Trump's latest move made U.S. 'irrelevant' on world stage: foreign policy expert

Brad Reed
February 27, 2025 


FILE PHOTO: Donald Trump attends a press conference, the day after a guilty verdict in his criminal trial over charges that he falsified business records to conceal money paid to silence porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016, at Trump Tower in New York City, U.S., May 31, 2024. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

Max Bergmann, the director of the Stuart Center at the Center for strategic and International Studies, told CNN's Sara Sidner on Thursday that President Donald Trump is increasingly making the United States irrelevant as an international power.

When asked about the mineral deal that Trump has reportedly reached with Ukraine, Bergmann downplayed it as more aspirational than a real contract.

"Frankly, I don't think it means very much," he said of the deal. "I think in some ways it's more of a symbolic deal... it's essentially a deal on paper. Right now, the minerals that this deal would capture, uh, aren't out of the ground... the mines would have to be built in Ukraine. That can take more than a decade and you're not going to start building those mines until the fighting stops. I think Ukraine initially offered this, this deal to the Trump administration, hoping it would entice the Trump administration to keep providing military support to Ukraine. That didn't work."

Bergmann then predicted that Trump would increasingly remove the United States from the conflict, but he also believed that Europe would start to step up.

"I think in some ways we're making ourselves fairly irrelevant in the entire conflict, because once you stop providing military aid, with the destruction of USAID, we've already stopped providing economic and development assistance to Ukraine," he said. "Ukraine was the largest recipient of our development aid. So, you know, we don't have that much leverage now over the Ukrainians... but there is this thing called Europe. They have resources. We've been wanting them to step up and do more and they have in response to this war. And they have the resources to ensure that Ukraine doesn't lose the war and can continue fighting. And i think that's what they're going to do."

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