There’s something about Donald Trump that sends Europeans mad. The President and Vladimir Putin agreed last week to commence talks about ending Russia’s war in Ukraine. From the hysterical reaction, you would have thought Trump had handed Putin the keys to Kyiv.
Shrill cries of surrender, betrayal and appeasement are premature; extremely difficult negotiations lie ahead, involving Ukraine, on the precise terms of any deal. And Putin himself has blinked by abandoning many of his pre-conditions for talks set out last year.
The mood among European security panjandrums at this weekend’s Munich Security Conference was fraught. European leaders claim to have been blindsided by Trump’s move, and shocked by the US defence secretary’s statement that
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