A week in mid-February of 2025 will go down in history as the first shot in the new Trump administration’s design to revolutionize its relations with the world. Key speeches in European capitals by senior White House officials provided alarming insights into how the doctrine of “America First” might shape the conduct of the United States as a global power.
This extraordinary week began with an address in Brussels by the US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, on February 12, to a body called the Ukraine Defense Contact Group. This is a multilateral organization with North American Treaty Organization (NATO) members at its core, established by the United States following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The group’s stated purpose is to plan for and facilitate the flow of military support to Ukraine and, as recently as January 10, the US Department of Defense issued a detailed fact sheet listing its accomplishments.
Hegseth lectured the assembled ministers and military officers of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group on the meaning of realism, as the war in Ukraine nears the start of its third year. For Hegseth, realism involves accepting that Ukraine will not return to its pre-2014 borders, that there will be no NATO membership for the embattled country and that any future security guarantees for Ukraine would depend on what the Europeans can ante up. There would be no US contribution to any peacekeeping force in Ukraine, should one be established to monitor a ceasefire, and it would not operate under NATO’s aegis.
The new defense secretary further explained that the United States would be pivoting away from Europe to face new challenges — what he called “consequential threats” at its borders, and China as a “peer competitor” in the Indo-Pacific. It was time, he said, for a new global “division of labour.”
The Hegseth speech was shock number one. That same day, February 12, it was revealed that Donald Trump had held a lengthy (90-minute) phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the first acknowledged such call since Trump was elected. This took place without the knowledge of the Ukrainian leadership or European allies. After the call, Trump affirmed some of the messages delivered by Hegseth, particularly that there would be no NATO membership for Ukraine, a key demand of Putin.
Fast forward two days to the opening of the Munich Security Conference, and a keynote address by the new US vice president, J. D. Vance. To the surprise of the assembled delegates, Vance said nothing about Ukraine, but took aim instead at Europe and his German hosts. His key message was that Europe was facing not a Russian or Chinese threat, but a “threat from within.” The threat, according to Vance, is a decline of “shared” democratic values that puts European countries in the same space as the former Soviet Union. Vance lectured Europeans to open the floodgates to far-right ideas and close them to migration. He called dealing with mass migration the “most urgent” task.
Vance was critical of efforts by Germany, his host, to prevent a resurgence of Nazism, saying that there should be “no firewalls.” He underscored this point by holding a provocative meeting with one of the far-right leaders of the German anti-immigrant party, AFD (Alternative for Germany) — this, on the eve of a German election. His speech was roundly denounced by Germany’s leaders.
The week’s finale was provided by Trump’s Ukraine envoy, retired General Keith Kellogg. He took part in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference on the topic of “Peace through Strength: A Plan for Ukraine.”
Kellogg had little to say about a plan for Ukraine, other than that it would be up to Trump. He also said Europe would not be at the table — just consulted for “input.” He dodged most direct questions from the panel moderator about how the United States might put pressure on Russia, turning instead to lambasting European countries for their failure to invest properly in defence and praising the first Trump administration, in which he served, for instilling fear in Putin and allegedly turning him away from foreign adventures (conveniently forgetting Syria or the Wagner Group in Africa). In Kellogg’s rendition, “peace through strength” was all about the historical record of the United States’ selective use of power.
Kellogg’s fellow panellist, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, tried to quell the growing sense of unease in the room by reminding everyone that “we are talking about talks about negotiations.” True enough — it will be a long process. For Ukraine, for the European members of NATO, for Canada with its stake in transatlantic security, it has begun very badly.
America First, after this dramatic week in February, looks like a doctrine that abandons allies, abandons democracy, abandons principles, abandons its historic global leadership, and lectures and threatens while it does so. A monumental reshaping of the global order is under way. America First is America alone and dangerous.
