As the 47th US president, Donald Trump, will not guarantee the US budget “to keep Ukraine afloat,” strategic analyst Paolo Raffone told Sputnik.
He conjectured that the Biden administration and its European acolytes fueling NATO’s proxy war “are history.”
“Trump does not see any advantage for the US to continue spending enormous budgets and political capital in Ukraine. If a deal with Russia and Ukraine cannot be reached, it is possible that Trump will push for a ‘frozen conflict policy’ as a sort of damage control... Europeans will have to cover those costs. It will probably be the end of the EU,” the director of the CIPI Foundation in Brussels speculated.
On the foreign policy front, the Republican is likely to display openness to “pragmatic” solutions with allies and foes to achieve “maximum advantage” for the US, he surmised, adding:
“I expect a great bargaining in which Trump will keep the centrality of the US as the ‘indispensable interlocutor’ in bilateral relations, also within the framework of multipolarity. Probably, there will be much less hysteria about Russia, Iran, China. The probable objective is ‘rebalancing the interchange’ with all these countries. They may not become friends, but deals are possible in mutual interest.”
In his pursuit of a national interest agenda, Trump may redefine America's contributions to NATO, emphasizing that US protection for Europe "is not a free ride," Raffone noted.
“Trump will guarantee the Europeans the military shield, but each European state will have to contribute much more to NATO. The previous US administrations asked to raise European military expenditure above 2% GDP. Such a target will probably be insufficient during the new Trump administration,” said Raffone.
It is difficult for Trump to “accept any idea of European strategic autonomy,” emphasized the pundit. He supposed that a new Trump administration would brandish “a combination of trade, tariffs, security levy to force the Europeans to increase their military budgets and buy more American.”
“European energy and technology dependency is a fact… Europe must find space for compromise to deal with not only the US, but also with Russia, China and the Middle East. The current ideological positions in the EU Commission, Paris and Berlin are not encouraging,” stressed the pundit.
Looking ahead to the US elections of 2028, none of the “old guard” will be running, conjectured Raffone, suggesting that “new forces will emerge during the current Trump term.”
“The Trump administration will probably be a transition time. The outcome will be visible in US politics over the next decade. Currently, the two US parties live a populist momentum. Time will tell if politics will arise again in the US,” he concluded.