‘Diminishing returns’

Weeks later, the mid-August Alaska summit between Trump and Putin set alarm bells ringing anew in Europe. Trump emerged apparently skeptical about Ukraine’s chances in the war, and intrigued by a Russian plan to end it on terms closer to Moscow’s than Europe’s. An eyes-only intelligence report circulated by a European country offered details of commercial and economic plans the Trump administration was pursuing with the Kremlin, including jointly mining rare earths in the Arctic. France’s Macron argued in an encrypted group chat with his fellow leaders that they should travel together to Washington for an urgent meeting with Trump to support Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Six European presidents and prime ministers, plus Rutte and the EU’s von der Leyen, filed into the White House past a string quartet, and complimented the president for his strength as a negotiator, as news cameras rolled. “Thank you very much, Mark,” Trump said to Rutte. “You’re a great leader. You’re doing a fantastic job.”

Macron, watching on, looked uncomfortable.

The White House was barely recognizable for the French president who had served since the early months of Trump’s first term. A European sessile oak sapling, taken from a World War I battlefield, which the two presidents had ceremoniously planted together in 2018 on the South Lawn, had been removed on concerns it carried parasites, and died. An antechamber off the Oval Office was decorated with framed magazine covers of the 47th President. The leaders sat in suspense as Trump, from another room, unexpectedly called Putin for 40 minutes.

In the end, the intervention bought them only a short reprieve. Within weeks, Trump was once again expressing doubt about Ukraine’s chances and entertaining a Russian peace plan that touted opportunities for U.S. businesses. The leaders realized they wouldn’t be able to pin down Trump to support the Western position on Ukraine—or perhaps any other policy.

It was “an excruciating experience,” one person present said, and a signal how little influence America’s closest allies, even traveling as a collective, exerted with the administration.

The fragile consensus on flattery was starting to splinter, a trend captured by Britain’s MI6. That form of diplomacy, per an assessment from the spy service, was “subject to the law of diminishing returns.”

Archive link: https://archive.ph/1Rp9v