Let us put aside the optics of the President of the World's most powerful country violating all the courtesies that a host owes to his guest and humiliating the President of another country like some defeated foe paraded before the media in advance of his ritual torture and execution. This is business and you pay for what you get. No one can piggyback on America's greatness to bolster their negotiating position without due deference and indeed abject subservience.

Indeed, Zelenskyy was accused of ingratitude and lacking in respect for `the leader of the free world' for even arguing with him in public as Vice President JD Vance added to the pile on. Zelenskyy was accused of siding with Trump's enemy President Biden and refusing to do Trump's bidding to participate in the smearing of Hunter Biden in advance of the 2020 US Presidential election campaign - for which President Trump 1.0 had previously withheld military aid to Ukraine duly authorised by Congress. This is politics and revenge is sweet.

President Zelenskyy was all but summarily ejected from the White House and told he can come back again when he is ready to make a deal. The reaction in Moscow to the Trump Zelenskyy meeting was nothing short of ecstatic. Dmitry Medvedev -- the former Russian prime minister and president and deputy chair of Russia's Security Council -- was quick to dance on the grave of the US -Ukraine partnership. "The insolent pig finally got a proper slap down in the Oval Office." Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova wrote on Telegram: "How Trump and Vance exercised restraint and didn't punch this scumbag is a miracle of restraint."

Three years after the Russian invasion, President Trump is making common cause with President Putin to carve up the land and resources of Ukraine without reference to the wishes of the people living there, much as he has made a deal with Benjamin Netanyahu to eject the people of Gaza to make way for a sunset facing beachfront tourist resort better than Monaco or the Riviera which America will own. This is property development, the Trump family speciality.

There is, however, one fly in the ointment that President Trump has yet to deal with. The EU, "which Trump says was founded to screw the USA" has yet to be put in its place. Trump has promised that 25% tariffs on all EU exports will be implemented soon notwithstanding the Macron and Starmer visits to the White House to ward off that threat. The EU has promised to respond firmly, but will it? With Trump's "senior advisor" Elon Musk openly supporting the far right in Europe, and with the far right in the ascendency, is the EU in any position to respond?

The EU has long been derided as an economic whale and a political minnow, unwilling or unable to project its strategic power amid a plethora of competing interests and national rivalries. It is not even able to defend itself, its critics argue. But that is to misunderstand what the EU is primarily about, which is about achieving economies of scale through increasingly integrated economic development and trade. The EU itself has few competencies, granted to it by treaties, in defence, domestic taxation, and social policies. These remain primarily matters of national sovereignty. But in trade, the EU is king.

What if Maroš Šefčovič, Stéphane Séjourné, and Ursula Von Der Leyen, the troika responsible for EU trade policies, where to make good their promise to respond robustly to Trump's tariffs? What if China, Canada, Mexico, and the other BRIC countries where to do the same? Combined, the EU and BRICs have over 50% share of the world's GDP while the USA's share has declined from 30% in 2000 to 25% now.

The lesson must have sunk in by now: Trump responds only to the realities of power. Human rights, the rights of whole peoples, and the niceties of international treaties, conventions, or diplomacy matter not at all. But when it comes to the economy, Trump is not quite as powerful as he thinks. Making too many enemies at the same time may not be quite the strategic master stroke he prides himself on.

It might not have registered with the White House just yet, but even An Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, met with the Chinese Foreign Minister a couple of weeks ago to "discuss our shared commitment to the rules-based multilateral order and agreed frameworks, including in relation to trade." The wheels of world diplomacy may turn slowly, but turning they surely are.

There is one little wrinkle in the emerging world order which might be of particular interest to Northern Ireland readers. Suppose Trump were to follow classic divide and conquer tactics and exempt the UK from the EU directed tariffs in thanks for King Charles III unprecedented offer of a second state visit to the UK with all the associated pageantry he so loves?

You might find that all the US multinationals in Ireland will quickly set up at least brass plate operations in Northern Ireland, "export" their products to Northern Ireland, and from thence to the USA. Whoever said the Windsor Framework and connection might not be beneficial to both parts of this island?

The larger world does have the cards. But does it have the wit and cohesion to play them cleverly? Trump is at least doing his level best to make everyone else realise they have more in common than they have to divide them. The "rules based international order" is there to protect us all. The meeting of minds has begun.