Donald Trump did Europe a favour throwing Zelensky out of the White House

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine did not even make it that long in his recent White House visit.

The ubiquitous, seminal footage of President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance tearing into the Ukrainian war hero is sensational.

The abrupt termination of the proposed minerals framework deal, followed by Zelensky's being asked to leave early, has killed the chances of a Ukrainian ceasefire with US security guarantees.

Now, it is up to Europe.

Beyond the obvious point that Trump occupies the Oval Office (for the second time), the President's credentials and intelligence have been routinely maligned by the media, commentators, government officials, rivals, and his predecessors since his first presidential bid in 2000.

The Zelensky shakedown on Friday, 28 February, was either a disgrace and symptom of a sick mind ill-suited to high office or a consistent, strategic, well-calculated act of realpolitik.

President Trump has long been critical of Nato because the United States pays the largest portion of defence spending among member countries. In contrast, most of the others contribute a much smaller amount, making—in Trump's eyes—the post-World War II alliance between the US and many European countries a deficit of an endeavour that has failed to keep the peace.

At the centre of Trump's concerns is a 2014 agreement among Nato countries to work to spend two per cent of their gross domestic product on defence. The target guideline was set following Russia's invasion and illegal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine. Nato expects 23 of its 32 members to have met the target on defence in 2024.

Trump's "America First" policies have driven a vision of the United States as a parsimonious economic and military autarky without moral leadership.

"I'm not going to provide security guarantees [to Ukraine] beyond very much," he said at a cabinet meeting. "We're going to have Europe do that."

The rub of how Trump's administration would do that has always been a question mark. The President has maintained that European nations may need to offer Ukraine reliable security guarantees in case of a peace deal with Russia if the US will not.

The US Secretary of Defence, Pete Hegseth, said he would "seek to ensure that our Nato allies demonstrate" a strong commitment to the alliance's Article 3, which states that members must be "sufficiently prepared" to face a crisis.

Trump had previously wanted Nato allies to spend 5 per cent of GDP on defence - a figure supported by countries close to the Russian border, such as Poland and Lithuania. The British Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, was among the first to propose peacekeeping boots on the ground in Ukraine and has already pledged an increase to 2.5 per cent of GDP from April 2027 in defence spending at the forfeit of Britain's international aid commitment (cut from 0.5 per cent of to 0.3 per cent from the same year).

Starmer's vision is not far different to Trump's: his proposal for a European peacekeeping force is predicated on Europe "play[ing] its role", with any future security guarantee for Ukraine requiring a "US backstop".

Flirtations of a US departure from Europe have lasted longer than the acrimonious Zelensky meeting. In January, French President Emmanuel Macron hinted that France would need to go beyond Nato's current spending target, especially if the United States, under Trump, pulls the American military out of Europe.

Even Trump's business-first approach to politics has a limit. Surely, someone amongst his army of acolytes (and whatever State Department advisors have survived the Elon Musk-led DOGE purges) has pointed out that you cannot unify a continent by decreeing it; you cannot force countries to reach into their pockets on a whim.

President Richard Nixon and his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, were famous "madman theory" subscribers. Nixon's team was determined to make communist leaders think he was dangerous and volatile to secure better terms of cooperation.

Nixon's chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, remembered the President saying: "I call it the madman theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe we can't restrain him when he's angry – and he has his hand on the nuclear button."

The obvious, most brilliant, most awful Machiavellian stunt for the Trump team to pull would make it so seminally apparent that Zelensky has no friends in the United States as to spur the urgent need for European security integration. It would require humiliating Zelensky in front of the assembled media at an opportune moment.

JD Vance's "you should be thanking the president" speech sounded painfully scripted. All the Vice President did was tee up the madman president to rant and make the world wonder if he may now withdraw from Europe.

Trump is surrounded by the likes of Musk, who may see the future of combat as unmanned cyber warfare with a premium on intelligence gathering over hard military conflicts measured by traditional capabilities. Ukraine, by that definition, is pointless unless there is a natural resource return.

Trump understands that America cannot simply walk away from Europe—it is not in the United States' best interest. He may well be playing the villain, the madman, to provoke Nato leaders to get their houses in order so America can withdraw—the same strategy Nixon employed 60 years before in Vietnam.

If the imperial presidency, a global reality since 1945, will be replaced with an autarkic gerontocracy, then Europe owes itself to save itself.

For that reason alone, Trump may have done Europe, the world, and Ukraine, an enormous favour by unceremoniously ejecting a good man from the Oval Office on Friday.

Trump's vision of a remedial transatlantic realignment can finally take place—Europe can finally unite, appropriately finance, and appropriately strategize its future free from a tyrannical superpower that has entirely forfeited any pretence of moral leadership.

Then, it can deal with Russia.