Donald Trump’s plan for peace in Ukraine means no peace at all
Editorial: The outlook is poor, for Ukraine and the cause of freedom. America under Trump would recede into isolationism and protectionism – and its foreign policy would be the appeasement of Russia, if not China
It cannot have been a great surprise to the foreign secretary, David Cameron, that Donald Trump showed such little interest in supporting Ukraine’s war of resistance. Had Mr Trump wanted to see Ukraine receive the military assistance that Kyiv has been begging for, and which remains stalled in the House of Representatives, he’d have given it the nod months ago, and the Republican caucus would have responded with alacrity.
The fact that Trump’s puppet, speaker of the House Mike Johnson, couldn’t find time in his diary to speak to His Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office speaks volumes for the indifference America feels for its allies and the weakness of the now almost satirically-styled “special relationship”.
We’re learning, if we had not already, the full gruesome nature of what lies behind the slogan “America First”. Mr Trump, as he’s already practically admitted, is not interested in helping President Biden get his plan through Congress; nor is he much bothered about the territorial integrity of Ukraine. He plainly regards the war as a waste of money and a lost cause – indeed, a cause for which he feels little sympathy.
The former president has long boasted that he could secure peace between Russia and Ukraine within 14 hours, and, in any case, the war would “never have happened” if he’d still been president in 2022.
In both scenarios, “peace” means secession of eastern Ukraine plus Crimea to Putin, and de facto recognition of the present sham so-called “people’s republics” as within Russia’s sphere of influence, if not inside the Russian Federation itself. With such a plan for peace, it makes no sense to arm Ukraine. So, The Donald isn’t going to. It is appeasement, with a beaming Trump grin on its face: the greatest betrayal of Europe since Stalin at Yalta managed to persuade the Allies to allow him to occupy most of Eastern Europe.
What is being lost here is even more crucial than the fate of Ukraine, tragic as that is for its people and the security of the whole of Europe. What is being lost is the argument.
As the Ukrainian Catholic bishop in London, a kind of consul for President Zelensky, tells The Independent: “This is not just a battle for Ukraine, it is the battle for rule of law, democracy and freedoms that we have all taken advantage of. That we stand to lose.” But to the famous man in his big house in Mar-a-Lago, that truth is not self-evident.
Mr Cameron’s attempt to teach Mr Trump the lessons of history may have been valiant and eloquent but it is not clear to Trump, much of his party in Congress and the Republican base why his “peace plan” amounts to appeasement. Trump thinks it’s a deal, of the sort he does in the world of New York real estate (notwithstanding some little local difficulties recently surrounding property valuations).
Mr Cameron, in harmony with Nato and President Zelensky, argues that Putin is the Hitler or the Mussolini of our times, and the lesson of the 1930s is that if you fail to stand up to dictators, then you will merely postpone and make more likely a military conflict. The argument today is that if half of Ukraine is surrendered now, then soon enough, just like Hitler after the Sudetenland, Putin will be back looking for more, including one day, ironically enough, Poland (which was, after all, carved up and occupied by German and Russian leaders in 1939, and not for the first time).
But Mr Cameron and the West haven’t been able to convince Trump that this is necessarily and inevitably going to happen; and why he should care if it did. Someone, and it may be beyond anyone, will have to try and persuade why a free Europe – covered by a US security guarantee via Nato and nuclear deterrence – is in the interests of America, and not merely yet another ripoff by rich allies well able to pay for their own defence.
It is an argument that never needed to be made with any president from Harry S Truman to Barack Obama, but it needs to be made afresh now. America will be less rather than more secure if Europe is dominated once more by Russia, as well as less prosperous and prone to Russian pressure.
As for whether Putin is interested in swallowing up the whole of Ukraine, we have only to recall that one prong of his failed “special military operation” in February 2022 was to send a column of tanks directly down the road to Kyiv, where they would presumably have been welcomed as liberators. With regards to occupying Eastern Europe and dominating Western Europe, Putin – who spent some happy years as a KGB man in East Germany – has never made a secret of his nostalgia for imperial and Soviet Russia, nor his wish to rebuild it.
The outlook is poor, for Ukraine and the cause of freedom. America under President Trump would recede into isolationism and protectionism – and appeasement of Russia, if not China, would be the principal goal of foreign policy, with a much-denuded commitment to Nato. Mr Trump’s malign neglect of Europe is already being felt via congressional inertia over Ukraine (which may run out of shells long before November’s US elections).
Rather like Neville Chamberlain and Hitler, Donald Trump is a man who thinks he can do business with, and trust, a dictator: in this case, Putin. He is dangerously foolish in that belief – and he is not going to appreciate the likes of Mr Cameron implying that he is. Other arguments, aimed at the direct interests of the United States (and indeed, the self-interest of Mr Trump) are needed. It’s not going to be an easy sell.
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