With the usual qualifier that I could be entirely wrong, my sense is that both the Alaska Summit and Monday’s meeting at the White House were reality checks. They revealed that Putin was finally able to convince the “collective Trump” (Gilbert Doctorow’s term), that the war in Ukraine did not begin with the Russian invasion of February 2022 but with the February 2014 Maidan coup in Kiev that overthrew the democratically elected Ukrainian president Victor Yanukovych. It was part of the neocon’s grand strategy of using Ukraine in a proxy war to bleed Russia before taking on China.1 This faction of the permanent government or Deep State has been defeated on the battlefield.
The filter to which to view recent events is that the other faction of the US ruling elite, the one to which Trump is nominally connected, “only” wants domination of one-third of the globe and they have correctly concluded that Russia has already won the war in Ukraine. Trump does not want to be associated with a war that ends like Vietnam or Afghanistan. Putin was offering Trump an exit and he pulled the plug onUkraine or, to mix metaphors, took Ukraine off the neocon’s global chessboard.
At Monday’s White House meeting, the now neutered and obsequious Zelensky (who at least wore a coat) set a world record for uttering the words “Thank you, Mr. President”and the fact the Trump despises the back-stabbing, groveling European vassals was on full display as he humiliated them. I was reminded of disobedient school children sitting in the principal’s office. In any case, as each one offered his or her portion of the prepared script, the high (or low) point was when Merz pitifully raised the dead letter “ceasefire” demand for the umpteenth time and Trump pretended to listen before offering an offhand patronizing comment.
The question arises why these Europeans will feverishly continue to sabotage the peace process? There might be a few leaders who believe the nonsense about a “Russian threat” but as Vijay Prashad has cogently argued, “European elites are primarily interested in protecting their legitimacy. They have invested too much political capital in their goal of ‘victorious peace’ to walk away.” As I’ve noted in previous posts, how else can the European ruling class justify massive increases in arms spending which requires dismantling the welfare state if they can’t maintain the narrative that the Kremlin plans to invade Europe? More critically, how can they maintain their power and privilege if ordinary citizens realize they’ve been lied to over so many decades? In sum, this is the “existential threat” facing European governing elites and they’re living on borrowed time.
In the near future, Putin will meet with Ukrainian negotiators, probably in Istanbul but because both sides are so far apart, no compromise is possible. Putin will enforce a resolution of the conflict on Zelensky which will be a surrender, a capitulation. Trump won’t be there because he wants to evade responsibility when everything collapses.
Finally, Alaska and Washington were limited but positive first steps in transforming US-Russia relations and that’s good news for those aware of the real danger of nuclear war. Further, there’s a better than fifty percent chance that the Ukraine war will end in the near future and that tens of thousands of lives will be spared. And lest I be misunderstood, this isn’t because Trump is a “good guy” or US imperialism is softening but because of the aforementioned, array of highly unusual circumstances the US was forced to retreat. If there are folks out there who miss the truth that at this narrow, isolated point in time that’s a positive development, I can only say “pity on them.” Of course this “good news” must be quickly tempered by the fact that US “Project Ukraine” has already cost the lives of 1.1 million Ukrainians and Russians in a totally unnecessary war.
Note: The entirely disingenuous question of so-called “security arrangements” must be taken up another day.
ENDNOTE:
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Gary Olson.