of the economic weight of the war. All that is evident given recent Trump and Zelensky’s public statements; the first one said that “Ukraine should have never started the war” and accused Zelensky of being a dictator. This is followed by the UKR president’s response: “President Trump is spreading Russian propaganda”.
On the other hand, there is a “dictated collaboration” by Ukraine, aware that US support is essential both for reaching a deal to end the war and for resisting Russian attacks. This is evidenced by the recent mineral agreement made between the 2 countries.
ASSEDEL supports the claims: “No decision about Ukraine without Ukraine” and “No decision about EU without EU”. A hypothetical deal, made by the US and Russia over EU and UKR’s heads, would breach firstly the Ukraine’s sovereignty and secondly the Ukranians who would be left out of choosing their future. Therefore, their destiny after three years of destruction would be decided by actors who do not put the interest of the Ukrainians over their own economical and political ones. Moreover, ASSEDEL highlights the importance of preserving the rights of Ukrainians who live in Russia’s occupied territories in order to not force them either to stay in a country where they do not feel represented and to migrate, abandoning their home.
What we can expect for the future
Now it is hard to predict how and if the new international system will be balanced in the future. We are definitely living through a historical turning point for the global system.
What is evident is that Trump, since he has taken office in the White House, has led to a shake-up of the previous international order, causing a rift within the transatlantic alliance. The new US administration has accelerated the process of multi polarisation all around the globe, acting with an aggressive political approach based on their economic and military supremacy in order to influence both their allies and competitors. Trump’s world design (or strategic doctrine) seems to lead to a new international system whose founding principles may be closer to the Yalta Conference than Helsinki one. This would mean a world ruled exclusively by the most powerful actors who prefer to implement the threat of the use of force over international cooperation in order to pursue their own economic and political interests.
On the other hand, the 2025 Munich security conference highlighted how much Europe has missed several wake up calls through the years, ignoring complaints from US leaders about unfair burden-sharing for decades. In fact, MSC 2025 has marked once again a particularly loud wake up call for the EU to become more independent and united.
ASSEDEL wants to conclude by supporting the UN High Commissioner for Human rights Volker Turk’s claim: “If the Multipolar World does not have rules or guardrails, it’s chaos, it’s unpredictability, it’s violence.”
Sources:
https://securityconference.org/en/publications/debriefs/westlessness-reloaded
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/P-10-2025-000150_EN.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/13/eu-failed-trump-proof-europe-humiliation-ukraine