Europe Pushes Back

A curious peace process gets curiouser

Never assume you know what Donald Trump is going to do or say next because it is unlikely he does. Take seriously what he says at any time because that probably accurately reflects what he is thinking, but some of his thoughts can be very transitory and are soon replaced by others. If you don’t like the positions being held on one day, push back because he might be convinced to hold a different position the next. Equally, when satisfied with today’s position do not assume it will last.

It is hard to overstate how little relationship Trump’s peacemaking efforts to end the war between Russia and Ukraine have to any normal diplomatic processes. Everything revolves around Donald Trump, which is how he likes it, rather than the peace he is supposedly promoting. Trump has made regular statements leading up to and after the meeting with Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, and now leading up to and after the great gathering in the White House. Although each statement sounds definitive, when they are viewed in sequence, there is no consistency.

It is also a lazy sort of peacemaking, full of grandstanding but not the hard yards put in by past presidents when trying to address major conflicts. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton got into the details of the Arab-Israeli conflict and sought constructive solutions to the most intractable problems. Trump barely puts in hours where they put in days, and it is often unclear exactly what if anything has been agreed because so little is written down. Even if he can get Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin to meet and shake hands on a deal - today’s hope - the agreement would be at such a high level that the two sides would have many opportunities to pick away at the multitude of second- and third-order issues raised before they could move to implementation.

Nobody wants to fall out with Trump if it can avoided. The crazy nature of the process is obscured by the lashings of flattery and rhetorical concessions that all those who want something from Trump know they must offer, with nods towards whatever happens to be his view of the moment, and an ability to sit impassively while he airs his favourite grievances, clinging to the hope that good may come out of all this chaos or at least bad might be averted.

It was quite reasonable to assume after the meeting with Putin in Anchorage that the next stage would be heavy pressure on Ukraine to agree to an unjust and unstable deal, with dire consequences if Zelenskyy resisted. This is certainly what the Russian media were expecting, convinced that at last Trump was fully on their side. It is what Zelenskyy and the sundry European leaders that flew to Washington on 17 August to meet with Trump feared. The Europeans arrived in numbers to ensure that Zelenskyy had moral support and did not have to face Trump alone, at least not for too long. The other objective was to try to pin Trump down more on the question of security guarantees. They appeared to have succeeded. The dial was switched back in Ukraine’s direction, although nothing much was really resolved.

This post will try to assess how this came about and where we are now. I noted in my previous post, following Alaska, about the move to urge a full peace settlement rather than an early ceasefire:

So the basic consequence of this shift (if it lasts) is that it is even less likely that there will be any peace deal soon. Trump may not appreciate this. One of the problems with his peacemaking efforts is that he fabricates deals in his head and then gets cross when it turns out that either Putin or Zelenskyy or both don’t agree.

Does the latest set of talks change this judgement?