The Putin-Trump call was a true turning point

The only thing more dangerous than being America’s enemy is to be its friend.

That is a statement often attributed to Henry Kissinger – the multiple,
unrepentant as well as un-prosecuted war criminal, butcher of the Global
South, and revelation-resistant icon of US foreign policy. And even if
the sources are a little murky – involving the slightly deranged and
badly overestimated arch-conservative grandstander William F. Buckley –
it would have been just like bad old 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.

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’s words, “reel[ing]” and already clamoring for being heard merely confirms that they have been shunted aside.

Rest assured: whatever cosmetic role the Europeans may be allowed to play
(or not), they are delusional if they think they’ll matter. In reality, the Trumpists are brutally frank
about what they have in mind for their underlings: 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 – a big 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.

Let’s be frank: 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 involving – and 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.

Regarding NATO, the EU and Europe: Apart from getting the acid disrespect they richly deserve for allowing the US and/or Ukraine
to blow up their vital infrastructure, Europe’s spineless leaders have
made it abundantly clear that the best thing they can do for world peace
and international stability is to have no say. The antics of Kaja Kallas,
the overpromoted simpleton who counts for the EU’s de facto foreign
minister, are just the latest proof of that fact. And let’s not even
start on Baerbock, Lammy, Macron, Starmer, von der Leyen… The list of
war-besotted incompetents and “Atlanticist” sell-outs goes on and on.

It’s not as if there had never been alternatives: remember what happened
when Viktor Orbán, leader of bona fide EU and NATO member Hungary, tried to revive some diplomacy
on behalf of Europe last summer? The Brussels gang went into an almost
indecent panic attack, disavowing all such uncouth ideas: Diplomacy?!?
Not on our watch! Well, what’s left to say now? You didn’t want talks
with Orbán, now you’ll get freezing-out with Trump. Slow claps all
around, once again

I am a European; I wished it were different. But reality remains reality: Unless NATO-EU Europe’s “elites” either grow up (very unlikely) or are replaced (if only), they should be left out of serious international politics. It’s better and safer for everyone, including their own countries.

As things seem to be shaping up now, the US has signaled that it is ready
to accept crucial Russian war aims: Ukraine will not get into NATO and
Moscow will retain territories conquered during the war, as Trump’s secretary of defense Pete Hegseth has made clear. Both points, it is true, require serious elaboration: Moscow has been explicit for years that it will not agree to any settlement that leaves open the possibility of a “sneak”-NATO
membership for Ukraine, where the West’s war alliance arms, trains, and
equips but without formal membership, as it has already done. If anyone
in Washington – or somewhere in Europe, for that matter – still thinks
they can cheat, again, Russia will keep fighting. A Russian red line is a
red line is a red line. 

And don’t forget: the West has zero  credibility left. After three decades of massive post-Cold War bad faith and trickery over one issue after another, from NATO expansion, via the rights of Russian-speakers in the Baltics and Libya’s destruction, to that of Syria – to name only a few examples – no one in Washington should assume they can have anything from Russia simply by saying “but we are different.” 

Art of the deal here, art of the deal there: This time, only hard-headed,
verifiable quid-pro-quos will even be on the table. As ancient-history
American uber-cold warrior and – weirdly enough, sort of co-peacemaker,
in the end – Ronald Reagan once said in execrably pronounced but brave
Russian: doveriai, no proveriai (доверяй, но проверяй): Trust but
verify. Now it’s Americans who will get to hear that a lot and in proper
Russian: if there will ever be a time again for trust, the West will
have to earn it first.

Concerning territory, only negotiations can clear up details. Yet, while there may or may not be some flexibility in Moscow, all Western and Ukrainian interlocutors should avoid getting
up their hopes: This war has been costly for Russia, too; and whether
its opponents and critics like it or not, it is winning. These two facts
will translate into hard limits to Moscow’s flexibility on territory as
well. Where exactly they are, remains to be seen. Trying to disregard
them is a recipe for further or renewed war.

This rapprochement in the still crucial US-Russian relationship is a very important
development. That much is already certain. It was not unpredictable.
Trump’s campaign statements, his overall sense of the world, and even
his temperament made it more likely than not.
But it could also not have happened: Washington hardliners, who are not
extinct or powerless, might have nipped it in the bud. Indeed, they may
still succeed. Nothing will be certain before an agreement is not only
signed but also fully implemented in good faith (unlike Minsk-2 of sad
2015 fame, yet another agreement that the West – and Kiev –
systematically betrayed).    

Yet let’s not overlook two important things that are already clear: As I have pointed out before,
it is a fact now that Russia has defeated the West, in the simple sense
that it is Moscow that is now imposing its terms on the war’s
settlement; and the West’s leaders in Washington have now de facto
acknowledged this outcome. While the West has fought Russia through
Ukraine, its investment in treasure (including through self-damaging
economic warfare), arms, intelligence, unofficial fighters, political
support, and, last but not least, excessive rhetorical commitment is
amply sufficient to make this a painful Western defeat, not “merely” a Ukrainian one. And that is how it will be perceived by the world, too.

Trying to “take out” a resurgent Russia was always a predictably bad idea.

Allow me, for once, to quote myself. As I wrote in December 2021, before the escalation of February 2022, a “major change in how the West and Russia relate to each other” was “inevitable” then already, because “sometime
between, say, 2008 and 2014, the post-Cold War era has ended, and we
are now in a post-post-Cold War world. It is this tectonic shift,
Russia’s come-back, far from perfect yet substantial, that fundamentally
drives the need for a geopolitical re-adjustment. The latter can happen
in a deliberate and negotiated manner, or the movers and shakers of the
West, first of all the US, can decide to let geopolitical nature take
its course. The second course of, as it were, malign negligence would
lead to a much bumpier ride to a new status quo, quite possibly with
catastrophic effects.”

It is that “much bumpier ride” that, hopefully is coming to an end now – at least for a while – and
the result is in: The West has tried and failed to stop Russia; the West
has gambled recklessly and lost. Russia is now stronger than before
that Western failure, and the West is weaker. Because weakness and
strength are always relative, as Thomas Hobbes, past master of realism
and pessimism told us a long time ago.

And here is the second thing that is already clear: The West is not one thing. While it is
dominated by the US, its European vassals will suffer much worse from
this historic setback. They could have stymied the American war course.
If even one major European NATO state (France, Germany, Britain…) had
come out and struck a deal with Moscow to never allow Ukraine into NATO,
that state would have surely been punished by Washington, but the war
could have been avoided. Because every individual NATO member has, in
effect, veto power on new admissions. 

In an ideal scenario, the hapless vassals could even have banded together and rebelled against
their risk-addicted lords in Washington. But they chose complete
submission instead. Now they have only two options: Try to continue the
proxy war on their own – if there will be a Kiev regime left to
collaborate with – in which case the US will watch from the sidelines
as they are being ground up. (No, NATO, that is, the US will not
help… duh). Or they can give up and try to navigate their defeat by
Moscow and abandonment by Washington as best they can through trying to
mend ties with Russia. Their economies, in urgent need of rescue, would benefit, as stock market reactions to the recent developments signal. For their own sake, the European “elites” should finally return to reality. Personally, I doubt they will.