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| Pix credit HERE |
Fresh from his meeting with European Leaders in London, after a far more tumultuous meeting with the U.S. President and the President's team in the White House President Zelenskyy sought to sound a positive note and signal his own view of the state of the pathways forward--and the distance that still must be traveled on this road:
A deal to end the war between Ukraine and Russia “is still very, very far away,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, adding that he believed Ukraine’s long-term partnership with the U.S. was strong enough that American support would continue despite recent fraught relations with U.S. President Donald Trump. I think our relationship (with the U.S.) will continue, because it’s more than an occasional relationship,” Zelenskyy said late Sunday, referring to Washington’s support for the past three years of war. “I believe that Ukraine has a strong enough partnership with the United States of America” to keep aid flowing, he said at a briefing in Ukrainian before leaving London. (Ukraine’s Zelenskyy says end of war with Russia is ‘very, very far away’)
Nothing here is new. Even at Davos in February, President Zelenskyy had already signaled his sense that the Americans were tilting away from Europe and the other, drastic transformation would be required to save the project of Ukrainian defense against Russian territorial ambitions from 2014. (See President Zelenskyy's Reponse to Vice President Vance at the Munich Security Conference: Text of Remarks--"I Really Believe That Time Has Come: The Armed Forces of Europe Must Be Create). After those remarks, the clash between President Zelenskyy and the U.S. President and Vice President was almost inevitable. It is not just that President Trump and his team have or likely have ever shared that view. The threat came from the suggestion that the war would be of long duration-that suggestion, and the request for support to make it happen, might well be taken as a direct challenge to the core of President Trump's own agenda on Ukraine--to bargain one's way to the cessation of live fire hostilities now. That has been clear in the relentless stream of narrative pouring out of the White House since the the meeting of Presidents Trump and Zelenskyy: here, here, here, and here.
Almost immediately after this assessment, the Americans responded, not with more narrative (in the European manner), but with an order from the White House directing a pause in aid to Ukraine.
The decision to suspend aid came out of meetings at the White House on Monday between Mr. Trump and his senior national security aides, according to senior administration and military officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. It appears aimed at forcing Mr. Zelensky to agree to a cease-fire on terms Mr. Trump dictates, or condemns the country to larger battlefield losses. The officials said the directive would be in effect until Mr. Trump determined that Ukraine had demonstrated a good-faith commitment to peace negotiations with Russia. It was not immediately clear what that might look like or how long the suspension will last. For now, it will be up to Kyiv and its European allies to try to keep Ukraine’s guns firing. (Why Is Trump Pausing Aid to Ukraine? What to Know)
But this point none of this should surprise.
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First, the United States has used weapons and support to subaltern states as an important "soft power" element of its control and guidance mechanisms for a long time. It is just that the tastes of different Administrations, and their objectives, vary, sometimes successfully. Mr. Biden and his friends in Europe were quite adept at drip feeding the Ukrainians when it suited them and for the same reasons trotted out by the Mr. Trump and his people--fear or Russia and willingness to compromise the territory of subalterns in return for more advantageous relations with superior (even if dependent) powers. The same applied to other conflicts--the intravenous supply of aid to Israel during the recent wars that exploded after October 2023 offer another window. Mr. Trump tends to perform these actions in a very different style than Mr. Biden--but stylistic differences merely mask continuity. This conflict is different in scale, but more importantly in place--usually there is little difficulty with these sorts of decisions and attitudes on the periphery and with respect to old imperial mandates or holdings. But this time the conflict is bound up with core issues of European identity and the normative cage within the relationship between the United States and its ancient (as these things are counted in human terms) alliance between the US and Europe is to be understood.
Second, even when it seems otherwise, justification is oftentimes merely an element of managing propaganda. Certainly universities worldwide have become quire adept at training clever people in the arts of persuasion and justification, and modernity has provided more than substantial techniques to those ends. It is important for the masses (most of whom are the risk bearers of these state activities) to believe that action follows justification. It promotes solidarity, creates and reinforces the narrative and ideological basis for the political-economic system of the state and provides a means of authority through the mechanics of transposing justification from an endogenous to an exogenous (and thus superior because it appears to apply to but not be sourced within humanity) organ of foundational principles--whether they be Marxist-Leninist, religious, moral-ethical, liberal-democratic and the like. At the level of operation, of course, the dialectic between exogenously oriented justification rationalizing premises and action produces a constant dynamic interaction between them, and the conflict and interaction between justification systems has a similar effect.
Third, almost invariably in the case of the United States the result are halfway measures that suggest both risk aversion and hedging behaviors. It is clear, for example, the the thrust of policy now is to transform the fundamental basis for U.S. European relations from one founded on NATO to one grounded in a close operating relationship between the U.S. and Russia through which relations with Europe may be reordered to their mutual liking. Yet such a tilt cannot be realized immediately, and thus the risk of full tilting cannot be undertaken in a riskless environment for a number of reasons. One, the masses have not been entirely prepared for the tilt--that requires a substantial investment in the sort of narrative weaving, one that in another age might have been undertaken more efficiently by the priestly caste of a society. Two, such a reorientation requires both the initial decision but then a substantial amount of clean-up--in this case negotiating the Russian detachment from China, the re-attachment of India, and the disentanglement of current relationship that run quite deep and might, in the short run be impossible to entirely untangle. Three, it is not yet clear that the Americans know exactly what they want--they know that they do not want the status quo. But do they know what they want inst4ead? That extraordinary inability to think past the initial impulse (even if it is warranted) substantially increases risk (to the United States) and the consequences of passively waiting for consequences (on virtually everyone else). The vision of America First provides a little help, but certainly not in the quite skeletal form in which it is now presented. Certainly at the moment there are hardly enough bones to chew on much less meat. That has to be attended to quickly or this whole tilt thing will have profound disastrous effects for a hegemon that now cannot either go back or move forward. Note I make no judgment about the tilt itself--elected officials have the power to make that determination and also must bear the consequences--entirely. and without impunity.
Fourth, there is much discursive material already to be worked with. If one considers words to be textual vessels that may be emptied filled and refilled to suit its producer and consumer, than one has already begun to see is the transformation of meaning (in context) of key terms: peace, security, sovereignty, insult, negotiation, cease fire and the like. Not that any of this is new, Quite the contrary. But,sometimes one can discern a signaling of change by efforts, usually not transparent of changes in meaning of well worn discursive tropes. That is very much on offer now in the speeches and communications of all leading stakeholders in this contest.
Fifth, the sort of limboland tactics of merchants can carry the preset Administration's actions so far, but not far enough for it to both obtain its objectives to full measure and to secure them past the useful life of the present cohort of elected and appointed officials and their supporters. That was a lesson that ought to have been quite readily apparent from the ease of the collapse of the principles based building project of the last administration. But these sorts of lessons apparently come hard to officials less mindful of the fact that the time and planning horizons of the nation ought to be considerably longer than the lengths of their political careers, and that this ought to be quire publicly borne in mind; again another lesson ignored of the past administration. Perhaps it might be useful to use the language of merchants to explain: this ought not to be undertaken, and certainly not understood, as a one off transaction (eg peace for territory from a third party jobber, Ukraine; and long term supplier of some tolerable (to the current US leadership at least) level of stability, Russia) , but rather as a set of necessarily intertwined long term contracts involving division of territory, output, and quality control, which is to be undertaken alongside the breach of similar long term contracts with a former partner whose new relationship has yet to be determined but with respect to which some sort of output relationship remains essential--if only to block access from competitors (eg China). That is rough, and not quite either complete or accurate but it paints a picture using language and meaning sets that may be more relevant to decision makers. What ought to emerge form all of this is the extent of the risk of negative impact (in terms of effects on access to markets, and production, supply and consumption chains) it might have on the entirety of the objectives of America First--which appears to be the core enterprise of the American body corporate at the moment. Thus, it is not enough to extract some gain from any peace process: "In a fulsome statement issued a day after Trump halted military aid to Ukraine, Zelenskiy said he was ready to sign a deal giving the United States access to Ukrainian minerals, which he had left on the table when he abandoned a visit to Washington after an Oval Office argument with Trump on Friday." (Zelenskiy calls Trump clash regrettable: 'it's time to make things right'). It will be necessary to protect that supply chain as well.
Sixth, despite all of this analytical hand wringing, what appears as clear now as it was under the quite different conceptual cage within which the Biden Administration labored from the 24 February 2022 start of the second phase of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (both ironically enough undertaken during the administration of Democratic Party Presidents), is the reality that superior powers have always been willing to negotiate their way out of this conflict; that the superior power will likely drive and shape the negotiations, that the inferior power has relatively little but the power of old and powerful discursive tropes (war crimes, human rights, human dignity, the territorial integrity of states, honor, etc.) on which to fall back on (which Mr Zelenskyy has ably done). But it may not be enough as this discursive rug may be yanked out from under the Ukrainians. And the Ukrainians now appear poised to lose it all: territory, NATO membership, and try into the EU. That would amount to a spectacular failure (under the old alliance systems) and a mark of the breadth of the transformation (under the potentially new or emerging power framework in or between Russia and the US in Europe. Too early to tell but the Europeans' most potent weapon to date have been their discourse, principles and vision; but that no longer seems sufficient and they may be unable to substitute themselves for the Americans in time.
Seventh, and of course there is also a hidden prize the attainment of which will horrify many and satisfy others. A new arrangement, however unequal, between the U.S. and Russia, with or without some tacit agreement of the Chinese might be a useful means of effectively substantially reducing the power and authority (in fact if not in form) of the ICC apparatus. That would be the golden ring on this carousel of change.
Eighth, the level of Ukrainian desperation now evidences both the powerlessness of Europe to deliver more than the most principled sentiments, and the extraordinary financial and military power of the United States in its Ukrainian investment. "
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky proposed a new framework for a partial ceasefire with Russia on Tuesday, posting on X that Kyiv would be willing to release prisoners and agree to a truce that would ban long range attacks on civilian and energy infrastructure. The offer came after the Trump administration declared that Zelensky was not ready for peace and froze the U.S. military assistance that Ukraine has been relying on to battle the Russian invasion. (Zelensky Offers Partial Ceasefire With Russia To Restart Peace Talks)
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