The converging visits of Benjamin Netanyahu and Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Washington offer an unusually eloquent snapshot of a world in turmoil, unmoored from decades-old certainties.
Some things remain the same. The US is still an almighty military and economic power and for both foreign visitors, a White House encounter with Donald Trump is critical to their governments and the wars they are fighting.
The imperial presidency Trump has tried to forge is in decline, however, in large part as a result of his own erratic leadership. He may see his visitors as client-potentates flying in from the edges of empire to kiss his ring. But they will be as aware of Trump’s weaknesses as they are of their own.
Netanyahu and Zelenskyy arrive in Washington on opposite trajectories. The Israeli prime minister’s star has declined dramatically since he persuaded Trump to join him in an ill-conceived war on Iran five months ago, on the groundless promise that the Tehran regime would quickly collapse.
Since then, a viscerally disappointed president has publicly scolded Netanyahu and insisted Netanyahu would ultimately do his bidding, while the White House has liberally leaked Trump’s foul-mouthed tirades belittling him.
Israel has been left out of negotiations with Iran, and its views were ignored when it came to selling F-۳۵ stealth fighter planes to Turkey, or making a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia. An Economist/YouGov survey found that nearly half of Americans polled thought that Netanyahu should be arrested on arrival for war crimes.
By contrast, Zelenskyy arrived in Washington in the ascendant. Ukraine has defied the US administration’s predictions of inevitable defeat to Russia’s might, his country is now a world leader in drone warfare, and parts of the Magaverse are now warming to the accidental war leader they once scorned as a loser.
In traditional administrations, both men and the countries they represent would be natural allies and both could be sure of solid welcome in the Oval Office. It is telling that the occasion of their coinciding visits was the funeral of Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican hawk of the old school who could be relied on for wholehearted promotion of the Israeli and Ukrainian war efforts. In that respect, he was one of a dying breed.
But this is no normal administration, led by a president who rules on a whim, and neither visitor can predict how he will be received. Neither wanted cameras in the room. Trump began his presidency by throwing all-in support behind Netanyahu and his wars, dropping even the pretence of concern for the lives of Palestinians or the people of southern Lebanon that had tempered backing for Israel from earlier presidents.
Facing a hostile electorate, the president is trying to extricate himself from the region, but in doing so is finding Israel the most recalcitrant party on every front.
In Ukraine, Trump threw out the American foreign policy handbook altogether, proposing peace deals that often echoed Moscow’s talking points, rewarding aggression with territory Russia had not even won on the battlefield.
Rather than capitulate, Ukraine showed it could fight on despite drastic cuts in US military aid, relying more on Europe and its own hard-won improvised expertise.
Now Zelenskyy finds himself the unlikely darling of far-right Maga influencers such as Lara Loomer, formerly an apologist for the Russian invasion, who interviewed the Ukrainian president in his garden last week, and called for “moral clarity” in Kyiv’s support.
Zelenskyy’s recent ascent may mirror Netanyahu’s simultaneous decline, but that does not mean they came to Washington with comparable status. When it comes to the Trump administration, they arrive from very different starting positions.
Just about anything would count as an upgrade for Zelenskyy compared with his infamous White House ambush in February ۲۰۲۵ by Trump and the vice-president, JD Vance, who tried to humiliate the Ukrainian visitor in front of the cameras, demanding gratitude and acceptance of defeat with “no cards” left to play.
Zelenskyy does have cards this time but well short of a winning hand without US support. The Ukrainian’s immediate aim is modest: for Trump to honour Senator Graham by backing a Russia sanctions bill he was pushing at the time of his death. He knows that direct US military aid to Ukraine is not likely to return in meaningful quantities any time soon.
The Patriot interceptors and other weapons Ukraine once counted on for its defence have been used up wholesale in the Middle East, many of them to protect Israel. It will take years for the US to rebuild its own stocks. Netanyahu may be out of favour in the current White House, but the US is committed to Israel’s defence in a manner and on a scale of which Ukraine can only dream.
Netanyahu and Zelenskyy came to Washington on different paths and footings but they do at least share an awareness that their relationship with the administration can be upended with scant notice, without any clear reasons, in a matter of mere seconds in the court of the irascible, flagging would-be emperor.
