The Trump-Zelenskyy face-off underscores a stark reality — the world is now contending with a radically supremacist and assertive United States, one that swears by MAGA and is determined to re-establish American primacy on its own terms. Whether through actions or rhetoric, Trump’s administration is relentlessly signalling that the era of sugar-coated diplomacy, porous borders, and open-ended commitments to battles of marginal interest to the US is over. If the world expects American intervention, assistance, or firepower, it must come with a clear price tag, set in the Oval Office. Room for negotiation has shrunk. Hard bargains are the new diplomatic currency.Zelenskyy, to his detriment, learned this the hard way. Despite being cautioned by Republican heavyweights like Lindsey Graham to avoid direct confrontation with Trump, the Ukrainian president misread the moment. He believed his equation with Washington had not fundamentally changed, that the old playbook of appeals to shared values and historical ties would still work. It didn’t. Instead, he was publicly chastised, reminded of Ukraine’s dependence on American support, and warned that defiance would leave Kyiv to fend for itself in a grinding, inconclusive war now entering its fourth year.
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