Times are changing again. Modern diplomacy is no longer about smiling for the cameras and shaking hands with other leaders on a red carpet while ordering airstrikes on their military bases. The February meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy ended in a heated argument that made headlines around the world. The Ukrainian leader and the U.S. president broke off their negotiations after a fierce dispute, and the meeting concluded without the expected signing of the agreement on rare earth minerals. Two days later, Zelenskyy changed his mind, made himself available to the United States, and offered to sign the agreement.

If we set aside the spat at the White House, Trump’s vision for Ukraine is intriguing. Twentieth-century diplomacy is dead. The United States needs a tangible reason to continue helping Ukraine. And that reason has been found in the exploitation of Ukraine’s most valuable minerals. Under the agreement, in exchange for U.S. assistance, both countries will create an investment fund for the reconstruction of Ukraine. Ukraine will contribute 50 percent of its future revenues from state resources such as minerals, oil, and gas.

In this way, Ukraine would become a specific interest for the United States, marking a significant step in the geostrategic battle for rare earth minerals, which China currently dominates. These rare earth minerals are used in the production of permanent magnets for fighter jets and missiles. This is why both the EU and the United States include these elements in their lists of critical minerals.

Trump considers the methods that worked to maintain international order over the past hundred years — including NATO alliances and, in particular, the defensive strategies of the Cold War — to be obsolete. Military deterrence is no longer his primary option. And all Trump wants from Europe is for it to spend its own money on its own wars. The era of French-style diplomacy, immortalized by P.J. O’Rourke years ago when he wrote, “The French are masters of ‘the dog ate my homework’ school of diplomatic relations,” is over.

If we extrapolate this approach from the Ukrainian case, there are many scenarios where things could change if the West began asking this question before activating economic aid or even military operations on foreign soil. What would happen if this same method were applied to the Gaza conflict?

Amid the growing climate of antisemitism and support for Palestine among Western elites, progressive parties, and universities across Europe and the United States, the same question could shatter the idyllic relationship that a worrying portion of the left has with Hamas: What does Hamas offer you, and what does Israel offer?

Pro-Palestinian propaganda has always relied on emotional reasoning. They haven’t hesitated to use fake photos of children and burning hospitals to try to evoke empathy from the West. The repetition of messages like “genocide!” over and over is a public opinion molding technique that wasn’t invented by Hamas but was extensively used by the Nazis and Soviet communists. It’s sentimental propaganda that’s highly permeable, and its reach is impossible to measure.

From the Palestinian keffiyeh to the easily digestible, simplistic slogans, all of it is part of the growing support from a significant portion of the Western political left for Palestine. It’s irrational support. Ronald Reagan spotted it years ago: “The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”

If we were to ask the key question — what does Hamas offer the West? — the answer would be terrible.

On the other hand, if those same Western leaders asked what Israel offers their countries, they would have to admit that it provides cybersecurity and high-tech solutions — it’s a leader in chips and semiconductors — applied AI in health and defense, biotechnology focused on health, agrotechnology, advanced military systems, intelligence cooperation with the United States and NATO, as well as cutting-edge military equipment, the immense tech hub of Tel Aviv filled with startups, cultural and university exchanges, and R&D investment opportunities to access engineering and scientific talent. All of this without even considering the endless shared legacy of Judeo-Christian culture, without which it would be impossible to understand the history and present of Europe and the United States.

On the other hand, if you had to list what Palestine contributes in terms of technology, you’d be limited to their ingenuity in building flying bombs with condoms, perhaps donated by some Western international cooperation agency, meaning they don’t even provide the condoms themselves.

Without Israel’s victory over terrorism, the world would be a much worse place, the Middle East would lose its only real democracy and fall under the control of authoritarian Islamic regimes, and jihadism would comfortably expand into the West.

In 2025, countries need real reasons for their strategic alliances. This might very well be what Trump has suggested to Putin this week. At the end of the day, countries don’t do charity — that’s what individuals do. Nations that want to maintain their sovereignty and prosperity need international agreements and “friendships” that are mutually beneficial. Trump has opened the door with Ukraine. If it works out, this new diplomacy could take hold and leave behind the costly, unbreakable defensive alliances that haven’t even yielded good results while Europe has spent decades dismantling its armies and relying on the infinite generosity of the United States.

The next time someone takes the podium at the European Parliament to criticize Israel and justify Hamas’s violence, someone with a very calm voice could coldly ask: What does Hamas offer Europe, and what does Israel offer? And another question: How are you going to defend European soil against the jihadist threat without Pegasus and without Israel’s intelligence? Perhaps this, and not the sentimental propaganda on backlit panels, is the right way to frame things.

This new diplomacy may not seem friendlier than the old one, but it might just be more effective.

We’ll leave the touching charlatanism to the left. Obama was a master in the technique of talking too much and saying too many nice words; maybe that’s why he ended up being the world leader at dropping bombs. Bombs are fine. I mean, they do their job. But you have to pay for them. And sometimes the best way to stop a war is to bomb a presidential palace with business plans.

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