Trump’s talks with Putin, Zelensky signal end of multilateral security

The recent back-to-back meetings in Alaska and Washington offer a troubling portrait of today’s security order. Rather than demonstrating a collective search for peace, these spectacles highlight a drift towards unilateralism, great-power deals and a hollowing out of multilateral security frameworks. The meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin revealed how easily Europe’s security can be reshaped behind closed doors, while the hastily arranged gathering at the White House with Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and several European leaders underscored Europe’s diminished agency. European leaders were there less to negotiate than to listen, fearful of being sidelined as Trump outlined his vision for ending the war in Ukraine. This series of encounters should be seen less as a move towards peace and more as political performances that expose the growing dysfunction of global governance. At the heart of these meetings lies the question of Europe’s future security architecture. In theory, Russia’s war in Ukraine could be a catalyst for reimagining European security. In practice, however, neither Alaska nor Washington has yielded any such framework. Past agreements – such as the Dayton Accords that ended the Bosnian war in 1995 or the Minsk agreements intended to halt fighting in eastern Ukraine – offer lessons in both ambition and failure. These agreements, designed for specific conflicts in distinct historical contexts, are ill-suited to today’s war in Ukraine. Any settlement now must grapple not only with ceasefire lines but also with the redefinition of security guarantees across Europe, something neither Dayton nor Minsk was built to handle. Without a multilateral mechanism that includes not just the United States and Russia but also the European Union, Nato and regional stakeholders, Europe remains vulnerable to great-power bargains made at its expense. Perhaps most striking is what these summits reveal about the state of transatlantic relations. European leaders, who had long relied on their partnership with Washington as a cornerstone of their security, once again found themselves on the outside looking in. While the EU might have saved a small amount of face, European leaders still had to watch from an anxious distance. The Alaska summit held to this pattern of bilateralism, with no European or Ukrainian representation. The White House meeting with Zelensky and European leaders only reinforced this dynamic. Convened with little preparation, it resembled less a negotiation and more an audience. European leaders, anxious not to be excluded after Alaska, effectively came to Washington signalling their insecurity about being left out. The session was less about jointly shaping a solution to the war than about Trump notifying his counterparts of his intentions. This asymmetric diplomacy further erodes the notion of a transatlantic partnership built on consultation and consensus. While the Alaska and Washington talks were framed as peace-building efforts, the underlying motivations appear far more self-serving. Trump’s well-documented desire for personal accolades – especially his fixation on securing a Nobel Peace Prize – casts a long shadow over his diplomatic ventures. His willingness to pursue high-profile meetings springs less from a structured foreign policy strategy and more from the allure of being seen as a “deal-maker” on the global stage. For his part, Putin exploited the Alaska summit to appear as an equal to Trump while conceding little. The mutual benefit lay not in peace but in optics. In Washington, Trump’s dominant posture made European leaders look more like petitioners than partners. These meetings also raise an uncomfortable question about the United Nations as it celebrates its 80th anniversary: has the organisation become irrelevant? An affirmative answer is increasingly difficult to deny. At a time when international law and collective action are most needed, two of the UN’s founding members opted for bilateral fixes, bypassing not only the Security Council but the very principles enshrined in the UN Charter. This marginalisation is not new. Both the US and Russia have in recent years flouted the UN’s foundational norm prohibiting the unilateral use of force. From Iraq to Ukraine, military interventions have been carried out without UN authorisation, further eroding the institution’s credibility. The Alaska and Washington summits merely put exclamation marks on a trend that has been unfolding for more than a decade. The Trump-Putin and Trump-Zelensky meetings should not be misread as steps towards peace. They are troubling signals that the world’s most powerful actors no longer feel bound by multilateral rules or institutions. For policymakers, scholars and civil society, this moment calls for a renewed effort to defend and rebuild the mechanisms of collective security. Here, China and the Global South could play an important role. Beijing recently established the International Organisation for Mediation in Hong Kong, bringing together countries from Asia, Africa and Latin America to provide platforms for negotiation outside traditional Western-led forums. For states in the Global South, this is also an opportunity to press for a more inclusive global order, one where mediation is not monopolised by a few Western capitals and where the legitimacy of agreements derives from broad international participation. The more diverse the guarantors of peace, the more resilient any settlement is likely to be. If Europe’s security is again being decided in bilateral rooms or at hastily arranged White House meetings, then building counterweights through wider coalitions might be the only way to restore balance. The alternative is a future where great powers carve out spheres of influence, leaving smaller states to live with the consequences.

Trump’s talks with Putin, Zelensky signal end of multilateral security

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Rather than a move towards peace, the meetings should be seen as political performances that expose the dysfunction of global governance

Rather than a move towards peace, the meetings should be seen as political performances that expose the dysfunction of global governance