There are moments in geopolitics that feel like punctuation marks in history—sudden, jarring, irrevocable. The meeting between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House was one such moment. It wasn’t a summit so much as a spectacle, a stage where two men—one a former reality television star turned American president, the other a former comedian turned wartime leader—played their parts in what would become an inflection point in the West’s support for Ukraine.

The tension was palpable from the moment Zelenskyy arrived. Trump, never one to let an opportunity for critique slip away, commented on the Ukrainian leader’s attire. When the two men sat down, a member of the audience—perhaps emboldened by Trump’s offhand remark—pressed Zelenskyy on why he hadn’t worn a suit. “Do you even own one?” the man asked. The question, laced with condescension, could have been ignored. Instead, Zelenskyy, visibly irritated, offered a retort: “I will wear a costume(sic) when the war is over.” His words, however, were likely mistranslated—kostium, the Ukrainian term he used, meaning both “suit” and “costume.” The semantic confusion became emblematic of the entire encounter: two leaders speaking past each other, their words shaping narratives neither intended.

For forty minutes, the meeting maintained the uneasy civility of a political engagement where both sides understood the choreography. Then, Vice President J.D. Vance weighed in. “This war can be ended through diplomacy,” he offered in a tone of pragmatic detachment. Zelenskyy, whose tenure has been shaped by the shattered remains of diplomatic promises, was not amused. “There is no diplomacy with Putin,” he snapped, citing the countless ceasefires Russia has violated over the years. He warned, in a comment that was at once prophetic and provocative, that while America may feel shielded by its oceans, it too could one day face an existential crisis.

Trump took this as a personal affront. The President leaned in and delivered the evening’s climax: “Without the U.S., Ukraine has no cards to play. Make a deal with Russia.” It was less advice and more of an ultimatum. The conversation quickly devolved into an inquisition, with Zelenskyy cast as a defendant, blamed for a war he did not start, held accountable for a crisis not of his making.

By the time the Ukrainian president returned to Kyiv, the damage was done. Washington announced a freeze on all aid to Ukraine. More consequentially, it prohibited Britain from sharing U.S. intelligence with Kyiv, effectively cutting off the lifeline that had kept Ukraine’s war effort afloat. The unspoken message was clear: Ukraine was now on its own.

But if the meeting marked an unraveling of American support, it also ignited a rare moment of European solidarity. Within days, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer convened an emergency summit, with France’s Emmanuel Macron joining in an effort to craft a counterproposal—one that could salvage Ukraine’s position before Trump’s policy became irreversible.

Beyond the immediate consequences, the meeting posed a question that loomed over the Atlantic: Was the United States ready to abandon its allies? From Canada to Mexico to Europe, the first weeks of Trump’s second presidency have seen America drift further from its traditional partners, its foreign policy shifting from alliances to transactions. The specter of a U.S. withdrawal from NATO, once an unthinkable prospect, now hovers as a very real possibility.

In retrospect, the White House meeting was never just about Ukraine. It was about the future of Western power, the reliability of America as a global leader, and the uneasy realization that the world order, as we knew it, might be slipping away—not with a declaration, but with an offhand remark about a suit.

Trump 2.0 is guilty of one of two things: either deliberately breaking old ties to forge new ones or being overconfident in his power. History is filled with similar miscalculations, where leaders place too much faith in alliances, only to be abandoned when the political winds shift. A striking parallel is India’s disastrous intervention in Sri Lanka (1987-1990), when Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi deployed the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to enforce a peace accord between the Sri Lankan government and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). India misjudged the LTTE’s willingness to disarm and quickly found itself in a guerrilla war against the very group it was supposed to protect. The mission, intended as a diplomatic success, turned into an unwinnable conflict. Sri Lanka, initially supportive, soon turned against India, seeing the IPKF as an occupying force. By 1990, India withdrew in humiliation, having failed to secure peace. A year later, in 1991, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by an LTTE suicide bomber—a grim reminder of how foreign policy miscalculations can have deadly consequences.

Peace now fights for survival, as it often does. The world’s energy feels different, thick with tension, as if even the birds sense a storm approaching.