Eamon Dyas
If Zelensky does go through the pretence of talks with Russia it won’t be in good faith. There will be proposals – as there always have been from Kiev – that everyone knows will not be acceptable to Russia.
As far as I see it nobody, including Trump, Russia and the European war hawks believe that this is anything other than a pretence. But it’s a pretence that nobody other than Trump has created. He has positioned himself as the man everyone wants to influence, the man on which the future of the conflict revolves and like a Roman emperor he will decide the fate of the contestants. But, Trump is not only behaving like a Roman emperor he is behaving like a Greek god!
For months now he has played with the hopes and expectations of those who wish to see a genuinely negotiated end to what he himself acknowledges as the “slaughter”. During that time there have been several examples of Kiev’s behaviour that would warrant him deciding that Kiev is the party that does not want peace. And yet he pauses and prevaricates by introducing ever more tests and deadlines for the contestants. This has allowed the U.K. and Europe to openly fashion the instruments by which they can ensure that the prospects of peace are diminished.
Europe has even ruled out the idea that its shipments of arms to Ukraine be suspended during a 30-day ceasefire and in so-doing confirms that the object of the ceasefire is to increase the stock of European arms in Ukraine.
This shows that it’s not only Zelensky that doesn’t want peace but Europe as well. And yet, despite all the evidence that Europe is intent on sabotaging his apparent efforts for peace Trump has continually failed to call them out on that basis. This accommodation of Europe’s sabotage has served no other purpose than to embolden them to develop more policies (they are now expressing an intention to have Russia tried for war crimes at the end of the war) that they know will only result in pushing the prospects of peace ever further away.
The result of this pausing and prevarication on the part of Trump is that there has emerged a kind of symbiotic relationship between the European war hawks and the Trump administration when it comes to Ukraine. One part of the relationship stimulated the other part into investing more in arms and in increasing its supplies to Ukraine and the other enables Trump to credibly conclude that when the Emperor’s thumb points down it will be against the party that the watching multitude has been led to believe is the lesser kind.
Whether this has emerged by design, bad advice or miscalculation on the part of Trump is neither here nor there. But the only outcome from all of this is that it will be Russia that will be blamed for not wanting peace.
It’s indicative of the actual (rather than the media’s view) relationship between Europe and Trump that the Guardian report (reference below) indicates that should the meeting in Istanbul take place there will be European “handlers” available to ensure that the Ukrainian negotiators can overcome situations where otherwise they might find themselves making certain concessions. But again this blatant interference in what are supposed to be direct talks between Ukraine and Russia has not been met with even a mild rebuff from Trump.
Despite the frequent statements emanating from Europe that only Ukraine can decide the terms on which it would negotiate peace we long ago passed the point when it had become obvious that Europe was in fact dictating terms to Ukraine. Trump’s beef should therefore be with Europe and not Russia or even Ukraine. That he has not acted on that basis should be telling us something.
Guardian report:
Setback for Europe after Trump insists Ukraine has ‘immediate’ peace talks with Russia
All components of the U.S. governing structure agree that China is the main target of U.S. foreign policy. They also recognise the danger of a Russo-Chinese alliance. The components represented by the Obama/Biden administration believed that such an alliance could best be prevented by confronting and diminishing Russia first. At the time it was genuinely believed that this could easily be done as Russia was intrinsically weak – a gas station masquerading as a nation. Hence the emergence of a policy that sought to use Ukraine as the “felling wedge” to take the Russian tree down. The response from Russia came as a shock to the advocates of this policy.
That shock took time to percolate through the layers of anti-Russian propaganda that had been constructed on the back of the “Russia first” policy and, judging by the Senate hearing and the statements from the likes of Lindsey Graham, hasn’t quite reached all areas but then again that’s human nature. In the meantime the remnants of that thinking and Biden’s mental weakness resulted in a stubborn adherence to that perspective by the U.S. well beyond the point when it should have been abandoned.
Trump’s policy seems to be the manifestation of a clearer US perspective that has adopted to the reality of Russian resilience. But that does not mean that he wishes Russia to win in Ukraine. From the position of U.S. interests it would be best if Russia was corralled in a situation in Ukraine of heightened expectation of a continued threat with minimal U.S. involvement. Hence the need for Europe to step up to the plate. This would then leave the U.S. to, as Rubio said at the Senate hearing, “concentrate its resources in the Indo-Pacific region” – I.e. China.
But by this stage we have a EU, devoid of any perspective that is anchored to anything like a sense of national interest. As a consequence it had fallen in behind the U.S. lead. It was ripe for adopting this slavish position because over the past two decades or so it has accelerated the alteration of its cultural outlook from one that viewed Soviet Russia as a saviour of Europe from Nazi Germany to one which defines Russia and Nazi Germany as co-instigators of the Second World War. This was done in order to accommodate the expansion of the EU to the borders of Russia. That opened the door for the likes of the Baltic countries and Poland to ensure that their interpretation of the threat from Russia gained a high level of legitimacy within the EU.
That legitimacy, combined with the U.S.-supplied estimate of Russia’s inherent weakness, meant that when Russia attempted to warn Europe of the likely implications of what was happening in Ukraine, it was ignored. Since then the same shock generated by Russia’s resilience has been percolating through Europe. But, unlike the U.S., Europe has no sense of a national interest that can help to extricate it from the situation it now finds itself in. It remains in thrall to the Baltic view of Russia and cannot retreat from it without dismantling the “Russia-Nazi Germany responsibility for WW2” narrative that it has so carefully constructed over the years.
EU finance of the war effort against Russia
The EU has designed a loan scheme to help EU members to increase their defence spending.
The main thing to note is the way the EU Commission is becoming increasingly authoritarian. The Commission has taken the initiative on this by using “a legislative instrument that allows it to bypass a vote by European lawmakers.” In other words one of the checks and balances that are meant to constrain its tendency towards arbitrary behaviour.
The proposal has within it what at first sight appears to be a concession to national sovereignty – the National Escape Clause. But that’s simply a mechanism by which countries could free themselves from the EU fiscal rules when it comes to defence spending. This is important because if that freedom from EU fiscal rules didn’t exist countries wishing to expand their defence spending would have to make cutbacks in other areas of their budgets – in welfare or infrastructure spending for instance – and the National Escape Clause enables them to do so without impinging on such domestically politically sensitive areas.
The Euronews report states this as follows:
“Additionally, the fact that countries could decide to take up SAFE loans not to bolster their own stockpiles but to send more military support to Ukraine, could boost uptake in member states where increasing defence production and re-armament might be politically sensitive.”
In this instance we see something in operation which the EU has been increasingly relying on for the past two decades – to gain legitimacy for its policies through the use of money by circumventing and manipulating popular sentiment.
Labour Affairs 