“How many divisions has the Pope?” Stalin is said to have asked sarcastically in 1943, deriding the influence of the Vatican during a wartime summit with Winston Churchill and Franklin D Roosevelt in Tehran.
A similar question might well be asked in Washington and Moscow about the political and military ability of the 18 world leaders gathered in London on Sunday by Sir Keir Starmer to impact what might be the endgame of the Russia-Ukraine war.
Starmer said it was a time for action not words in support of Ukraine, as the leaders met in the wake of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s public row with Donald Trump, leading to his humiliating ejection from the White House. But, for all the warm hugs and pledges of solidarity that Zelensky received from his allies in London, he would be unwise to exaggerate the extent to which bombastic European rhetoric offers an alternative to full American support.
Starmer has called for “a coalition of the willing” which is to act as a “peacekeeping” force in Ukraine, supposing it gets a guarantee of American military backing. Since Russia has repeatedly vetoed the presence of troops from Nato countries in Ukraine as a part of any peace deal, and Trump last week refused to provide a guarantee of American air support, Starmer’s strange idea looks moot.
Like much else during and after the London meeting, it appears to have been designed to promote the UK, France and other European powers as serious players in the Ukraine crisis. This European desire to show themselves as being important and relevant powers is harmless enough – so long as the embattled Ukrainians do not take it too seriously.
The very use of the phrase “coalition of the willing” to describe a putative European deployment in Ukraine is ominous, since the phrase was first used over 20 years ago about those countries (notably the UK, though not France and Germany) who were willing to join President George W Bush’s disastrous US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
All concerned swiftly found that they had mired themselves in a horrible and dangerous mess, from which they then spent years trying to extract themselves. Much the same thing had happened in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. The fact that Starmer is willing to resurrect such a coalition, even if he is only posturing, suggests that he is ignorant of the lessons of past UK interventions, or is willing to ignore them.
It is reasonable enough for the Europeans to offer greater support for Ukraine in the shape of more money and military supplies, so long as nobody in Kyiv imagines that this will strengthen them sufficiently to categorically reject a US-Russian deal.
Posturing about Ukraine is scarcely a British monopoly; it is true of most European states. French president Emmanuel Macron is proposing a limited one-month truce between Russia and Ukraine, though one of Moscow’s main negotiating levers is to negotiate while fighting an attritional war which is tipping gradually, if not decisively, in its favour. Ukraine has expressed reservations about a temporary ceasefire on the grounds that it would allow the Russians to rearm and recuperate, though there is no sign that they need to do either.
A problem for Starmer’s “peace plan” is that his ideas for any long-term agreement, insofar as they are known, appear to ignore what Russia wants.
As Trump remarked at the start of last Friday’s shouting match with Zelensky, it is all very well to say abusive things about President Vladimir Putin, but this does no good if the intention is to negotiate a deal with him. Given that Putin’s three main demands – for a neutral Ukraine (like Austria and Finland in Soviet times), Russian retention of Crimea and Donbas, and a limitation on Ukrainian armaments – are unlikely to be met, negotiations may well be protracted and subject to ups and downs in the battlefield.
square PATRICK COCKBURN
Newsletter (£)
Critics of Trump must have their own peace plan
Read MoreAs with Tony Blair and most British prime ministers over the last century, Starmer visibly enjoys playing the role of mediator and “building bridges” between the US and the European powers. Yet, of all US presidents, Trump is the least likely to welcome diplomatic bridge builders. During the infamous row with Zelensky, he said that he alone can reach an agreement with Russia and doubtless he believes just that.
Starmer’s grandstanding speeches over the last few days have been full of contradictions, though in his defence it could be said that other European leaders, such as European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, with her ambition to turn Ukraine into a steel hedgehog, have been just as bad.
He denies that there is a rift between the US and Europe, when the exposure of this yawning gap was the reason for the London meeting. He insists the UK is somehow in “lockstep” with the US, which is “a reliable ally”, when Trump is pursuing an entirely different policy towards Ukraine and Russia than America’s European allies.
The lesson of Starmer’s and Macron’s visits to the White House early last week, briefly lauded by themselves and their domestic media as triumphs of tactful diplomacy, is that they had no detectable influence whatsoever on Trump, despite a display of flattery and deference on their part that an ancient Egyptian Pharaoh might have considered excessive from a pair of visiting vassal potentates.
Shocking proof of how little their views weighed with Trump and vice-president JD Vance came almost immediately when the pair launched their ferocious verbal assault on Zelensky. What is not clear yet is if Trump wants the Ukrainian leader out or tamed.
Those who call and attend summits invariably exaggerate their achievements, but if the Ukrainian leaders take too literally the solemn pledges of European support, they will be making a potentially catastrophic mistake.
Monster though Trump may well be, his Ukraine peace deal, if and when it happens, is the only game in town.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Starmer’s peace plan means little – Trump holds the real power )
Also on site :
- Country 'MVP' Refunds Entire Audience Mid-Concert and Fans 'Cannot Believe He Did That'
- Legendary '70s Rock Band’s Song Sparks Fan Theories 50 Years Later
- Trump fija nuevo plazo de negociación de dos semanas y desencadena esfuerzo urgente por reanudar las conversaciones con Irán