Baala Shakya, Staff Photographer

President Donald Trump’s foreign policy is shocking observers at home and abroad.

Days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s White House meeting with Trump and Vice President Vance turned into a televised shouting match, Trump announced that he would temporarily suspend all military aid to Ukraine. Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance LAW ’13 is facing outrage in France and the United Kingdom after he said, following their pledge to place peacekeeping troops in Ukraine as a part of a peace deal, that American economic investment in Ukraine would be a “better security guarantee than 20,000 troops from some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years.”

“My first reaction was a shame and disgust I’m still having difficulty putting into words,” said professor Marci Shore, who teaches modern European history at Yale. “My feeling was: ‘there is no bottom.’”

Shore said Trump and Vance “behaved like bullies on a playground” in their Oval Office meeting with Zelensky, playing out classic tropes of abusers.

While Vance demanded that Zelensky thank Trump for American support for Ukraine, Shore said Zelensky has “said ‘thank you’ to the American people over and over again.”

She added that Trump’s shouting at Zelensky “You don’t hold the cards” and Zelensky’s reply that “we’re not playing cards” revealed much about the two leaders’ characters. 

“This was actually a very profound moment, illuminating a confrontation between someone for whom all of life is merely a casino game and someone for whom human lives are real,” she said.  “Zelensky is the president of a country at war, he’s watching his soldiers killed, his cities bombed and children buried under rubble day after day. And he feels that responsibility and takes responsibility.”

Shore also condemned the Republican praise of Trump’s hostility towards Zelensky, including Sen. Lindsay Graham’s comment that Trump “gave a masterclass on how to stand up for America.”

“In fact, what happened on Friday is that President Trump gave a masterclass on moral nihilism and Lindsay Graham gave a masterclass on selling one’s soul to the devil,” she said. “I have felt inspired by all this to put together a new seminar on fictional and nonfictional versions of Faust.”

Margaret Donovan, who teaches “The Russo-Ukrainian War” at Yale Law School, said this undiplomatic tone will “unfortunately” continue as it is clear the Trump administration’s priority is to appeal to its base voters.

As long as their political base remains unfazed by the consequences of these new policies, including the “extension of the war and its effect on American consumers,” she said, this combative tone will continue.

Shore said the radical shift in the American government’s approach to Ukraine has triggered European nations to develop their own response to the war and the threat of Russia more broadly. On Sunday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the U.K. and President Emmanuel Macron of France announced the creation of a European “coalition of the willing” to secure peace in Ukraine.

“The only silver lining to our administration’s obscene performance on Friday is that Europeans might have finally been shaken into recognition that this is in fact the end of the affair,” she said. “The American government is untrustworthy, unreliable and unhinged; that if Trump belongs to anyone, it’s to Putin, and that Europe has to mobilize.”

Donovan agreed that the formation of the European coalition signals that “European leaders correctly understand the threat of an unchecked Russia.” 

“If the administration’s true goal is to achieve peace, it should acknowledge that Russia can achieve peace at any time by leaving Ukrainian territory,” she said. “Russia faces significant manpower and morale shortages. Putin is in just as much, or more, of a position to make concessions as Zelensky.”

Donovan added that if the war ends with any Russian gains in Ukrainian territory, European leaders have “every reason to believe another incursion will take place within years, or sooner.” 

She also condemned Vance’s “troubling” comments that apparently belittled the European coalition’s commitment to deploy peacekeeping troops to Ukraine as a part of a peace deal.

“We led a 68-nation coalition in the fight against the Islamic State,” Donovan said. “Who among those nations were ‘random?’ Whose help will we turn down for the next threat to national security? For someone who lived through the 9/11 attacks and resulting 20+ years of a coalition-based response, it is extremely shortsighted to dismiss any European ally in this way.”

Vance has since denied that he was referring to the U.K. or France.

Michael Brenes, who teaches 20th-century American foreign policy, political history and political economy at Yale, said it is unlikely that America’s relationship with Europe will be completely severed due to Trump’s combative tone.

“It can’t go that far, I think, in many respects, given the institutional commitments and the historical connections between the United States and Europe over the past 80 years, certainly after World War II,” he said. “But I do think that the Europeans, as it relates to Ukraine but also many other issues, are making decisions that indicate the United States is no longer in a position where it’s going to unequivocally support European security.”

Brenes added that Trump’s foreign policy, especially in Ukraine, reflects a belief that the rest of the world owes America both resources and rhetorical gratitudes and apologies. The imposition of tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico, for example, reflect the notion that those countries owe resources to America.

Brenes said Trump’s statements about incorporating Greenland and the Panama Canal to U.S. territory also embody his belief that the U.S. is in a position where it needs to “constrain and conquer” to protect U.S. interests around the world. He expects to see a similar transactional approach with China as well. 

Overall, Brenes said Trump’s approach to foreign policy reflects his willingness to upend “the old order.”

“Everything that we’ve known about foreign policy, or many of the foundations of foreign policy and how foreign policy is conducted, is being questioned,” he said. “There’s going to be a lot of sound and fury, but in the end, he’s going to back away from the most radical or most upending policies that he is promoting.”

Trump’s term started on Jan. 20, 45 days ago.