The drama and achievements in the White House on Monday 18th August had been unthinkable two days earlier. The success was positive, remarkable and breathtaking.

In this unthinkable world there is much all leaders should learn and take-away. Raw and single minded opportunism at the highest levels brought success.

What had evolved hour by hour after the apparent negatives of Friday’s Alaska summit between Trump and Putin was admirable political and diplomatic opportunism at its most impressive.

In Alaska Trump appeared singlehandedly to be giving away too much to Putin. Many found Trump’s warm glad handing and arm slapping shocking and even obscene. Leaders in Europe realised that Trump needed to be reined in before he sold the togetherness of Zelenskyy, Ukraine and European leaders into a deep political chasm which Putin would not let them climb out of.

So overnight on Friday and into Saturday a singleness of opportunistic purpose and determination evolved among Europe’s leaders, literally minute by minute.  

Above all, together, lead nations in Europe, the European Union and NATO realised they needed to flatter Trump. They had to convince him that his chances of achieving progress on Ukraine were far greater supported by the strength of like minded travellers. And Europe’s leaders knew they had to do it in person.

So phones and emails ran hot with ideas, proposals and above all bare opportunism.

A publicly declared and absolute determination were required. And above all, there had to be confirmation of unity to back and reinforce Trump. The US President must not be allowed to dive down a new unilateral path of transactional whims, unknowns and handbrake turns.

All those travellers (the European leaders, European Commission and NATO) would make clear in public, gushing terms that they backed him. Unspoken was the thought that their apparently unrestrained support for him would add weight to the possibilities of Trump qualifying for the Nobel Peace Prize if he succeeded in ending the Ukraine war.

This was all despite deep anxieties about what Putin thought Trump had agreed to. So there had to be a unified counter attack from Europe to massage Trump’s ego and make sure he did not submit to every Putin condition for ending the war.

Doing this virtually on computer screens would not be decisive enough to impress Trump.

Instead all leaders would need to fly their presidential and prime ministerial planes to be lined up at the Joint Base Andrews airfield outside Washington. This would impress Trump with an unambiguous show of both commitment and support for him. The US president must not be shown any vacillation that might allow him to think he could wriggle in new directions of uncertainty and controversy.

So Monday’s success in Washington was achieved by way of leaders creating new mind muscle to think in imaginative and unorthodox ways. It took them and their support officials well beyond orthodox thinking. In particular Trump’s sudden support for non-NATO military guarantees for Ukraine was a left field surprise.

So the final photograph of White House unity was confirmation of success, even if subsequently in the coming days and weeks, much falters and leaves deep pauses for anxiety.

After all we are a huge distance from any deal that might end fighting in Ukraine.

The Dayton agreement that ended war in the former Yugoslavia in 1995 by defining power and national lines of control between three warring nations took months of negotiation. The document ran to more than 150 pages after every line and word was argued over.

That was an enormous amount of drafting to make comprehensive and durable what was designed to end a war and create an irreversible stability. Thirty years on, it has succeeded. Just!

Securing a lasting peace, stability and recognition of sovereign borders for Ukraine will require an equally long and drawn out process.

But Monday 18^th August 2025 at President Trump’s White House should be remembered as an astonishing and unthinkable success after more than three years of disunity, horror, loss and destruction right across Ukraine.

It has not ended the war. Yet it might have brought a few centimeters closer the possibilities for eventually achieving that.

But many more unthinkables lie ahead.