Russia and America are going to have a peace summit about the Ukraine war without Ukraine or any European country. This is slightly less ridiculous than the previous peace summit which didn’t include Russia since Russia can fight on without anyone but China’s support, while if the US decides to stop supporting Ukraine, it’s cooked.
Well, sort of. Ukraine is cooked any way you look at it. It was always going to lose the war, and that hasn’t changed.
What’s amusing about the what’s being floated is that Europe is supposed to send the peacekeepers and pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine and the US is supposed to… well, maybe get some of Ukraine’s wealth, though Zelensky has quite rightly refused to sign that deal.
Interestingly Zelensky had, at first, expressed willingness, but when he got to the White House, it turned out that he was being offered nothing in return. It seems the Trumpian right feels that Ukraine has been taking advantage of America and owes it.
So, the US, which was the primary actor behind the Maidan coup and Ukraine’s actions since then which contributed to the war, who was almost certainly responsible for cutting Europe/Germany off from Nord Stream gas through sabotage, wants the Euros to foot the entire bill for ending the war.
Any European leader willing to chew down on this has less than zero self-respect.
And the sheer chutzpah of saying that Ukraine has taken advantage of America reminds me of the guy V.P Cheney shot apologizing to him. None of this would have happened if the US hadn’t pushed for it every step of the way, and the US and UK were responsible for Ukraine not taking an early, far better peace deal.
The issue, of course, is that neither Europe nor Ukraine can sustain the war without American support. It’s lost, but the Euros could veto the deal if they could keep the war going alone and drag it out enough that it was worth Putin dealing with them.
There is another way, of course. Europe could offer Putin an end to sanctions and repair of NordStream. They could ask China to be the peace guarantor, which makes sense because China is, actually, the only country Russia has no choice but to listen to. They could cut a deal with China at the same time.
Then they could leave NATO and build their own militaries up. Kick out 90% of all American diplomats and all remaining post-USAID NGOs at the same time, to help avoid the inevitable coup attempts.
All this requires is either a modicum of self-respect or a scintilla of self-interest. When Europe’s power has disintegrated to the point where they don’t even have a seat at the table on how a war being fought on their soil should be ended, it’s either a wake-up call, or the end of Europe’s significance.
More realistically the best hope is that multiple European governments fall and are replaced by those who have enough pride or self-interest to strop grovelling.
Europe has no prospect of being what it once was. But it could be a regional great power. It’s that, or returning to what it was for much of history, a meaningless Eurasian peninsula full of barbarians.
bruce wilder
a central issue that your narrative side-steps is that Ukraine collapsed into oligarchic corruption and consequent extreme poverty and collective political debility for most of the population with the fall of the Soviet Union and never recovered. the political capacity to form a cohesive and coherent idea of a Ukrainian Republic with a common self-interest is not a given, but rather a product of political processes, contested processes of organization, propaganda and competition. the U.S., the EU and Russia participated in those political processes, carrying on their own contest for power but also exacerbating the corruption of a politics dominated by local parasitic oligarchs struggling among themselves
Zelensky’s political advent was the outcome of the wishful thinking embodied in the fantasy of a popular televised situation comedy, a Ukrainian version of the West Wing. It shouldn’t be lost on anyone that many Democrats of the DailyKos / Pod Save America variety thought Obama was President Bartlett and looked forward to episodes of Weekend at Biden’s like it was to be a sequel promising a comfortable “normal” politics, papering over the increasingly squalid corruption and incompetence.
The legitimacy — to use the traditional term — of the actors available to play leadership roles and not incidentally the rhetorical finery with which they dress their stances and proposals is very much open to question. You can call this “agreement-incapable” but that label hardly covers the depth of the crisis. The U.S., domestically, is near the end of a dramatic political realignment that has predictably become a major constitutional crisis. Various European states are even deeper in political turmoil. The UK, whose farcical PM just declared some kind of millennial alliance with Ukraine, seems on the verge of collapse. Germany, France . . . yikes!
we used to joke about how Obama would negotiate with himself as a way of euthanizing any remaining New Deal impulses, but realistically Ukraine or Europe would have to complete an heroic round of negotiating with themselves before they could be coherent enough to negotiate anything. I agree with Ian that a logical standard for political self-interest would be recognizing that a European alliance with Russia would offer good opportunities to salvage a future. but, consider how distant is the possibility of such rationality.
sbt42
“If you don’t have a seat at the table, then you’re on the menu,” indeed.
I agree with previous posts, that the EU needs to grow a pair and throw off the shackles of the US. I think that if there’s no EU/Asia bloc, then the rest of the EU will be carved-up in conversations like this, and/or absorbed into larger, China-backed nation states as their economy collapses and they lose the ability to manage themselves and their populations.
KT Chong
Posted this awhile ago elsewhere. Reposting it here because it has not yet dawned on most of you yet:
America is withdrawing and will no longer be the backer of European excesses. If the resource poor and starved Europe is to survive, Europe will have to reinvade, reoccupy and recolonize countries and continents that are weak, unable to defend themselves and have lots of energy and resources.
Why do you think Finland, Sweden, etc., abandoned their neutrality and joined NATO? Why do you think the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is calling for the formation of the European Army?
Russia and Ukraine are not the whole reason. The real reasons: NATO and the European Army are going back into Africa and Asia, and they are gonna TAKE. They are gonna loot. They are gonna pillage. They are gonna plunder. It will be like what NATO did in Libya but on a larger scale.
European countries that have joined the hordes (like Finland and Sweden) will get to share the booty. European countries that are not part of the club will be left out in the cold on their own.
KT Chong
Ursula von der Leyen has been calling for a “European Defence Union” since the she became the European Commission President in 2019, which was during Trump’s first term. She made the creation of a European Defense Union a centerpiece of her campaign for a second term in office. That European Army is coming.
bruce wilder
Putin, in his lawyerly way, has drawn attention to Zelensky’s personal lack of formal legitimacy, being essentially an unelected authoritarian dictator running a one-party state with systematic political and religious persecution. It would seem like Z’s “base” is exclusively his ability to garner reception by Western political officials rather than organic support by any discernible faction or constituency in Ukraine itself. I could certainly be wrong in that assessment — my sources of information on Ukraine are thin. But, it is an hypothesis I cannot reject on the basis of information I do have. The possibility that Zelensky might pop suddenly into exile and obscurity in Florida does not seem entirely far-fetched — an even more farcical version of Kerensky living out his life in New Jersey. It is in that context that I read the comments from Poland, with the largest army in NATO after Türkiye and the U.S., to the effect that are not enough troops in Western Europe to credibly keep the peace in the chaos of a post-armistice Ukraine. Without an organic political cohesion or an economic foundation, is there even a Ukrainian state post-war, let alone anyone foolish enough to lead one?
GrimJim
Is this our Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact moment?
This history sure seems to be repeating more than it rhymes…
Andre
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/china-says-ready-to-work-with-eu-for-prosperous-world-/3482695
This was three days ago. I would do the same thing if I were China, and the EU has now no reason to not accept.
Thanks to the big mouth Bully!
Soredemos
@bruce wilder
At least Zelensky’s show was openly a sitcom. The tragic stupidity of West Wing was that it’s writers and fans legitimately think it’s a serious adult drama, a truthful portrayal of anything political.
TWW, the liberal power fantasy where even when they’re literally writing their own fiction they can’t write themselves as achieving anything meaningful, where they still portray their GOP opponents as essentially well meaning patriots with whom they just have some tactical disagreements, and where anyone who actually has any principles or vision of substantive change is a childish emo-prog who deserves to be mocked.
All of this written at the height of the George W. Bush era when Jon Stewart was a least elevating ‘Republicans R stoopid’ into an art form. When the GOP was the worst and most retrograde it has ever been, was essentially openly both moronic and evil, and yet Liberals then and now elevated possibly the dumbest political drama ever written into a beacon to be followed and emulated.
No wonder Republicans trounced this pathetic party.
different clue
I am not sure a EUrope Alone would be able to reconquer, recolonize and reloot in Africa and/or Asia. It would take time to try and this would give those parts of Africa and Asia which would need resistance-assistance to arrange for help of various kinds from China.
So if EUrope is going to try for Return to Empire, that will be a bad bet and the last bad bet EUrope ever makes.
EUrope would be better off letting China maintain it as a cultural petting zoo for Chinese tourists.
Soredemos
@KT Chong
I’m not convinced even an earnest effort on Europe’s part would matter at this stage. Their ability to conduct war has been shown to be seriously degraded. The doctrinal and officer class competence simply doesn’t exist anymore, and from the angle of the ability to make weapons they’ve gone for what is self-evidently the deeply wrong headed American system of very few eye-wateringly expensive vehicles and weapons packed with gee-wiz tech that ultimately amounts to not actually being any better than rival gear, is often noticeably worse, and which even when effective they simply don’t have enough of because none of it is built with the mindset of mass disposability that full scale warfare requires.
I’m reminded of things like France sending a third of its total number of a certain model of mobile artillery pieces to Ukraine, which amounted to something like 23 vehicles. Twenty-three. It’s a fucking joke.
Maybe a united European army could manage the beating up of chronically ill trained, equipped, and led post-colonial African armies. That might be a task they could manage.
GrimJim
Things are really starting to look more and more like the Orwellian Oceania-Eurasia-Eastasia blocs from 1984.
Issues around the edges:
Oceania: The core US/UK is there, Trump wants to add Canada and Greenland.
I don’t see how, with the white supremacist Evangelicals at the helm, the US could expand south to take Central and South America. We just don’t have the manpower or resources. There’d have to be a sea change in the racial dogma of that core cadre to make that acceptable, as the locals would never accept Anglo-American rule.
The last chance to expand the Anglo-American Empire south in political and well as economic fashion passed with Walker and the Filibusters.
Plus, China would have a heaping helping to say about that.
Eurasia. The US is fading away from Europe, so eventually Central and Western Europe will fall into the Russian — I mean, Eurasian — orbit. They have not the strength or resources to resist without US backing.
Once the US is no longer a direct competitor in Europe, the need for the Russia-China detente will end, and so those borders in the rich Siberian territories will heat up.
Eastasia — Except for Siberia and the far northeast, southeast Asia is a lock for the Chinese sphere. The Pacific is the issue between Oceania and Eastasia — island chains might change hands several time until they are sunken by melting icecaps… though by then there won’t be much fight left in either faction.
Real Odd Bits — India, Middle East, and North Africa will be hot potatoes. Left alone except for raids, and then when it is too hot for life, left alone entirely.
South Africa — Depends on how things go. Trump wants to extract the whites, the whites want to fight, but with no support from outside, the whites are probably looking at extinction. When 80% of the population owns only 4% of the privately held land, something is going to go…
So there is the only place where Orwell’s map is grossly far off.
shagggz
@ KT Chong,
Attempted looting and pillaging of Africa by a European Army are easier to imagine than any such successes, if France’s recent whimpering evictions from former African colonial possessions are any indication.
Revelo
>is there even a Ukrainian state post-war,
Russia does not want more territory to manage, which is why measuring war by territory gains/losses is idiotic, but Russia cannot stop until Ukraine is demilitarized. Right now, demilitarization consists of exterminating Ukrainians willing to fight on the front lines, plus destroying industrial potential of Ukraine to support war. There is no way Ukrainian fanatics will agree to lay down arms and be a truly demilitarized state ala Costa Rica. So Zelensky will sabotage peace talks, Trump will abandon Ukraine to EU, war will continue until Ukrainian military eventually revolts.
When Ukrainian military will revolt is anyone’s guess. Soldiers everywhere are notorious for stubbornness if they believe in their cause. Once the revolt starts, it is very likely that Ukraine will shatter into fiefdoms ruled by warlords. Russia will work cooperatively with warlords in east, south and probably central Ukraine because no one in EU is as capable of working with these warlords. Working with local warlords has far better optics for Russia than occupying more of Ukraine. This situation of warlords cooperating with Russia will endure for decades, similar to situation with Transdniestria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia.
Hardcore Ukrainian nationalists will retreat to western Ukraine, where there is much bad blood between Ukraine and Poland (see Volyn massacre). So cooperation of west Ukraine with EU may not be as smooth as cooperation between east and south Ukraine with Russia. Then again, EU dwarfs size and economic clout of west Ukraine, so a full scale occupation, reeducation, liquidation program is conceivable. Liquidation would preceed incorporating this region into EU. There are hydrocarbons in the Carpathians south of Lviv that are probably suitable for fracking, plus 2 large nuclear power plants. Poland would definitely like to get its hands on these energy resources.
mago
I did a private cooking gig for a German friend’s family long ago and far away with the aim to heal Oma, the over medicated grandma.
Details could fill a novel.
Anyway, one morning at breakfast, which was always at 9 and always featured the same stuff, Oma up ended her bowl of oatmeal on the table and effectively said, “I’m sick of this shit and won’t eat it anymore.”
I took that as a true sign of her healing.
And it was. That overmedicated granny got her spunk back and was soon cracking jokes and wiping her own ass.
Europe could learn a lesson that German daughter.
Feral Finster
KT Chong wrote:
“Russia and Ukraine are not the whole reason. The real reasons: NATO and the European Army are going back into Africa and Asia, and they are gonna TAKE. They are gonna loot. They are gonna pillage. They are gonna plunder. It will be like what NATO did in Libya but on a larger scale.”
Logistics, Holmes, where are the euroweenies going to find the logistics (not to mention the manpower) to do any of that?
Britain and France couldn’t even manage Libya and they had to call in the US to bail them out.
Ian Welsh
Of course the US can conquer Canada if it really wants to. It will simply involve a very long hard insurgency war. Canada is the second largest country on Earth, and the resources and transportation routes for those resources will be damned near impossible to secure.
If the US was to commit to such an action, it would be similar to the Spanish ulcer: an endless drain. And since Canada is willing to sell those resources, for cheap, such a war is moronic.
Forecasting Intelligence
In two generations western Europe will be part of a wider Islamic empire.
Eastern Europe will be part of the Russian empire.
Europe is toast.