Trump is enjoying great success with his domestic policy, where in just a few months he has minimised the number of illegal immigrants at the borders, he is making major inroads into government waste, and he seems to be on the right track with most issues.
But there are things that are not working as well, and that is foreign policy, especially the kind of foreign policy that requires tough action. Many believed he could bring peace to Ukraine quickly and effectively, and that a US withdrawal would bring a swift end to the war.
Peace may not be that simple, as there are some fundamental problems.
The US and Western powers have violated several major and important agreements, including not expanding NATO closer to Russia, as well as the two Minsk agreements, which were about giving ethnic Russians in Ukraine more autonomy, securing their rights to their language, etc. Western leaders have even publicly said afterwards that the Minsk agreements were just about buying time.
So, Russia feels that it is not logical to make more agreements with Western powers or that they can trust us at all. And now that Trump wants to negotiate an unconditional ceasefire, he has nothing to offer. This successful businessman always had a good product to sell, but in this case the situation is different, and the question is how to negotiate with a party that is winning the war and does not trust the other party?
What should Trump sell to Putin?
There is nothing sensible to negotiate. And nothing to threaten with, in case the negotiations fail. Should the US impose even more sanctions on the Russians? Sanctions have already proven to be ineffective because much of the world economy is now outside US control, and Western sanctions are no longer effective. Instead, they damage the domestic economy, as has been shown in both Germany and the US. It is now also in the West’s interest to get rid of the sanctions.
Trump needs to offer Putin something big, then maybe Moscow could get interested; and the proposal must be implemented fairly immediately so that the Russians understand that it is not about cheating, lies, etc. If we know Trump correctly, it is probably about some kind of trade agreement, which both parties could benefit from. If Russia moves closer to the US, their relationship with China might also weaken, that is probably the idea. China has always been the main enemy, and Russia should have been on the side of the Western powers, but instead sanctions forced the Russians and Chinese together in trade and defence relations.
Putin can in principle continue the war, it is a matter of days or months before the Ukrainian military falls, and then he can dictate the terms of peace himself without Western influence. That is, unless the Western powers start a full-scale war against Russia, and that could be difficult with untrained armies, depleted armouries and insufficient military industry. Although some European countries, led by the UK, are scrambling with all the weapons they have. The aversion to lasting peace is both difficult to understand and unpleasant.
Western leaders would prefer to freeze the conflict, send in so-called peacekeeping troops, let it go for a few years, train the Ukrainian military, and try again.
The long-term strategy is to divide Russia into smaller, more manageable regions where we can gain influence and the ability to extract natural resources. It also seems important that the Russians remain in our economic system, and do not start up their own strong currencies that could replace the dollar, and challenge our financial centres in New York, London etc.
And the Russians understand all this. They don’t want to freeze the conflict, so that we get a divided country like in Korea, Cyprus, Germany during the Cold War etc. They suspect, probably rightly, that the conflict will continue by proxy; next time it will be Poles sent to the battlefield, Romanians, Balts, etc. Therefore, there is a great risk that the Russians will reject the Americans’ peace invitations, unless they are given something really yummy.
Cancelling Sweden and Finland’s NATO membership could be on the table, a military withdrawal from Germany, reconstruction of Nordstream financed by the West, trade routes across the Bering Strait, etc.
Putin also wants to address the heart of the conflict.
Which in practice would mean that the Americans recognised that it was NATO expansion and the coup in Kiev that triggered the war. We have been taught by our news channels that Russia attacked unprovoked and full-scale.
So, the US supported a coup against the incumbent elected Ukrainian president, and later controlled the country, and wanted to join NATO with the possibility of positioning nuclear bombs along the border, so close to Moscow that the missiles cannot possibly be shot down; this is according to most doctrines casus belli, i.e. the right to start a war for the wronged party.
Nuclear doctrine says that nuclear weapons placed too close to an adversary’s border can only be neutralised by a pre-emptive strike.
The big problem is that the West thinks it can do anything, ignore agreements, tear up negotiations. How is it that they have such a strange attitude?
For one thing, Putin is described as a dictator and evil itself, and then, according to Hollywood’s interpretation at least, you can behave maliciously. In order to overthrow evil, you can cross certain boundaries that you would not normally do. And secondly, the Western powers have become arrogant, telling themselves that there is some kind of unipolar order, that the United States and its allies are a superpower that basically sets the agenda.
We do not negotiate with dictators, politicians have been heard to say. The fact that they themselves defend democratic values gives them the right to start wars and intervene in other countries’ politics. But sometimes it ends up in outright lies like the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Tonkin Bay, etc. And it is perhaps not so strange that the United States and the Western powers are called the Empire of Lies in some parts of the world.
But isn’t it right to fight undemocratic countries, and sometimes to resort to white lies to further a good cause?
The problem is that doing so undermines your own credibility. The good knight must be good, or he is not a good knight. By lying and breaking agreements time and time again, you show a very bad side of yourself. And the same goes for the democratic ambitions of the Western powers; the election of Joe Biden left a lot to be desired, low ID requirements at the polling stations, postal voting without checks, etc. etc. The appointment of EU President Ursula von der Leyen was not preceded by a general election, but by an unelected Commission. In addition, constant interference in people’s private lives, their freedom of expression and economic freedom. Soon we will be as bad as the bad guys. What gives us the right to point the finger?
Back to the topic. If peace is to be achieved in the Ukraine conflict, the major powers should get to the root of the problem, address the root causes of the war and ensure that they are resolved in a mutually acceptable way. Russia has called for a neutral Ukraine, an end to NATO enlargement and the resignation of the current regime, which it should do anyway as the elections have been postponed.
But should Russia really be allowed to set the agenda? Should we agree to their demands? Can’t Ukraine join NATO if they want to? Or join the EU?
Well, the harsh reality is that being a neighbour of a great power comes at a cost. Mexico and Canada would not be treated well by the US either if they suddenly became pro-Russian or pro-China and allowed them to build military bases next to the US border. That would lead to disaster. Besides, Russia is winning the war despite the collective support of NATO. The winner sets the agenda.
A multipolar order will most likely lead to the division of the world into different spheres of interest, like before the two world wars. And the US sphere will be North America and parts of the Pacific, while Russia resides over Central Eurasia, and China Southeast Asia, etc. Europe serves as the western outpost of the Eurasian landmass. And both China and Europe should try to befriend Russia (which is in the centre) to create trade routes and connectivity across the vast continent. These are some of the geopolitical realities.
Note that in my reasoning I do not consider which countries are democratic, dictatorships, evil, good, etc. Statehood has little to do with the real political game. In international traditional law, there is something called tyrannocide, the right of the people to remove a bad leader. But this is a right that only the people concerned have, and should preferably not be used by foreign powers to gain geopolitical advantage. Neighbouring countries may of course have opinions about what is happening next door, but natural suspicions are raised about a foreign bird that flew all the way across the Atlantic and Western Europe to catch a fish in the murky waters of the Dnieper.
