Online Reporter
The US cutting loose both Kiev and Brussels is the way to end the war and that’s a good thing.
The only thing more dangerous than being America’s enemy is to be its friend.
That is a statement often attributed to Henry Kissinger.
And even if the sources are a little murky — involving the overestimated arch-conservative grandstander William F. Buckley — it would have been just like Henry: sort of witty, deeply malevolent, and yet realistic in its own, venomous way.
Never mind that the idea is not that original: Aleksey Vandam, an unjustly forgotten geopolitical theorist and general of the late Russian empire, knew that much already. Watching the British and Americans abuse China, Vandam felt the Chinese had every reason for concluding that “it’s a bad thing to have an Anglo-Saxon for an enemy, but God forbid having him as a friend.”
And yet some lessons are never learned. This time it is the turn of both Ukraine and America’s EU-NATO vassals to pay the price of trying to be friends with what, in a global perspective, has been — quite objectively, quantifiably — the most overbearing, violent, and disruptive empire of firstly, the post-World War II and, recently, the post-Cold War periods.
Because that is one of the key messages of the increasingly intense — and now, finally, open — top level contacts between Moscow and Washington, that is, between presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.
Let’s be clear: This is, in and of itself, a positive and badly overdue development. The recent, officially confirmed “lengthy and highly productive phone call” (Trump’s words) between the two leaders may not yet amount to a breakthrough. Even if Trump’s rhetoric — about a “successful conclusion, hopefully soon!” — already makes it look like one; Trump, it’s true, can be grandiloquent.
Trump wants a deal with Russia – but can he deliver?
Yet the conversation does already serve as a big, heavy slab of a tombstone on America’s absurd and very dangerous policy of decrepitly stubborn non-communication. Moreover, Moscow has now confirmed that a full summit is in the making.
Even better, we also know already that neither Kiev nor the EU-NATO vassals were in the loop: There goes the daft, devious, and very deadly (for Ukrainians, too) mantra of “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.” And as a bonus: Soon there will be a lot about EU-NATO Europe without Europe. The fact that its leaders are, in the Financial Times’ words, “reel[ing]” and already clamouring for being heard merely confirms that they have been shunted aside.
Whatever cosmetic role the Europeans may be allowed to play (or not), will not matter. In reality, the Trumpists are brutally frank about what they have in mind: Washington and Moscow make the decisions, the NATO-EU vassals fall in line and, also, pay for the outcome: Reconstructing Ukraine, Trump’s people feel, is for European budgets. And if, given Moscow’s objections – any Western troops somehow end up stationed in what will be left of Ukraine, then those too will be Europe’s very bad business to take care of as well.
Both steps look harsh, but they are necessary. In the case of Ukraine, its leadership needs to be deprived of its implied veto power over peace. Because, first, that power is not real anyhow. It has always served as a smokescreen to allow warmongers in the West — recall Boris Johnson, anyone? — to sell their proxy war as the “will of Ukraine,” while Ukrainians have been used up as cannon fodder.
Second, since the Ukraine War has long been a war putting at risk all of Ukraine’s Western sponsors as well. It is obviously unjust that their populations’ security should not matter as long as a US puppet regime in Kiev doesn’t feel like peace. Third, Ukraine is not the same as that regime. Ever more of its people want a compromise end to this war, as polls have been showing for almost a year already. The regime’s superannuated, detached, and ever less popular leader Vladimir Zelensky and his team of slick operators and clumsy sycophants have no right to stand in their nation’s way.
—RT
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
