Among the many unsettling aspects of Donald Trump’s political takeover, the most corrosive is the return of an old and bankrupt worldview: that of the zero-sum game.

In Trump’s conception of global affairs, prosperity is finite, and for one nation to thrive, another must be diminished.

It is a bleak, regressive mindset that stifles cooperation, inflames conflict, and betrays the very principles that underpinned decades of international progress.

The zero-sum worldview, at its core, rejects the possibility of mutual benefit. It sees diplomacy not as dialogue, but as a marketplace of extraction.

Alliances are not relationships to be nurtured, but levers to be pulled for short-term gain. This belief has shaped Trump’s conduct on the world stage, where every negotiation is reduced to a crude calculus of winners and losers — an unyielding framework that has left America more isolated and, ironically, less secure.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Trump’s posture toward Ukraine.

As Russia’s brutal invasion continues to test the resolve of democratic nations, Trump’s focus has not been on defending sovereignty, deterring aggression, or preserving democratic ideals — but on the mineral wealth beneath Ukrainian soil.

He has spoken, quite openly, of leveraging military or financial aid to secure rights to those resources. This is not strategy; it is transnationalism........

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