Most of the Western commentary on the Alaska summit is criticizing President Trump for precisely the wrong reason. The accusation is that by abandoning his call for an unconditional ceasefire as the first step in peace talks, Trump has surrendered a key position and “aligned himself with Putin.”
This is nonsense. What Trump has done is to align himself with reality, and the real charge against him is that he should probably have done this from the start, and saved six months of fruitless negotiations and thousands of Ukrainian and Russian lives. Moreover, by continually emphasising a prior ceasefire as his key goal, Trump set himself up for precisely the kind of criticism that he is now receiving.
He is now entirely correct in saying that he wants “to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire, which often times do not hold up.”
The Russian side made clear from the very start of negotiations that they would not agree to an unconditional ceasefire. Indeed it would have been completely illogical for them to do so, given that military pressure on Ukraine, and advances on the battlefield, are by far the most important leverage that Russia can bring to bear at the negotiating table. […]
Short of the complete defeat and subjugation of one side — which is out of the question in Russia’s case — the best that can realistically be hoped for is a combination of deterrents and incentives that will discourage a return to arms for a long time to come.
A semi-frozen conflict would also be bad for the European continent as a whole. It would create a long-term risk of a return to war in Ukraine and European entanglement in the war, when long-term U.S. military support for Europe in these circumstances is all too obviously no longer guaranteed.
On the other hand, as highlighted last week in Responsible Statecraft, the resulting need and hope for U.S. support would force the EU and European states into deeper and deeper dependence on an undependable U.S., resulting in more of the kind of economic surrender over tariffs and subservience to U.S.-agendas in the Middle East that we have seen in recent months. If continued, such humiliations will undermine the domestic prestige of European establishments and threaten civil peace and liberal democracy in ways that Moscow could never hope to achieve. Läs artikel