The Bygone World of Europe and Zelensky

 

The Bygone World of Europe and Zelensky
Ukraine was a project for regime change in Russia
Jim Kavanagh

 SAUL LOEB/AFP

This New York Times piece epitomizes the dangerous delusion underlying the brouhaha over the Trump-Zelensky Oval Office fiasco and the “West’s” Ukraine project in general:

Here are the highlights:

The gathering took on greater urgency after Mr. Zelensky’s heated Oval Office meeting with President Trump and Vice President JD Vance on Friday raised fears the U.S. would try to strong-arm Ukraine’s president into making a peace deal on whatever terms the Americans dictated…

Mr. Starmer told the BBC that he, Mr. Zelensky and President Emmanuel Macron of France had agreed they “would work on a plan for stopping the fighting and then discuss that plan with the U.S.” Any peace agreement “is going to need a U.S. backstop,” Mr. Starmer added, saying that British and U.S. teams were discussing the idea…

Mr. Zelensky “found every opportunity to try to ‘Ukraine-splain’ on every issue,” Mr. Rubio told on ABC News, “ 

Can you guess what’s missing here? Once Zelensky and the Europeans craft a plan, they have to present it to the U.S.? They're afraid the U.S. is going to dictate difficult terms of a peace deal to Ukraine?

News flash: If anybody is going to dictate tough terms or a peace deal to Ukraine, it will be Russia, not the U.S.—and certainly not the Europe of Macron and Starmer. Russia is winning the war on the battlefield. Russia has defeated the largest and best-equipped US/NATO army in Europe, manned by Ukrainians. Russia has set forth its specific objectives and its conditions for a ceasefire and negotiation (if Zelensky ever removes his self-imposed ban on negotiating with Russia).  Any plan that Starmer, Macron, Zelensky, and/or Trump “present” to Russia that ignores the Russian position will be dismissed by Lavrov and Putin. They hold the cards.

The Europeans (at least, Starmer and Macron) still presume that they, the Euro American Masters of the Universe, having negotiated the definitive “peace plan” among themselves, will then have Donald Trump, Grandmaster of the Universe, “present” it to the Russians, who will accept it as the default position to which they will have to accommodate themselves. They cannot imagine that the Russians will look at a plan the president of the United States presents them and tell him, politely, to shove it.

It is delusional, Euro-American, self-centered arrogance. Starmer, Macron, and Zelensky are projecting their own lapdog relation to the U.S. onto Russia. They just cannot believe the Russian bear is not intimidated by their kennel. They cannot imagine a world in which they don’t set the terms.

Surprising and strange as it is to say, it seems (don’t count any chickens yet) that Trump does understand that Russia is an powerful independent actor, in a dominant position in this situation and worthy of respect in general—the country that is going to make a peace deal, not have one “presented” to it.

The central point of what’s been going on with Macron, Starmer, and Zelensky over the last week, which culminated in the Oval Office slamfest, was stated by Starmer: “Any peace agreement [the lapdogs concoct] is going to need a U.S. backstop.”  Which is pipsqueak for: “The war is lost unless the U.S. joins it.”

The deal about Ukraine’s fictional  “rare earths” (or “raw earths,” per Trump), which was first proposed by Zelensky months ago and was supposed to be signed on Friday, really had only one purpose: to bring the U.S. fully into the war against Russia as a “backstop” to “peacekeepers” from some Anglo-French led “coalition of the willing.” ” That is what any “security guarantee” means and they all know it. That’s effectively a“security guarantee” to Ukraine that will inevitably get the U.S. forces into combat, and they all know it.  Zelensky has always known that he had to get direct U.S. military involvement in the war. He is frantic about the possibility—now virtual certainty— that’s not going to happen, not in the cards.

During their meeting in Kiev, Zelensky was shouting at Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent when he insisted on removing any such guarantee from the rare-earth deal, and Trump also firmly rejected any such security guarantee when Macron and Starmer came to Washington in advance of Zelensky and tried to coax Trump into it. Zelensky arrived in D.C. having reluctantly agreed to sign the “rare earth” deal without any security guarantee, because Macron and Starmer persuaded him the deal would at least bind Trump to him, and that they/ would work on Trump to get the guarantee later.

Zelensky had that deal in the bag, but he could not stop himself from relitigating it in front of the press for forty minutes, culminating in the blow-up when he challenged Vance on the impossibility of diplomacy with Putin. Now, he’s huddling with Macron, Starmer, and selected (By whom? On what criteria?) European leaders, trying to revive the “backstop” idea again. They can’t take “No!” for an answer, and Macron and Starmer are heading toward the same treatment Zelensky got from the big dog tired of his bitches yipping at his heels.

All of this demonstrates exactly what NATO is, exactly what the Ukraine project has been, and exactly what the situation in the Ukraine-Russia conflict is.

NATO is a front for U.S. imperialism It is a creature of the U.S. and nothing without the U.S. The other counties in NATO are politically subservient to and militarily dependent on the U.S. The major NATO countries begging for a U.S. “backstop” makes that clear.

The Ukraine project has been a U.S./NATO—i.e., U.S.—project for regime change in Russia.

With the maidan coup, the ensuing civil war, and the building up of US/NATO army, Ukraine became a totally compliant and dependent pawn, used to weaken Russia. Since the Donbass republics’ declarations of independence and the Russian military intervention on their behalf, the U.S./NATO have been in a war with Russia, albeit in a limited way—“limited” to arming, funding, directing, and doing everything except explicitly putting contingents of uniformed fighters on the ground and in the air.

The U.S. thought it could use that war to quickly bring regime change in Russia without too much fighting, via “sanction from hell,” which, they assumed, Russia was too economically weak to endure. The oligarchs will overthrow Putin!

When that failed, the U.S./NATO thought a further massive buildup of the Ukrainian military would do the trick. They provided various wonder weapons and organized daring offensives that would kill so many Russians that the people will revolt, and the oligarchs and generals will overthrow Putin.

The purpose of the Ukraine project for the U.S. has always been to strategically defeat Russia by getting rid of Putin—as they got rid of Gaddafi and Saddam and Yanukovich—and turning Russia back into a subalternized Western-worshipping Yeltsin-esque failed state, ultimately to be dismembered.

Ukraine was never anything but a tool for that. When, in April 2022, Zelensky was about to sign a deal and opt out of this project, the U.S. sent its British sheepdog to bring him to heel. BoJo told him that US/NATO/Europe would abandon him if he signed, but would supply him with everything he needed to win if he stayed in the war.

It has all failed. It has failed militarily, economically, and politically.

It’s Europe’s economy that has been devastated. It’s European militaries that have disarmed themselves. It’s European and American politics that are in turmoil. It’s Ukraine and Zelensky that have no hope to avoid defeat and some kind of serious regime change. Russia is more economically and militarily powerful than ever. Putin is more firmly in command.

The war in Ukraine is lost, and crucially for the U.S., its fundamental objective—regime change in Russia—has failed, conclusively. There is no hope of making that happen. So, no more need for Zelensky’s (or Ukraine’s) services.

As I’ve been saying since the start of the SMO: “the only negotiations are over terms of surrender. Of one side or the other. After a decisive military defeat”—and it’s not Russia that’s defeated. The result of this war will be the capitulation of Kiev.

The Europeans just cannot believe this. Zelenskyy, who may have thought the US/NATO was in this for his or Ukraine’s sake, just cannot accept it.  The fact that they're begging for an indispensable U.S.  “backstop” means that they do know it, even if they can't admit publicly—or to themselves—that they do. The only thing they think might reverse this is the U.S. going from limited to full-scale war with Russia.

Except that Donald Trump does seem to have accepted the reality. Indeed, he seems to be entirely uninterested in the project of regime change in Russia, and willing to deal with Russia as a respected international actor. The whole project that was conceived, financed, supplied, and directed by the U.S. through its NATO and Ukrainian proxies cannot continue unless the United States is willing to go to full-on war with Russia, and the current United States president is—as the last one said he was—opposed to doing any such thing. If that's the case, Zelensky, et. al., yapping at his heels will not get them anything but a kick to the curb.

If Zelensky wanted to make a pointed argument, he could say: “How dare you complain about me coming to beg for help from you again. I was ready to sign a deal with the Russians three years and half-a-million casualties ago and it was the U.S. government, via its British agent, who warned me not to and assured me that if I didn't it would give me everything I needed to win! You're reneging on your government’s promise and stranding me in an impossible position that you put me in. And you call me ‘ungrateful!’!”

Europeans, too, could say: “You—the United States government—insisted we hobble our economies with sanctions and exploded pipelines, and that we disarm ourselves by sending all our military equipment to Ukraine, in order to continue the war. And now you’re walking away from this project you had us commit to, and leaving us with the damage it inflicted on us!”

But they can't say that, because they know what the response is, they've already heard in their heads, and they don’t want the embarrassment of hearing it said out loud: “First. that was Biden’s United States government; this is mine. Second, even he said under no circumstances will the U.S. go to war with Russia. Were you counting on talking him into that? Third, you chose to follow the orders of the United States government and be its lapdog, and you still are. So, however unfair you think it is, it's my decision. I'm not going to full-on war with Russia, which is what you want me to do. I'm going to withdraw entirely from the limited war we are now in and from the whole project of isolating and regime-changing Russia. Stop nipping at my heels and deal with it.”

Trump has already essentially said that to Zelensky, and If they keep nipping, the Europeans will hear it out loud, too. It’s a tough lesson that Kissinger gave: “it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal”

This isn’t about whether Trump is bullying or hypocritical, or whether Zelensky is shabbily dressed and ungrateful. It’s about one thing: Will the United States go to war with Russia to prevent Ukraine from losing this conflict? Anyone who thinks the U.S. should, has the responsibility to make that case to the people and bring it to a vote of the Congress for a declaration of war. That’s not a decision to be made or Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer. or Donald Trump. inserting a clause in a “rare earth” deal, or by Zelensky hectoring American leaders at a press conference. Any antiwar “progressive” or leftist who railed against previous undeclared regime-change wars should understand that. Is there any one of them who thinks the American people really want that?

As I said, it seems Trump, for whatever reason, is going to be adamant about avoiding that. He seems to be deciding that the United States is no longer a party to the conflict that the U.S. started, promoted and has been a limited co-belligerent in for three years. Is that unfair? To whom? To the parties the U.S. fooled into going along with it? Is it more fair, or better in any way, to take the next step to full-scale war being demanded by the fools in the deadly fools’ game the U.S. created? Because that is exactly what Zelensky stans and “security guarantee” proponents of the left, right, and center are advocating.

The Trump team has talked with Russia about things related to re-establishing normal diplomatic relations, but has not publicly proposed any specific terms with Russia about how to end the Ukraine conflict. Trump seems to be recognizing that, if he’s leaving the conflict, best leave that to the parties directly involved—Russia and Ukraine (Europe, note, counts for nothing)—to figure out. He seems to be suggesting that he’ll take one shot for some kind of ceasefire deal, but if either party rejects it, he’s out and it’s on them to “fight it out.” He seems ready, in other words—and this would be a politically astute move—to just walk away from the whole Ukraine project and blame it on Biden. All is fair.

I hope he does, and I’ll credit him for it if so—even as I’ll denounce him for a myriad of outrages, including being the obsequious genocidal cuck of the genocidal Zionist project to which he so gratefully gives all or America’s cards. But it’s a lot of “seems” from me. I cannot entirely trust that Trump will accept what he will be told is, and will be, an indisputable capitulation to Russia and a death blow to NATO.

Trump has the Ukraine project and NATO hanging by a thread and he’s twirling the scissors.  But it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.

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