Labour Affairs Group

Why is Jonathan Powell attending peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine?

Moscow has barred Western European leaders from participating in the negotiations, accusing them of a biased approach to the conflict and trying to prolong the fighting. Nevertheless, the UK is reportedly sending Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s security adviser, Jonathan Powell, to meet with Zelensky ahead of the talks to provide “background advice” on how he should handle the meeting.

The Guardian reported that Powell’s advice is expected to focus on making sure that Zelensky does not do “anything that alienates Trump” and equip him to persuade the US president that Putin is the “obstacle to peace.”

The purpose of illusions is to hide what is really going on.

In this case, the illusion the British are trying to create is that there is a power behind Ukraine which can and will sustain Ukraine in the war.

But the real agenda is the continuation of Britain’s foreign policy of the last 130 years, to destroy Germany as a power in Europe and to generally weaken the other European powers.

The British have every reason to be very pleased with how this policy is progressing.  Dead Ukrainians and Russians are just collateral damage in the pursuit of that policy.

In terms of explaining what the British are up to, and they do seem to be the main organisers of the pro-Zelensky show, that makes a lot of sense. However, for the last 100 years the British have again and again needed the United States in order to achieve their designs in Europe. What they´re doing right now has dangers for them.

Britain has a more limited role for itself these days, to remain the regional hegemon.

After the WWII the situation was difficult.  The USSR was a regional power that could only be balanced by the US.  Britain had to accept the primary role of the US in the region.  But things did not stand still.

The USSR dissolved itself in 1991.

Germany united and emerged as the economic power in Europe.

The Europeans adopted a single currency.

But most important was the emerging political and economic relationship between a united Germany and Russia.

Both the US and Britain feared this.  They were well aware of what Mackinder had written of such a development, i.e. an excessive concentration of power in the biggest continental landmass.

To that extent Russia did represent a threat to the role of the US as regional hegemon in Europe.

The eastwards expansion of NATO was designed primarily to disrupt the developing German and Russian relations.

It has been successful.  What Mackinder feared, an alliance of Germany and Russia, has been put to rest for a long time.

Russia is now no longer a threat to Europe and to the primacy of the US in Europe.

For precisely that reason, that Russia in no longer a threat to Europe, the US has little interest in having a primary role in Europe.  It is happy to leave it to the Europeans to do their own thing, safe in the knowledge that they are capable of doing very little.

Much of British foreign policy is designed to make itself the new regional hegemon.

In this it is proving successful.  France and Germany look to Britain when leadership from the US is lacking.

But the seeds of the collapse of Britain’s regional hegemon policy are already in the wind.  Friedrich Merz, the new German Chancellor, has stated that Germany must have the biggest army in Europe and the AFD want friendly relations with Russia.