In response to the ‘Trump’ plan for peace in Ukraine
(which according to some was actually drawn up by Russia rather than Trump,
although its precise provenance remains in some doubt), Keir Starmer has said
it needs more work in order to turn it into a “just and lasting peace”.
Fine words, but whether they’re any more meaningful than a standard Trump word
salad is open to question. To be ‘lasting’, it has to provide cast iron
guarantees of no future aggression against Ukraine, and the version published
to date offers no more than wishy-washy words.
But the bigger issue is defining a “just” peace. If
we’re seriously talking about ‘justice’, then any agreement has to include a
return to the internationally-recognised boundaries prior to the seizure of
parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea, an agreement on reparations for damage
caused by an illegal invasion, a system of trials for war crimes committed, and
agreement that any future changes to boundaries will be negotiated, not imposed
by force. Such a ‘just’ outcome, realistically, isn’t going to be on the table –
it could only ever be an option if other countries were willing to use their
own military forces to impose such an outcome. What Starmer is talking about is
not whether the outcome is ‘just’ or not, but whether the degree of injustice
is acceptable to Ukraine and to those countries providing Kyiv with armaments
and other support. He's just not honest enough to say so.
The question for the UK becomes one of deciding just
how much injustice it should ask Ukraine to accept in the cause of peace. A
ceasefire along the current lines of control whilst negotiations on the longer
term continue (but without formally recognising the occupied territories as
Russian) is a big ask for Ukraine (and utterly unjust), but without external
military support it’s probably as good as it gets. But given how much ground
Trump has already conceded to Putin, he may already have made even that an
impossible outcome. Since Putin knows (not least because Trump appears to have
told him so) that Trump will support him in asking for much more than that, it’s
hard to see why Putin would back down significantly on what he thinks Trump has
already agreed, namely the handover of even more of Ukraine, the formal
recognition of Russian sovereignty over the occupied territory, the forgiveness
of all Russian war crimes and the reintegration of Russia into a US-led global kleptocracy.
Starmer is doing his best to look like some sort of global
statesman from an age where the UK’s opinion counted for something, but it
really doesn’t. The truth is that, if they jointly so decide, the two
dictators, Trump and Putin, have the power to impose their will. I don’t like
that, but me not liking something doesn’t make it untrue. The biggest obstacle
to a Trump-Putin accord is not a gang of European middle-ranking powers
pleading with Trump, it is that Trump doesn’t actually know what he wants from
one day to the next. He certainly loves being flattered, and it’s easy to see
why so many have concluded that flattery might be the best way to influence him,
but how long that influence lasts after they’ve left his presence is a
different matter.
Assuming that the world order will return to what was
previously regarded as ‘normal’ once Trump goes is a dangerous starting point,
not least because we don’t know when he will go or what will follow him. It’s
an unstated assumption, though, which seems to underpin Starmer’s stance –
which means that there is no planning going on for the new world in which we
may be living for some time to come.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment