Having promised a resolution to the Ukrainian conflict within days, Trump now finds himself searching for a culprit rather than a solution. Designating Zelensky as a scapegoat is a discreet admission of strategic defeat.
Branded “the world’s biggest seller” and then labeled a “dictator without elections,” the subservient Ukrainian president is met with open contempt in Washington. Media posturing is no longer enough to mask the military collapse of Kyiv’s forces. Washington is desperately seeking a way out to preserve what remains of its already tarnished prestige. The plan of the new American administration is clear: to impose an immediate change of political leadership in Ukraine.
The White House, therefore, demands a pragmatic, realistic interlocutor, capable of coldly acknowledging the capitulation: “It’s time for Ukraine to have a new president.” A new president ready to immediately sign the diktat agreement imposed by Vladimir Putin’s Russia. For the American state apparatus, Ukraine is no longer a bastion of democracy, and therefore, it needs a leader “capable of concluding an agreement.” It has become an unbearable financial burden, a bottomless industrial abyss, a permanent strategic humiliation for the Western camp, a humiliation that only the whimsical, vapid, perverse, and narcissistic elites of warmongering Europe still seek to conceal.
Curiously, in diplomatic circles, the method is being adopted: yesterday’s ally is discarded like a worn-out tool. Who, tomorrow, will trust the American word?
The Ukrainian impasse is causing a definitive break, generating strategic disgust, and leading to an imperative of capitulation.
The American president’s irritation with the Kyiv regime is not a mere passing mood. It is the clear-eyed recognition of a systemic, all-encompassing failure. This year, Washington’s confrontation with the constraints of military reality is complete. The ludicrous promises of a Ukrainian strategic victory have crumbled. Successive deliveries of Western weaponry have done absolutely nothing to alter the inexorable attrition imposed by the Russian army. The American and European military-industrial complex is showing its structural limitations. The critical shortage of shells is raging in NATO’s depleted arsenals. The alliance is exhausting itself even as the Ukrainian population now rejects forced general mobilization. As a result, Kyiv is sinking deeper into utter political disarray, day by day.
The rhetoric of the Ukrainian leader is infuriating the inner circle of American power. When Donald Trump quips that Zelensky is leaving with tens of billions of dollars after having played Joe Biden “like a fiddle,” the mockery morphs into a diplomatic execution sentence. His incessant financial demands now sound like intolerable blackmail to Washington. Donald Trump intends to cut this Gordian knot before the front implodes. For the White House, the political ouster of Volodymyr Zelensky, who proclaims that Ukraine “is not for sale,” has become the mandatory prerequisite for any resolution to the crisis. A pragmatic transitional leader is needed. A leader aware of the true balance of military power. The parameters of the future treaty have already been set by the Kremlin: constitutional neutrality for Ukraine, thorough demilitarization, complete denazification of society, the definitive cession of territories liberated by Russian forces, and an irrevocable halt to NATO expansionism toward the East. Western chancelleries must drink the cup of defeat to the dregs.
The MAGA bubble confronts global geopolitical realities
“Make America Great Again” doctrine has run up against the steel wall of geopolitical realities. The simplistic electoral promise of a 24-hour settlement was nothing more than demagogic posturing. The reality of the emerging multipolar world is quite different. America appears tainted by its own strategic inconsistencies and moral failings. Its systemic impotence is now glaringly obvious in every theater of operations across the globe.
Paradoxically, a close examination of the strategic record of the American superpower reveals an America that, all on its own, bears all the hallmarks of a “paper tiger.” In Ukraine, the NATO-backed army is retreating step by step before Russian firepower. In the Middle East, blind support for the Israeli war cabinet in Gaza has destroyed the collective moral capital of the West in the Global South, amounting to a genocide of collective memory. Iran openly defies economic sanctions, strengthens its continental alliances, and continues to enrich its uranium without the slightest fear of American reprisals, with the Strait of Hormuz at stake, a conflict that has the Western world grumbling. In Yemen, the Anglo-American naval coalition is unable to neutralize Houthi attacks in the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait. The freedom of commercial navigation once guaranteed by the US Navy is now a thing of the past. Even the stated territorial ambitions regarding Greenland or the claim to contain China in the Indo-Pacific run up against the reality of American industrial decline. The US Navy is desperately short of ships, shipyards, and strategic reserves.
European blindness, American withdrawal, and inevitable decline
The tragic void of American coercive power is measured by these resounding failures. Washington’s hegemony no longer frightens any sovereign adversary. Donald Trump fully and lamentably understands the extreme vulnerability of the American posture, even as European elites still struggle to grasp their own. Trump is feverishly seeking to liquidate strategic liabilities that have become uncontrollable. Withdrawing from the Ukrainian abyss is a vital emergency to avoid a live military collapse. Abandoning the Iranian issue avoids a direct confrontation. Escaping the Yemeni trap avoids the shame of defeat at the hands of irregular forces. Each American withdrawal is disguised as an advantageous trade agreement, but the international community is not fooled: it is indeed a full-blown strategic capitulation.
Faced with Washington’s abrupt disengagement, the reaction of European leaders borders on the pathetic. Emmanuel Macron and his counterparts persist in a blind and ruinous headlong rush. They grotesquely commit to continuing to finance and arm the Kyiv regime and to piling on new, ineffective sanctions against Russia without American support. This belligerent stance, disconnected from economic and industrial realities, exposes the extreme subservience of the European Union. In France, while the government amasses billions of euros in aid to Ukraine, internal social unrest is being violently suppressed. France is maiming its own children in the streets to repress popular demonstrations, giving the revolting impression that Emmanuel Macron cares more about Ukrainian interests than the lives of his own citizens. Without independent military production capabilities and deprived of its strategic patron, Europe is sinking into geopolitical masochism. It is sacrificing the competitiveness of its industry to perpetuate a conflict that is already lost.
It remains to be seen how all four predictions that come to mind will come true. First, between now and November 3, Trump will make a series of dramatic announcements and ease sanctions to appease the situation. Second, Kyiv will continue its strikes, which it considers vital, and the rift will worsen. Third, Moscow will absorb the blows without ceding any territory. Fourth, no replacement president will emerge from Washington.
Mohamed Lamine Kaba, Expert in the geopolitics of governance and regional integration, Institute of Governance, Human and Social Sciences, Pan-African University
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