The possibility of a “Big Split” between Europe and America has taken another giant leap forward with a take-it-or-leave-it Ukraine plan from President Trump.
In addition, there are dangers of widening chasms opening up between EU and European members of NATO.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and chief negotiator Steve Witkoff were expected in London this week for talks on Ukraine with key European leaders. But at the last minute they pulled out, saying that the president was tired of negotiations and demanded that all sides accept an agreement hammered out in Moscow between Witkoff and Putin.
The proposal on the table is basically a sell-out to Putin: International recognition of the annexation of Crimea; defacto control of Eastern Ukraine; Ukraine banned from NATO and the end of sanctions. Ukraine gets undefined “robust security guarantees” the return of small slice of the Kharkiv Oblast and undefined sum to rebuild the country. The US gets a minerals deal with Ukraine; operating rights for Zaporizhia nuclear power plant and increased cooperation with Russia, especially in the energy and industrial sectors.
Trump’s proposal makes no effort to uphold any principle of international law. It turns back the diplomatic clock to pay homage to the pre-war axiom might is right.
Vladimir Putin must be turning somersaults. If this proposal is accepted by Zelensky and his European backers the Russian president will have won. As German Chancellor said, if the Russian-American agreement goes ahead, Putin can say: “I can afford such aggression. I will prevail and I will achieve my goals.”
President Trump has threatened to “wash his hands” and move onto other foreign policy issues if his proposal is not accepted. But he has not defined his hand wash. Does it mean that he will stop all aid to Ukraine? That appears the most likely scenario as he illogically blames Volodomyr Zelensky for the war and the current failure of his peace efforts. If that is the case then the burden of defending Ukraine falls on ill-prepared and ill-equipped Europe. Europe and the UK are left with an unpalatable choice: Abandon their principles and stay with the US and let Putin win. Alternatively take the moral but riskier and expensive option of going it alone and continuing to back Ukraine in its war against Russia.
Politics requires a stiff dose of pragmatism. But it also needs a moral centre.
Countries such as Viktor Orban’s Hungary and Robert Fico’s Slovakia will almost certainly embrace the plan and undermine any efforts for a united EU front. They are charter members of the populist leaders’ club which now includes Trump.
The Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—along with Poland and Romania will lead the pack in opposing the plan. They have a long and painful history with Russia. Do not underestimate the influence of Poland whose Prime Minister Donald Tusk has become a powerful voice in European circles.
Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands and Italy are the big EU voices alongside the commission itself led by Ursula von der Leyen. So far they have been loud in their condemnation of Russia and supplied weapons and political support to Ukraine. But more than most EU members tend to the pragmatic as they have to consider wider international implications.
Then there is Britain. The UK was an early and strong supporter of Ukraine and the recent problems with the US has enabled London to revive some of its influence in Europe. And despite Brexit, the EU has remained Britain’s biggest trading partner. But at the same time, the UK’s strongest political, military and intelligence links are transatlantic.
Sir Keir Starmer has adamantly denied that he must choose between Brussels and Washington. He wants to be the bridge between America and Europe. In recent months he has been reasonably successful at doing just that. But with an increasingly mercurial Trump in the White House that bridge has become more of a dangerous tightrope.
Ukraine does not exist in a vacuum, and increasingly other factors are playing a major role in splitting America and Europe. There are Trump’s threats to the sovereignty of Canada and Greenland. And, of course, there are the tariffs.
April 2—or, as Trump says, “Liberation Day—saw the imposition of 20 percent tariffs on all EU goods and services and 25 percent on cars, aluminium and steel. The markets quickly crashed and Trump was forced to lower the all goods tariff to ten percent but for only 90 days to allow time for trade negotiations which usually take years.
Trump says he is looking forward to meeting European leaders at the funeral of Pope Francis on Saturday. It will be a sombre occasion for more than one reason. The next opportunity for the American president to meet with his increasingly frustrated and angry allies will be at the NATO summit at The Hague on 24-26 June. This gathering will almost coincide with the end of the 90-day suspension of the higher tariffs.
* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and author of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “America Made in Britain".
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13 Comments
Ukraine had a much better deal available shortly after the start of the war but was persuaded by Boris Johnston to reject it, with the promise of support from the collective West for as long as necessary.Three years later, Ukraine has a choice of a worse deal to achieve peace, or rejecting it in the knowledge that their backing will be far less than promised in 2022. A terrible choice – accept a 20% loss of territory or risk the remaining 80% to try to recover what has already been lost.
My fear is that if the war goes on for another 3 years, Ukraine may lose 50% of its territory, including access to the Black Sea.
The claim that Boris Johnson was responsible for scuppering a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia was refuted by President Zelensky as Russian Propaganda saying “There were several approaches with ultimatums and I never gave my approval for it . Johnson had nothing to do with my decision. It doesn’t fit with logic; what was he supposed to be talking us out of?'”Zelenskyy rejects claim Boris Johnson talked him out of peace deal with Russia in 2022
As the Institute for War said of the agreement drafted by Russia in Istanbul Fact Sheet: Istanbul Protocol Draft Agreement of April 15, 2022
The Istanbul Protocol draft agreement would have left Ukraine helpless in the face of future Russian threats or aggression. It imposed no limitations on the size of the Russian military and no obligations on Russia other than those noted below.
• The draft agreement would have prohibited the continued Western military assistance and support that US officials have repeatedly urged European states to offer, as well as bilateral security agreements, which US officials have also encouraged European countries to make.
• It is thus entirely incompatible with the current stated US policy and cannot be the basis or guidepost for negotiations that amount to anything other than capitulation to Russia’s pre-war demands.
The proposals of the Trump regime are a betrayal of the commitments made to Ukraine by successive US administrations including the 1st Trump administation. With an effective, if fatigued, army in the field (supported by International allies) the Ukrainian government has no reason to surrender its country to the mercies of Putin’s Russia or the corruption of Trump’s America.
@Joe Bourke
I read the ISW updates each day as well as following daily YouTube updates by Military Summary Channel and Weeb Union. My understanding is that David Arahamiya, the leader of the parliamentary faction of Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, was appointed as the head of the Ukrainian delegation during the peace talks hosted by Turkey in March and April 2022, and he later went on record as saying that Boris Johnston’s intervention was one of the factors in the decision to reject the deal on offer at the time.
Military Summary Weeb Union are both pro-russian youtubers. Hardly unbiased, independent thinkers…
Mike,
I think we have to be careful with Russian misinformation. David Arahamiya in his interview was reporting that Russia was prepared to end hostilities if their ultimatum to Ukraine was met Russia Offered to End War if Ukraine Dropped NATO Bid
In his interview, Arakhamia said changing Ukraine’s intentions to join NATO would require an amendment to the country’s constitution since Kyiv’s parliament voted to adopt an amendment in February 2019 that stated Ukraine’s goal of becoming a member of both NATO and the European Union.
Arakhamia also said that Ukrainian officials did not trust Russia to uphold their end of the bargain.
“There is no, and there was no, trust in the Russians that they would do it. That could only be done if there were security guarantees,”.
Elsewhere in the interview, Arakhamia brought up former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s surprise visit to Kyiv in April 2022. He said Johnson encouraged Ukraine to not “sign anything” with Russia and “just fight.”
So yes, Johnson made his views known but as Zelensky has said – Johnson had nothing to do with the Ukrainian presidents decision.
As regards the current deal being promoted by the USA Boris Johnson warns Ukraine ‘gets nothing’ from Trump’s peace proposals. But then, President Zelensky doesn’t need Boris Johnson or anyone else to tell him what is glaringly obvious to all that Trump’s proposal would leave Ukraine at the mercy of Russian rapine and American asset-stripping.
Might the adoption of Neoliberal politico- economics have contributed considerably to the weakening of our defence capabilities since 1975?
https://martinwheatcroft.com/icaewchart341/#:~:text=Our%20chart%20this%20week%20illustrates%20how%20soldier%2C%20sailor,that%20defence%20spending%20is%20back%
@Eric P, @ Joe Bourke
Yes, Military Summary and Weeb Union are pro-Russian and ISW is pro-Ukrainian – I prefer to seek information from different perspectives as a way of seeking a more complete picture. (Just as I would never seek news from just CNN or just Fox News, but both, to try to gain understanding of US politics.)
POTUS Pilate wants to ‘wash his hands’ with the negotiations if Zelensky does not agree to hand over part of Ukraine to Putin, with a transactional deal for Trump to benefit from Ukraine’s mineral resources and power.
I sincerely hope that Europe will not give way, or Putin will feel free to extend his empire building to other ‘vassal states’ that formed part of the USSR. The rest of the world must resist the US attempt to dictate terms to all and sundry by using tariffs to soften up any opposition to his misplaced attempts to Make America Grate Again.
Perhaps Donald Trump (and Mike Peters) should read Kipling’s ‘Dane-geld’…
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
@Steve – still trying to blame neoliberalism for everything? 😉 No, the decline of our defence forces wasn’t because of neo- or any other form of liberalism. It was because, after the collapse of the USSR, most Western Governments figured that we were no longer facing any threat from any superpower that merited maintaining such large military forces. So they deprioritised military spending. Obviously with hindsight that turned out to be a big mistake, but the politicians making the decisions back in the 1990s and 2000s didn’t have the benefit of hindsight, and we are now where we are 🙁 .
@ Simon R,
Your response to Steve is entirely correct if ‘spending’ is interpreted to mean the allocation of scarce resources. It’s usually taken to mean the allocation of money, though, which is somehow claimed to be in short supply.
If we do decide that we “can’t afford”, or, more likely, don’t want to afford something, it should be on the basis that we believe the real resources consumed would be better employed elsewhere.
This would lead to a better understanding of what is possible when governments set their budgets.
@Peter. Agreed. As I think we’ve discussed before, I’d interpret spending as just a proxy for allocation of resources. After all, any spending (whether by the Government or anyone else, other than on goods that have already been made) amounts in practice to an economic demand that resources be allocated to whatever the money is being spent on.
As an example, the graph Steve linked to shows a 200K reduction in military personnel since 1975. And we probably do need to start reversing that. But allocation of scarce resources is relevant: 200K more soldiers means 200K fewer people available to staff our hospitals, run our trains, build houses or provide any of the myriad other things people need, and that would certainly impact our standard of living. (But to be clear, I believe the threats to liberal democracy we face – as illustrated by Ukraine – are so great that we probably have to make that sacrifice).
The Ukraine war is about many things. One is whether agression by a country against another is lawful and if so under what conditions. Russia’s actions need to be curtailed and in such a way that it does not seek to repeat its actions. We should strengthen conflict prevention procedures under the auspices of the UN.