Trump to huddle with Zelensky, Syrian leader at NATO Summit

Trump sitting down with Zelensky and al-Sharaa in Ankara on the same trip tells you something about where American diplomacy actually happens now. Not in press conferences. In rooms, one on one, with people who need something from Washington and know it.

Al-Sharaa's inclusion is the interesting part here. A year ago the idea of a Syrian president being anything other than a pariah or a corpse was fantasy. Now he's getting a bilateral with the American president at a NATO summit. Whatever you think of how Syria got here, that's a real shift, and Trump seems to grasp that ignoring it doesn't make it go away.

Zelensky is the more familiar dance. Every meeting like this gets read as a referendum on the war, on aid, on whether Trump is "tough enough" or "too soft." We'd just note that showing up and talking is not the same as capitulating. Diplomacy requires actually being in the room with people you disagree with.

NATO summits used to be photo ops with predictable script. This one has actual stakes attached to it, which is more than can be said for most of them this decade.