What Trump has said and done since his re-election to the US presidency continues to shake all states and international organisations, including the traditional allies of the US. On the one hand, the Trump administration is trying to confront the deep state, the so-called ‘establishment’ within the US, and to eliminate its apparatus; on the other hand, it is also trying to come to terms with the global collaborators of this apparatus, first to expose and then to destroy this deep network.
Trump, who faced the threat of impeachment in his first term on the grounds that Russia may have interfered in the 2016 elections in favour of Trump, and then faced accusations that he abused his office by pressuring Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden, has brought to the agenda the claims that the US is experiencing an ‘axis shift’ with his statements and decisions after his inauguration.
So, where do we get this axis shift claim from? Or let’s ask it like this, why did we feel the need to ask such a question?
First of all, it should be reminded that when Biden just sat in the presidential chair in 2021, he gave a message to the countries on the global Western axis, especially the EU and NATO member countries, because of Trump’s policies similar to today between 2016-2020, which was his first term, and gave guarantees that the US was committed to its traditional alliances and would fulfil all its responsibilities in this context.
Biden had already thrown Ukraine into Russia’s lap before he had even completed his first year in office, and while blatantly causing Russia to invade Ukraine, he had consolidated the Atlantic Alliance and formed a broad front against Russia. In fact, this campaign was so effective that the EU had to move away from Russia, its closest and cheapest energy supplier, and turn to the more expensive USA. So much so that even two European countries, Finland and Sweden, which until then had preferred to remain neutral, were at NATO’s doorstep because of the Russian threat.
Reviving the Cold War-era fear of the Soviet Union, the US, on the one hand, tried to strangle Russia economically by imposing sanctions against it, and on the other hand, it tried to restrict the Russian leader legally and render him incapable of functioning by issuing an arrest warrant against Putin at the International Criminal Court. While countries doing business with Russia have been deterred by various sanctions, countries traditionally allied with Russia have also tried to distance themselves from Russia by means of incentives, and Russia has been transformed into a pariah state.
In fact, a lot of progress has been made in this regard, and Russia, bogged down in Ukraine, could not achieve an absolute victory despite all its power, and had to bring in soldiers from North Korea and buy kamikaze drones from Iran because it lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers. In fact, with the surprise entry of the Ukrainian army into the Kursk region, a Russian territory was occupied for the first time since the Second World War.
Before Russia could recover from the shock in the Kursk region, Ukraine, despite Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons, called Putin’s bluff by using ballistic missiles supplied by Western countries and caused great damage to Russia’s prestige.
The losses in Ukraine weakened Russia to such an extent that it had to quietly leave Syria as a result of the Syrian revolution, despite its centuries-long dream of accessing warm waters, which it had pursued for centuries and realised by entering Syria in 2015 at the invitation of Assad.
At a time when Russia was approaching such a low point, Trump was re-elected as president and within the scope of his campaign promise to end the war in Ukraine, he announced that he would cut aid to Ukraine on the one hand and sit at the table with Russia for peace on the other. Immediately after these statements, US Vice President Vance, who made a speech on the margins of the Munich Security Conference, buried the EU on the grounds that there was no freedom of thought and expression, and said that the US could not protect Europe under these conditions and that America would withdraw its troops from the continent if the EU did not take action to ensure its own security.
Meanwhile, the fact that the US and Russian delegations, which met in Riyadh with the aim of achieving peace in Ukraine, were not accompanied by the EU and Ukrainian officials led to the belief that something was wrong. As if it was not a big enough scandal that the US did not include Ukraine, the other side of the war, in the talks with Russia, the exclusion of the EU, its traditional ally and a front itself due to the Ukrainian war, was also considered problematic.
As if this was not enough, Trump’s unjust accusations against Zelensky, such as ‘dictator’ and ‘Zelensky started the war’, were interpreted as both disloyal in the sense that they contained a great injustice against Ukraine and hypocritical in the sense that they were a denial of what the US administration had done so far to bring about this war.
On top of all these, Trump’s demand for compensation from Ukraine and his desire to seize Ukraine’s rare elements, mines and other underground resources in return for the so-called 350 billion dollars of US aid has been the last straw. Even the establishment of an institution like ‘Düyûn-ı Umûmiye’, which was established in the last period of the Ottoman Empire, has been discussed in order to secure these receivables, which Trump has mentioned, totalling 500 billion dollars.
Trump’s anti-Ukraine sentiment has reached such a level that he has gone so far as to say that Putin does not have to negotiate and that he can occupy all Ukrainian territories if he wants. He even stated that it would be enough for him to meet only with Putin on this issue, and that Zelensky did not need to be at the table. In other words, we can say that the USA’s Ukraine policy has changed 180 degrees, yesterday’s absolute anti-Russia stance has turned into an absolute surrender to Russia today, and to put it briefly, we can say that the USA has definitely experienced an axis shift.
Zelensky, who was helpless in the face of Trump’s words, came to Turkey and asked for help from President Erdoğan as the only remaining remedy since he realised that the EU was no longer taken into consideration by the US. The pose between Erdoğan and Zelensky under an umbrella has been the most meaningful frame in the recent period. Because Zelensky, who had rejected Turkey’s ceasefire and peace efforts until yesterday by relying on the EU, especially the USA and the UK, has now come to seek help from the same door. Fortunately, Turkey is the only address of peace today as it was yesterday and will do its best to stop the bloodshed and reconcile Ukraine and Russia.
Even though the EU countries, which only yesterday, together with the USA, fuelled the fire in Ukraine, tried to get involved in the game by setting up a different table in Paris under the leadership of Macron when they were excluded from the table of sharing Ukraine, which was called peace talks, they were not taken as an interlocutor by anyone, and even among themselves, they could not reach an agreement on what to do if the USA withdraws its security guarantees against Russia.
In conclusion, it would not be wrong to say that the US, which established the global Western axis, has left this axis with Trump and has shifted its axis and come under the influence of Russia. We do not know where this axis will take the US, but it is doubtful whether the rest of the world will follow the US.
Because this new axis does not promise good things. On the contrary, it shows that the rule-based global system is bankrupt, that power is the rule of the day, and that a new world order is coming to life in which no other factor is decisive.
Let’s see how those who, a few years ago, interpreted Turkey’s having to pursue different policies from the West in order to protect its own interests in the Ukraine war as an axis shift and accused Turkey of betraying the Western alliance, will react when it comes to the shift of the US axis.
This article was originally published in Diriliş Postası on Feb 25, 2025 in Turkish.
