Despite the US-Russia summit, we needn’t return to a world like the one before 1945

A poster of Robert Hopkins' photograph of Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin together after negotiations at the Yalta Conference in Moscow in 1945. AFP

It has been a consequential fortnight in Germany, bookended by the Munich Security Conference, which wrapped up on February 16, and the country’s general election over the past weekend. In both of these events, much of the conversation was centred on the transatlantic relationship and its value for Germany as well as Europe at large.

If the Munich Security Conference is remembered in decades to come, it won’t just be for decoding American Vice President JD Vance’s tirade against European leaders. It will be remembered as the weekend when Europe and the US began to file divorce proceedings.

As a participant at the event, I could measure the profound shock around the room as Mr Vance spoke, lecturing European leaders on their internal politics and warning them not to depend on America for their security. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy followed with a call for the creation of “European Armed Forces”.

The Ukrainian leader has repeatedly asked Europe for a more unified stance against Russia independent of Nato, with stronger EU defence co-ordination. But most EU nations prefer to rely on Nato, so the idea is unlikely to fly.

Nonetheless, the call for creating an “EU army” is an indicator that it is time for the continent to step up. Russia is winning on the battlefield, and Ukraine’s efforts to reclaim the territory it has lost are not just crucial to Ukraine but for all of Europe.

Munich revealed the crevices in the global order but also gave us a glimpse of the new order. “There are three imperial powers now,” one Ukrainian analyst told me, “China, Russia and the United States.”

US and Europe clash on first day of Munich Security Conference

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“A storm is coming,” the Nobel Prize-winning Ukrainian lawyer Oleksandra Matviichuk told me. But in many ways, the storm is already here. It landed on January 20, 2025, the day Donald Trump returned to office as US President.

Following Munich, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and a small delegation of negotiators – many of them with little experience in international peace talks – flew to Saudi Arabia to meet with Russian counterparts to discuss the end of the Ukraine-Russia war. Another shock: the Ukrainians and the Europeans were not invited, even though the fate of Ukraine is at stake.

For Germans especially, it was reminiscent of the 1945 Yalta Conference, in which Russia, Britain and the US met on the Black Sea to decide the fate of Germany and to carve it into four occupation zones. Finland’s President Alexander Stubb, however, has remarked that rather than a “Yalta moment” the talks in Saudi Arabia might be a “Helsinki moment” – referring to the 1975 Helsinki Accords, in which 35 countries took steps to reduce the tensions of the Cold War.

Despite reactions from European leaders, Mr Trump’s policy shift away from responsibility for European defence is perhaps not new.

In the 1990s, as the Bosnian war raged, there was a similar struggle between Bill Clinton’s administration – which believed Bosnia was a European “problem” – and the continent. Europe waited for America to make the first move to save Bosnia; America kept flip-flopping. Although UN peacekeepers were sent, neither Washington nor European states acted until it was too late and a genocide occurred in Srebrenica in 1995.

Perhaps the silver lining in all this muddle is that Europe finally grows up. Europe has always, in a sense, been the little brother of the US, even if the continent is older and grander. Now, the older brother has cut the familial ties.

There are real opportunities for Europe to continue helping Ukraine even without America, in the areas of air defence, military training, humanitarian assistance, the supply of arms and the strengthening of the European sanctions regime against Russia.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio meets Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Riyadh last week. Reuters

Germany’s election result, in which the pro-Russian far right failed to achieve as much support as its opponents feared, shows that the residents of Europe’s strongest economy probably continue to believe in co-operation and the rules-based order. At the same time, Friedrich Merz, whose party came out on top, has already said that Germany must “achieve real independence from the US”.

Going back to Mr Stubbs’s words, perhaps it is time to look back at the Helsinki Accords. Perhaps what we need in a world with competing ideas about order and power, where international law has been abandoned with impunity time and again, is a return to what we can call Helsinki 2.0.

In 1975, Helsinki confirmed the universality of human rights and international law, something badly needed in a world where 41,000 people were killed in Gaza in less than 15 months, and the “greatest nation in the world”, the US, has implied its support for the ethnic cleansing of the enclave’s 2 million inhabitants.

Mr Trump’s foreign policy thus far, one month into his administration, has been terrifying but it is also proactive. It has been startling but perhaps something good may come from his commitment to action and velocity.

The President, who cares deeply about his reputation, is well positioned to change Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s mind in obliterating Gaza. Mr Trump wants to be seen as a dealmaker, but he wants to be seen as a successful one. Perhaps that is why he backtracked over the weekend on his comments about displacing Gazans.

It is said in security circles that the year does not really start until the Munich Security Conference ends. We left with both Ukraine and Gaza hanging in the balance, but also brutal wars in Darfur and Democratic Republic of Congo. Mr Trump wants the Nobel Peace Prize. He might have a chance to get it – but only if he does the right thing and retains rules-based order and adheres to international law.