It is an indictment of three years of Western policy that it should eventually take a Fox News host and extreme white nationalist to spell out the truths about the war in Ukraine.
New Pentagon chief and Trump lackey Pete Hegseth did just that in his remarks to the Munich security conference this week. He said:
• It is unrealistic to expect Ukraine to reconquer the territories in the south and east of the country presently held by the Russian military.
• Kiev is not going to join Nato, a prospect which played a significant part in provoking Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of 2022.
• Neither will any peace deal be guaranteed by US military boots on the ground in Ukraine.
• If European forces are deployed in Ukraine, it will not be as a Nato intervention, meaning a renewed clash would not automatically trigger US assistance.
And Hegseth went even further, telling the assembled Nato defence ministers and securocrats that Europe was no longer in any event a high priority for Washington in military terms.
This may well prove to be the most significant intervention in transatlantic relations since the end of the cold war in 1991. It is not motivated by pacifism on Trump’s part.
The decisive focus of the Trump administration is clearly to be on competition with China and expanding US power in various parts of the globe. It will not be pursuing the zero-sum confrontation with Russia advocated by Keir Starmer and most European Nato leaders.
The one thing the US Defence Secretary did commit to was continued supply of arms to Ukraine. That is highly lucrative for the US business interests of which Trump is above all the servant.
Furthermore, Washington intends to leverage its weaponry to secure privileged access to key mineral resources in Ukraine.
Trump has apparently already discussed the outlines of a peace deal with Putin, presumably along the lines indicated by Hegseth.
It is not yet clear that these will easily succeed, since Russia may feel it can achieve more through continued action on a battlefield where it is gradually prevailing.
Stop the War’s Lindsey German is absolutely right to say that the deal now on the table could have been the basis for negotiations three years and hundreds of thousands of casualties ago.
Indeed, the peace plan as outlined echoes the calls made by some of the left ever since the outset of the war. Indeed, had it been outlined by a Labour MP it would surely have resulted in the loss of the parliamentary whip.
The government is clearly scrambling to obstruct Trump’s new policy, even as it acquiesces in every outrage against democracy and decency coming from the demagogue in the White House and his satrap Elon Musk.
Keir Starmer committed to still pushing Ukrainian membership of Nato and pouring arms and cash which the country can ill afford into the conflict, doubtless in the hope of persuading Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky to prolong the anti-Russian struggle despite the imminent loss of Trump’s support.
This stance is reckless and anyway doomed to fail. It is a mistake for trade unions and others to be marching to, in effect, keep the war going when at least the possibility of peace is at hand.
Raising entirely unrealistic slogans is no help to Ukraine and damaging to the interests of British workers.
Rather, the labour movement should unite in demanding that the government assist in getting negotiations going or at least get out of the way. And it must start to think about the new European security architecture of peace that Hegseth’s demarche demands.
Source: Morning Star