2025. Can be the year for the books of history

Only occasionally there are years when the world goes through some fundamental, convulsive changes. In 1968, with the Soviet invasion on Czechoslovakia, the Paris riots and the anti-Vijenj war protests in America were one of them. 1989, the year of the Tiananmen massacre, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of the Soviet Empire was second.

I was available to see that each of these things happens, and from that perspective it seems to me that, only seven weeks at 2025, it could be such a year: a time when the basic assumptions about the way our world is being done In bringing it to Shredder.

The main reason, of course, is Donald Trump.

Since the end of World War II, each of the 13 US presidents before Trump’s current term of office, at least paid his lips at a set of key geopolitical principles: that US own safety depended on the protection of Europe from Russia, and non -Communist countries of Asia against China.

Trump made up for this approach. He says he sets American interests first, first of all. Mostly it comes down to a unique question of how much it costs the US.

By itself, this is quite difficult for his friends and allies abroad, especially in Europe. But it made it difficult for Trump’s own personality. No US president in modern times, not even Richard Nixon, releases his personal characteristics of shaping his policy as Trump does.

“He’s like Louis XIV,” a retired American diplomat told me, referring to the French self -sacrificing Sunk King.

Critics like this believe that Trump is at the same time in vain and incredibly thin. As a result, the named people surrounding him, people like Elon Musk and JD Vance, may think that their position depends completely on how much he is praised and supported by his views.

When President Trump claims without evidence, that President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine is corrupt And he has a low grade of approval, Musk then takes him further: he appears to say that Zelensky has been overwhelmed by the Ukrainian people and feed on the dead bodies of Ukrainian soldiers.

No one in Trump’s circle seems to be coughing discreetly today and say, “Mr. President, you may need to consider rowing on that statement.”

Judging by his previous term in power, we can be sure that every of the people around him knows that he disagrees with them. And they will also know that many voters have returned Trump’s approach with all their heart and consider them to be bankrupt with security on the distant continent.

He pledged that Easter stopped the Ukrainian war. He is absolutely right to say that President Vladimir Putin is for that. Russian troops, through the pure power of numbers, are slowly progressing in the eastern part of Ukraine.

But costs in Russian life are immeasurable. If the procedure continues, Russia may need to contact the recruitment, which would be dangerously unpopular and even destabilized Putin’s regime. Everything Trump says about getting peace is music on the ears.

John Bolton, Trump’s far from national security advisers during his first administration, said that the other day he would break out champagne in Kremlin when they heard the peace plan of Trump’s administration. He certainly felt like a historic moment – not only in Moscow, but also around the world.

Putin prominently supported the idea that Trump really won the 2020 elections. This may not be true, but President Putin knows that Trump favors anyone who supports his view of things.

Why, in contrast, did Trump and people round him so hard on Zelensky’s president? This must be partly because he obediently does not do what he told him, like returning to the negotiating table and to conclude an American approach to the critical minerals of Ukraine.

At the same time, President Trump understands that Zelensky is the weakest relationship in the American-Rusia-Ukrainian trio and can be squeezed in a way that Putin cannot be. The more pressure on Zelensky, the faster the peace agreement will come.

President Trump never does, at least in public, to show a lot of interest in the detailed details of any agreement. It is an agreement itself, which is important to him, even if Ukraine and his allies believe that it is obviously unjust and allows Russia to return to a future date and again begins the war.

British and German diplomats that I know were furious by the way Trump started negotiating on the negotiating table. “He had two main tickets in his hand,” one said. “The first was Russia’s insulation. Putin would make a lot of concessions to get into talks with America – Trump just didn’t insist on any concessions at all. He just let him sit down and start talking.”

The second map, said the diplomat, was to insist that Ukraine should be allowed to join NATO. “Trump could have pushed out about it and extort all kinds of agreement from Putin, before he finally said OK, well, Ukraine would not join NATO -in that case.” In European capital cities, he felt that he had threw both of his basic tickets before the conversations began at all, without any prerequisites.

However, some European diplomats with the experience of American policy advise their governments that this great monarchical period in Donald Trump’s Presidency, where his advisers delay him (literally called “King” this week, will not call “King” this week) last) .

Trump is currently controlling the excellent congress and a conservative Supreme Court-but in just 20 months, in November 2026, there will be a medium-sized election in the US.

There are signs that inflation begins to grow in America, and a turnaround could badly affect enough people to want to punish Trump Republican.

If he loses control of one or both houses, the power he currently breaks through through every plan and politics, no matter how controversial, he will diminish.

But it can happen awful in the next year and eight months. Trump’s expansionism could strengthen China. The great international trade war, caused by Trump’s tariffs, could be opened. The European Union seems to become political and economically weaker than ever.

The arrangements of peace in Ukraine on Russian conditions will be something completely new to the United States. In the vast majority of negotiations since 1945, Russia struggled to go because of US economic and military forces.

Now President Putin, after making the expensive decision to attack Ukraine three years ago, is likely to get to get rid of it.

If that happens, then in 2025 it will truly be remembered as a key year: the moment when the history of the world has changed and nothing more has been quite the same.