Foreign policy: a lack of resolution

By Richard North - February 28, 2025

At least Biden had the excuse of Alzheimer’s disease – actual or incipient – to explain his lack of coherence. I’m not sure what Trump can fall back on, but it has to be said that his opening statement at his press conference with Starmer yesterday was singularly unimpressive.

Multiple journalists have been struggling to make some sort of sense of the meeting but whatever emerges from it is for the future, where actions not words will be the final determinant.

As one might expect, Starmer claims that he has had “very productive” discussions with Trump, but it is now down to the respective “teams” to deliver something bankable, and only time will tell where there is anything substantive to come from the yardage of extruded verbal material.

Despite that, The Times thinks that Starmer has won “clear victories” from standing his ground at the White House, which includes the “US’s backing on tariffs and the Chagos Islands”.

The “big challenge” however, is Ukraine, and the paper reports that Trump’s position remains “uncertain”, which probably describes every aspect of the meeting. In particular, though, this still leaves the matter of US security guarantees for British (and European) peacekeeping forces completely unresolved.

In fact, according to The Times, Trump refused to make a commitment, instead referring to a forthcoming deal between the US and Ukraine on mineral rights, which the US president and Zelensky are expected to sign today, when the Ukrainian president arrives in Washington.

That deal alone, Trump suggests, would stop Russia and Putin “playing around” because American workers would be on the ground in Ukraine. Putin, the US president said, could be trusted to “keep his word”. Needless to say, that is the opposite of Starmer’s view.

Trump’s thinking here – if the term “thinking” can be applied in this context – seems to be that the mere presence of US workers on the ground would deter Russian intervention.

Pressed explicitly on whether the US would come to the rescue if British troops were attacked by Russian forces, Trump said: “If they need help I will always be with the British … But they don’t need help”. This is a measure of the sort of dribble that Trump was producing.

About the only thing on which there was unequivocal clarity was the king’s invitation to Trump for another state visit, much being made that a second visit of the same person was “historic”. Trump accepted on behalf of the United States, and the gifted “teams” are now at work.

Starmer, we are told, will hope that diplomacy in the coming days – including a meeting of European leaders and Zelensky at Lancaster House in London on Sunday – will be enough to help persuade Trump of the need for a proper “backstop”.

It seems also that No 10 is encouraged by Trump’s repeated assurances that he will help Ukraine to get back the land that Russia has taken, together with his retraction of his previous assertion that Zelensky is a dictator – pointing to an attempt to repair bridges with the Ukrainian president.

Interestingly, the Telegraph also sees Starmer as victorious, headlining its main report, “Three simple words from Trump define a day of unexpected victories for Starmer”,

The three words, which turn out to be “vital” were delivered by Trump when he was asked whether he backed Article V of The North Atlantic Treaty, which even most schoolboys used to know “binds the US and every other member to come to the defence of any ally”.

Even then, it doesn’t actually do that. More prosaically, it requires the parties to the treaty, in the event of an armed attack on one or more of their number, to take such action as they individually “deem necessary”, which might include the use of armed force, but might involve very little.

Nevertheless – whether Trump actually knows what it involves – to the relief of many he declared: “I support it”, his three “vital” words. This apparently is seen to overturn a comment by Pete Hegseth, US defence secretary, who recently sent tremors through Europe by appearing to suggest that America’s commitment to Nato was conditional and wavering.

Trump’s reassurance, therefore, is welcome but, as with his comment about UK forces not needing US assistance in Ukraine, he grandly declared of the Article:
“I don’t think we’re going to have any reason for it”.

Here, it is helpful to see ourselves as others see us, so it is instructive to see the New York Times report which stresses that Trump says he believes Putin will abide by any Ukraine peace deal.

While sitting beside Starmer in the Oval Office, we are told, Trump repeatedly said that he trusted Putin not to violate the terms of whatever peace deal that might soon be reached to end. “I think he’ll keep his word”, Trump says of the Russian president. “I’ve known him for a long time now”.

For all that, the Washington Post doesn’t seem to be right bothered about the meeting: you struggle to find any report on its website which leads on the story that a judge has blocked the Trump administration’s mass firings of federal workers, which perhaps tells us where we stand in the scheme of things.

When you do find a report – tucked well down the page – it tells us that the British prime minister used “flattery, royal invitation to push Trump on Ukraine”, becoming “the latest international leader to play supplicant in the Oval Office as Trump threatens to upend the global order”.

That’s a different sort of “take” from the “victorious” Starmer that’s being sold to us back home, as the paper records, much as The Times did, that Trump is equivocal on whether he will offer a “backstop” for European peacekeeping forces. If that is a “victory”, there is nothing very much bankable in it.

Picking up on the end-of-meeting press conference, the paper cites Starmer welcoming Trump’s “deep and personal commitment to bring peace and to stop the killing”. Says Starmer in the quote: “You’ve created a moment of tremendous opportunity to reach this historic peace deal”, adding: “but it can’t be peace that rewards the aggressor or that gives encouragement to regimes like Iran. We agree history must be on the side of the peacemaker, not the invader”.

Trump, we learn, didn’t contradict him, even though he has spent two weeks minimising Russia’s decision to invade and focusing on Ukraine’s supposed culpability for failing to strike a deal to hand over some of its territory three years ago and avoid the Russian aggression.

Instead, in what may have been studied deflection, Trump focused on minimising areas of disagreement, complimenting Starmer’s “beautiful accent” and saying that he expected London and Washington to strike a trade deal that would help Britain avoid US tariffs.

Again, there’s nothing much bankable there, not least because the hurdles to a US trade deal are formidable – partly owning to the fact that, in many sectors, the US is not a regulatory single market, with State governments defining their own standards.

Thus, although we are saturated with reports, all saying much the same thing – or variations thereof – I am minded of the experience in researching for The Great Deception. Then it was possible to read contemporary press reports of “turning point” meetings, only to find that the previously secret archives revealed that something completely different had transpired, not hinted at in the published communiqués.

One would like to be more constructive about the heads of apparent agreement, but none of us are privy to what went on in the private discussions. I feel it is best, therefore, to reserve judgement and see how the “play” pans out, and what is actually delivered, beyond a jolly for Trump to see the king.