Perhaps we are beginning to see why, allegedly, President Trump is such a failed businessman, encapsulated by the critical words of Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan who drew comparison between himself as a self-made billionaire rather that the President who had “inherited from daddy”! It does not take a skilled negotiator to recognise that if you give away your key cards at the beginning the ultimate deal is likely to end in tears. Making unreciprocated overtures towards the President of Russia, after years of isolation bringing him out of the cold by a bilateral telephone call, having your Defence Secretary state clearly that in any peace deal Ukraine must accept a loss of illegally seized territory and that it cannot join NATO in the foreseeable future, then excluding the President of Ukraine (and even hinting at Ukraine’s complicity in the loss of its own sovereign land) from talks about that country’s future plus having your Vice President harangue European leaders on the basis that their greatest threat is not from Russia but from “within” is beyond comprehension to any trainee diplomat let alone to a global leadership.
What is the inevitable interpretation in Moscow of Mr Vance’s intervention? It is that a rift has been created in NATO allies, that the US is little interested in the defence of Europe and expects that continent to fund its own defence when all countries are facing budgetary difficulties. NATO has always been seen by the Kremlin as the great threat to Russia (which has never really understood that it is entirely a defensive organisation rather than an encirclement and ultimate destroyer of Russia epitomised by the former Warsaw Pact countries joining the alliance – despite then Secretary Baker’s words that after the reunification of Germany NATO had no interest in advancing further East). Russian rulers have always wanted and regarded as their right a seat at the top table in global affairs – a recognition of its importance – without the appreciation that this has to be earned by an acceptance of a rules based system. Why should that now matter if the USA itself seems willing to tear up those rules? President Trump’s overtures to Putin and statements indicating a willingness for Russia to rejoin the G8 without any reciprocal requirement only adds to the sense in Moscow of a battle won without having to fire a shot. It is an American own goal.
The tried and tested ancient proverb the enemy of my enemy is my friend" seems to have been forgotten in the Vice President’s diatribe against Europe. It matters less that there is some scintilla of truth in European society becoming so introverted and obsessed by causing offence to anyone that freedom of speech may well appear to be in some jeopardy than minimising a threat similar to that which devastated Europe twice in half a century. These sentiments come from the most powerful nation on earth yet one that woke up late, twice, to the threat posed by an aggressive European country and one whose foreign military adventures since that time have ended very badly and diminished its reputation. That is the first risk that is faced today – that the current approach will not only alienate allies and lead to an isolation other than of its own volition but that a failure in such diplomacy will weaken the influence that it wields. If wishing to be rid of the European question is to enable the USA to concentrate on the South China Seas this approach nevertheless brings some encouragement to China which is watching on the sidelines trying to assess what reaction there might be to an armed attack on Taiwan. The perceptible danger is that the US approach towards Russia over Ukraine will embolden China rather than create concern. Handing over your bargaining chips before negotiations begin is not new – it is precisely what happened in Afghanistan when Trump announce the unilateral withdrawal of US forces without anything in return: the Trump administration in February 2020 negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban that excluded the Afghan government, freed 5,000 imprisoned Taliban soldiers and set a date certain of May 1, 2021, for the final withdrawal. The President has form!
My former Parliamentary colleague Matthew Parris pours scorn on the suggestion that Trump is an appeaser in the mould of Neville Chamberlain in his piece in the Times on 17 February “Putin is not Hitler, he’s just another murderous Russian tyrant (hardly Russia’s first) grappling with his own demons and his vast, ungovernable country’s impending bankruptcy” although he acknowledges “I take the point that Trump should not have started a negotiation by conceding the inevitability of exchanging territory for peace but, given that no serious negotiator can doubt it, the concession could be seen as bait — to which Putin has risen.” I respect Matthew’s wisdom and perhaps any analogies of Putin with Hitler are misplaced (certainly, mercifully, there seems to be no replication of the desire for genocide – although Putin’s predecessor strong-man/Czar Stalin disposed of some 4 million Ukrainians in the enforced famine and did away with more of his own citizens that were killed by the Nazis). Yet the territorial ambition and the means of acquiring it have chilling similarities. The Anschluss and annexation of the Sudetenland, of bringing together those of a common language and historic identity, can be seen replicated in the desire to rebuild the Russian Empire of the past and a refusal to accept that Ukraine is an internationally recognised sovereign nation-state. It is at least plausible to recognise in that a threat to all that territory that was part of the former Soviet Empire. Naivety in an individual is always forgivable in the hope that true light will dawn in due course – but it should never be allowed to persuade others.
Moreover, appeasement can take many forms from pragmatic disengagement to actions so favourable to an opponent as to amount to treason. In the 1930s the flirtations with Hitler by parts of the British aristocracy, not to mention the monarchy, who saw fascism as an ordered society and a bulwark against communist revolution, as seen in Russia only a decade earlier, are well documented. It is still my hope that no sane human being can see Putin’s Russia as a force for good in the world – which makes any concessions to him even more inexplicable. Maybe I am missing the trick – that this is all a plan to lure the beast into the trap so as to be able to jump on him effectively and force concessions when Putin has come to rely on the new dependency with the USA and has then nowhere else to turn. If so, it is hard to discern the end game and displays a degree of Machiavellian device which so far seems beyond the reach of President Trump.
Ultimately, from Trump’s point of view this is all about money. He has promised the American taxpayer what he knows the Treasury cannot afford unless it not only secures extra cash from tariffs and repatriates the whole US Aid budget to home rather than abroad (American money for Americans and not for foreigners) but also only if he cuts off the expensive military aid to Ukraine – which is why in his latest tirade of accusing Zelensky of being a dictator and shunning elections he also mentioned that he was responsible for suckering Biden to give $350 billion (the reality is more like $183 billion) aid to the country and is behind his determination that Europe should fund its own defence. He cannot stand for re-election (unless he changes the Constitution which is not impossible) – so he wants his four-year legacy secure in the USA even if it is at the cost of sacrificing US influence overseas and imperilling the peace of the world. History may judge it to have been a massive own goal.
Let us assume that any negotiations lead to a division of Ukraine along roughly currently held territory by Russia with a line of control of thousands of miles to be policed by a multi-national European (possibly including USA) “peacekeeping” force. How will that work? What if there are then limited incursions by those who would be identified or described as Ukrainians (rather than Russians) who merely out of patriotic fervour wished to annex more of the territory lost to Russia prior to 2014 and not fully regained since 2022? How would the multilateral peacekeeping force react (ultimately subject to its own myriad national loyalties)? Would it be like the failure of the French peacekeeping force in Rwanda to prevent genocide or the failure of UNPROFOR and the Dutch battalion in Bosnia to prevent the Srebrenica massacre (having been declared by the UN a "safe area" free "from armed attack or any other hostile act")?
The President of the USA may thus present a real peril to peace in the world yet there is a further peril awaiting America in its economy and mounting debt – an increasing deficit (almost $2 trillion or 6.2% of GDP this year) and massive unfunded proposed tax cuts which make those of Liz Truss look miniscule in comparison (it is interesting that she has become such a cheer-leader for Donald Trump). It is no secret that tariffs are a way of direct funding of these – even if the pain is felt by the lower income families in the USA who disproportionately rely on those goods which will suffer most from tariffs (but probably only after Trump has left office). Maybe the current President, who does not demonstrate an intimate understanding of history (President Hoover’s Tariff Act rather than stimulating US agriculture contributed to the Great Depression), is harking back to those golden days of his grandfather when tariffs constituted the major element of US income: but times have changed.
All this is standing diplomacy on its head with even less certainty about the outcome. The Trump Administration’s arrogance may lead them to think that they can bully Putin into something that he does not want with his economy in dire straits and the body bags mounting up. That would misinterpret the Russian capacity for dogged determination and sacrifice of its own people in what it regards as the greater interests of Mother Russia (or those of its leaders) so amply demonstrated throughout its history. The sacrifice of Ukraine for a supposed rapprochement with Moscow would not be the first time a US President has abandoned a democratic country – Franklin Roosevelt was prepared to sacrifice Poland (despite Churchill’s concern) in his attempt to get Stalin to support a United Nations.
Is the destabilisation of Europe worth an uneasy and inherently unstable new relationship with Russia? History provides the answer. To quote Britain’s first Prime Minister observing public enthusiasm with a war against Spain (to which he was opposed) “Now they are ringing their bells but soon they will be wringing their hands.” What is clear is that we have moved away from any semblance of a universally accepted global rules-based order to which the majority subscribe and is overseen by respected international organisations to one of a strong-man (yes, it is alpha male!) polarised world in which a few determine the fate of the many. I recall during the Cold War visiting Potsdam Castle behind the Iron Curtain and seeing preserved on the walls the blank maps of Europe with thick red lines across them being the spheres of influence Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill (replaced by Clement Attlee after the election) and President Harry Truman had drawn across them without reference to ethnic, cultural, linguistic, religious identity – much like the national boundaries along lines of longitude and latitude undiscernible of the ground which was the legacy of decolonisation (with still a hatched line between India and Pakistan that has never been resolved). We all know the legacy of this in three of the five continents. Is this the brave New World?
Keith Best TD, MA is a former Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Anglesey/Ynys Môn and served as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Wales. Major in airborne and commando (artillery) forces, practising barrister, liveryman (Loriner), and Freeman of the City of London, Keith was named one of the 100 most influential people in public services in the UK by Society Guardian. Keith has made significant contributions to international refugee and human rights initiatives, including serving as Vice Chair of the European Council on Refugees and Exiles and as a member of the Foreign Secretary’s Advisory Panel on Torture Prevention. He is the Chair & CEO of the Wyndham Place Charlemagne Trust, Chair of the Universal Peace Federation (UK), patron of TEAM Global, and a trustee of several national and international organisations.
The views and opinions expressed in our International Insights are strictly those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views, policies, or positions of TEAM Global or its affiliates.
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