Ukraine
The Ukraine ball has bounced from Ukraine’s court to Russia’s court and now back into America’s court.
Donald Trump has always claimed a special relationship with Vladimir Putin– “He listens to me…the war would never have started if I had been in office…I can stop this war in 24 hours.”
Not if Vladimir can help it. As I write this Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff is flying back to Washington after exhausting talks in the Kremlin. He went asking Putin to agree to a 30-day ceasefire. Ukraine had already—under pressure from Trump—said yes.
Putin said…I’ll think about it. Actually he was a bit more diplomatic. He prefaced his hesitation with the normal flattery that must precede any exchange with the American president. He said that he is “aligned” with Trump and “expressed solidarity” with the man in the White House.
Then the Russian leader said: “I need more information,”which is another way of saying “I’ll think about it,”which is another way of stalling.
Putin is stalling because at the moment he is on the offensive. It looks as if he might soon push the Ukrainians out of their Kursk salient. He continues to inch forward in the Donbas and every captured inch improves his negotiating position.
That negotiating position has not changed for three years: Ukraine out of NATO and EU and demilitarised. International recognition for the annexation of the Donbas and Crimea. Sanctions lifted. Zelensky replaced by a Russian puppet.
Trump, however, is not focused on Putin’s long-term aims. He wants a ceasefire now. He has demanded it and has threatened renewed sanctions if his ultimatum is not met. It hasn’t been and Trump’s next move will reveal more about his role as honest broker.
Trump’s tariff rollercoaster
Tariffs up, down, off, on. Markets crave certainty. They fear uncertainty and they panic at chaos.
Trump’s muddled tariff policy is causing the stock market to dive. And according to Trump’s past statements, the stock market is the best judge of his economic policies.
He started off well. His election in November was followed by big rises. Nasdaq and the Dow Jones reached record highs in December. The S&P 500 two months later. American business was anticipating an economic boom fuelled by a bonfire of government regulations. It didn’t believe that Trump would actually follow through with threats of tariffs.
They were wrong. This week the American president was waging escalating tariff wars on several fronts. Canada, Europe, Mexico and China were the headliners, but not far behind are a host of other countries including India, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Australia….By this Thursday the S&P 500 was 10 percent below its February high. The Dow Jones was down 9.3 percent and Nasdaq a staggering 14.2 percent.
These figures don’t necessarily mean that a market crash is imminent. But they indicate that businesses are worried. They are worried because Trump’s on/off tariff’s policy means they can’t plan. Should they invest or should they retrench. Should they hire or fire. No one knows so no one invests and the market dives.
Duterte’s detention
As I write this, 79-year-old former Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte is being arraigned before the International Criminal Court at The Hague for crimes against humanity. The charges relate to what human rights group claim are at least 30,000 extra-judicial killings of suspected drug dealers.
The story behind how Duterte ended up before the ICC is worthy of the darkest of Shakespearean plots.
It started with an alliance between two of the Philippines political dynasties—the well-established Marcos clan and the up and coming Dutertes.
Ferdinand Marcos was forced to resign and flee the country in 1986 after a popular uprising known as the People Power Revolution. He died in 1989 in exile in Hawaii, but his family remained in the Philippines building a formidable political machine for a comeback led by Ferdinand “Bongo Bongo” Marcos Jr.
Duterte was constitutionally barred from running for the presidency in 2022 but had high hopes of handing over the family business to his daughter Sara. Bongo Bongo, however, had positioned himself as a virtual shoe-in but not to such an extent that help from the upstart Duterte clan was unwanted.
So the two families struck a deal. Dutuerte would support the Marcos campaign and in return Sara Duterte would become vice-president and at the next election the Marcos machine would support Sara Duterte for the presidency. In addition, Duterte would be protected for his alleged crimes.
Unfortunately for Rodrigo’s hopes and dreams, his daughter and Bongo Bongo fell out almost as soon as they took office. Relations plumbed new depths last year when Sara Duterte announced that she had hired an assassin to kill President Marcos if anything happened to her.
The Marcos-controlled Congress moved to start impeachment proceedings against Sara Duterte. The Senate trial is due to be held later this year and if she is found guilty Ms Duterte will be barred from holding public office and the Duterte family’s political ambitions will end.
However, Rodrigo Duterte, still wielded considerable behind-the-scenes power, so President Marcos contacted the ICC and said they would honour an arrest warrant for Duterte despite the fact that the Philippines withdrew from ICC jurisdiction in 2017.
The removal of Rodrigo Duterte is not the end of the matter. The Duterte’s also have a political machine which is likely to organise countrywide protests. But on the other side, Sara Duterte still faces her impeachment trial. And, of course, caught in the middle of this domestic feud is the ICC which has its own problems with the United States threatening to arrest any of its officials who visit the US.
* 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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11 Comments
A 30 day ceasefire without any agreement on the parameters of a future peace agreement works for Ukraine since they are being pushed back across the frontline and can use the time to get more supplies of armaments, prepare more fortified positions and get more conscripts ready for the fighting to resume at the end of the 30 day period. If Trump wants a negotiated peace agreement, he will have to be willing to force Ukraine to start the serious negotiation as to what a future peace would look like before a ceasefire is agreed and comes into effect. Of course, the Ukrainians may choose to fight on rather than agree to any concessions as part of a negotiation, in which case Europe will have to be ready to step up support for Ukraine when Trump decides to end US support.
@Mike Peters – clearly not been keeping up, currently by doing nothing other than to say yes but no, he has won significant concessions from Trump.
It isn’t the Ukraine that need to change, but Russia.
Currently Trump, just wants a quick deal, which benefits his backers and he can crow about and has no real long term objective for peace in Ukraine. As per WWII, the US will only wake up when they are attacked – directly as a result of their anything goes as business is business attitude.
Basically, for Russia to withdraw and to respect the pre-2014 borders (which it had agreed to), will require the US to directly give Putin some guarantees over the threat a US lead NATO presents to Russia.
Seeing as Ukraine was invaded because (apparently) Putin didn’t like who they voted for in 2114, taking the Crimea, then subjected to deniable warfare in the East (little green men etc), then invaded again in 2022 because Putin imagined it would be a cakewalk to Kyiv. And now they have lost 20% or so of their territory, Trump’s negotiators have already said they can’t expect that back and won’t be allowed to join NATO. I don’t see how anyone can say they are being advantaged by a ceasefire. Anyone obviously excludes apologists for Putin’s Russia.
My father left IRELAND in 1935.
The Tariff War between the USA and the rest of the world is a replay of the Anglo-Irish Economic War between the Irish Free State and the United Kingdom from 1932 to 1938.
Britain imposed a 20% import duty on Free State agricultural products into the UK, The Free State responded in kind by placing a similar duty on British imports such as coal. There was such a surplus of cattle in Ireland that farmers had to begin to slaughter their cattle, because they could not be sold to the British.
Already tourism to the USA is falling. How many Americans will want to leave?
@Jenny Barnes
You are probably right that Putin didn’t like when the democratically elected (and pro-Russian) president was forced from power in the ‘Revolution of Dignity’. Of course, that didn’t justify him sending troops into Crimea. Similarly Putin was probably furious that Ukraine was refusing to implement the Minsk agreement that would have given special status to Donbas within Ukraine, but that didn’t justify the Russian invasion of 2022.
But that is all in the past – we are now 3 years into a horrible war that can only be ended by a Russian defeat, a Ukrainian defeat or a negotiated settlement. Russia is currently winning but does not appear to be able to defeat Ukraine due to ongoing military and financial support. So it appears the war will either grind on for years or reach a negotiated settlement. I trust I am not an apologist for hoping that the war ends soon.
If Putin wants a negotiated settlement he could agree to the ceasefire and spend 30 days negotiating. It’s not difficult.
@ Jenny Barnes,
” I don’t see how anyone can say they are being advantaged by a ceasefire.”
From a military POV it depends entirely on the situation. A cease-fire will obviously benefit the side which is losing. If the Ukrainians are in retreat in the East and face the prospect of being encircled in Kursk, it would be understandable if the Russians decided that this suited them just fine.
So, to get the cease-fire which we all would like, probably does mean that the military situation does need to first be stabilised by increasing military aid to Ukraine. This won’t be easy at a time that the USA is withdrawing its support.
@Jenny Barnes
Putin has made really bad decisions but even he realises that he would be a mug to agree to a ceasefire when his forces are on top. If both sides were genuinely wanting a negotiated settlement, both would be willing to start the negotiation process before a ceasefire was in effect and then a ceasefire would become the first step of implementing any agreement that was reached. Sadly Russia does not want a negotiated settlement as it is unwilling to compromise on its demands and believes it will eventually win on the battlefield. Similarly, Ukraine also does not want a negotiated settlement as that would mean making compromises on its territory etc – it probably hopes NATO countries will eventually become actively involved in the conflict as its only path to victory. So Ukraine is willing to have a 30 day ceasefire as it would help them strengthen their position for when fighting resumes, and Russia is saying it supports a ceasefire in principle as a way of trying to not annoy Trump while, in practice, not wanting a ceasefire before its demands are agreed to. Very depressing.
A possible compromise in any peace negotiations might be for Ukraine to accept international recognition of the annexation of Crimea in exchange for total Russian withdrawal from Donbas. A bridge has been built from Russian territory to Crimea, so it doesn’t need access from the mainland. Putin will never agree without getting some benefit. Pete Hegseth had already said that a return to pre-2014 borders would not be possible. A split might just be acceptable and easier to monitor. The aggressor should not benefit any further than this suggestion. It was only because there was no international action against the original annexation in 2014, or the ‘military exercises’ on the border in 2021, that Putin thought he could continue his imperialist dreams without any challenge. The conflict in Donbas had been going on ‘unnoticed’ for years.
At the end of the day the premises advanced by Russia for the war are entirely based on lies and falsehoods advanced by a deeply corrupt and ruthless regime. That is not a platform that provides a rational basis for peace negotiations.
If there is a ceasefire, it will be because if offers Putin a way out of a disastrous invasion that has plunged Russia into economic ruin and devestating loss of life with no tangible security benefits gained as a result.
The UK national interest and that of Europe in general is in containing Russian imperial ambitions in the European space such that the violence and chaos does not spread beyond Ukraine.
It appears likely that some form of arrangement along the lines of the partition of Germany post WW2 may come into force. The lines of contact within Ukraine when the fighting eventually stops will form the basis of political authority between Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine will need to remain heavily militarised as a consequence with a European+ assurance force providing a relatively small support role with or without American back-up.
Russia will most likely continue hostilities against Liberal democracies via information warfare and efforts at political destabiisation throughout the Western polity for many years to come relying on what Lenin denotedas “useful idiots” to spread internal discontent.
The crux of the discontent in the USA (and the UK) is the substitution of good paying jobs in manufacturing for lower paying jobs in the services sector and the multi-decade stagnation in wages.
There have been tremendous productivity gains from the globalisation of trade but virtually all of those productivity gains have accumulated to the benefit of the wealthiest sectors of society. The federal minimum wage in the USA has remained at $7.25 since 2009, despite very high inlation in recent years. That is a starvation wage.
The issue to be addressed (as for the UK) is that of income and wealth inequalty primarily via tax reform. The proposed US tax reforms can do nothing more than exacerbate the extreme inequality that is already prevalent in the USA. The wealthiest in society already own the great bulk of assets. Lower taxes on high incomes will simply allow the wealthiest to acquire evermore assets including housing and ultimately return the population to a state of penury and ever growing homelessness.
There is no shortage of land for housing in the USA, but subsistence wages and inflated land prices are the principal means by which the great mass of working families are kept living paycheck to paycheck. The UK is on the same path.
The answer lies with taxation of assets to meet the cost of public services – specifically land value tax- not tariffs.