From the Telegraph / Yahoo!News:
"Trump is selling out Ukraine, but the tide may be turning
A leaked phone call appeared to reveal that Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s friend and envoy, had essentially connived against Ukraine by advising Yuri Ushakov, Vladimir Putin’s foreign-policy adviser, on how to flatter the president.
Neither the Kremlin nor the White House have denied that the call took place. Indeed, Trump has appeared to admit it...
By the weekend, Volodymyr Zelensky had little good news to celebrate, other than the disappearance of Trump’s initial Thanksgiving deadline to accept his peace plan. What precipitated this latest effort to produce a Russia-Ukraine agreement remained a mystery, as did who was actually functioning as America’s chief diplomat and what the ultimate objectives were.
What is not mysterious is how typically Trumpian it is: no coherent national security strategy, from America’s perspective or Ukraine’s; negotiations conducted haphazardly and asymmetrically, ignorant of facts on the ground; key issues left vague or unresolved; self-defeating deadlines and, like used-car salesmen, endless happy talk of an imminent deal.
First, from the Witkoff-Ushakov conversation we can conclude that the latest chaos was instigated by Witkoff, optimistically broaching it to Ushakov after the recent Gaza deal... Witkoff’s apparent first move after speaking to Ushakov was to conjure a Putin-Trump phone call that derailed Zelensky’s efforts to persuade Trump to supply Kyiv with Tomahawk missiles. This is not normal “honest brokering”. This is simply pro-Russian.
Second, Trump clearly sought to present the “deal” to Zelensky as a “take-it-or-leave-it” proposition. He could either knuckle under, or, as Trump so graciously put it, “continue to fight his little heart out”.
Dan Driscoll, the army secretary, reportedly warned Zelensky that Ukraine was in a difficult position militarily, with NBC News claiming this went so far as to tell Kyiv it was facing imminent defeat, which had not previously been the US assessment...
Third, Trump’s only objective is to make a deal, any deal. Witkoff suggested to Ushakov that Putin tell Trump the two negotiators had, as with Gaza, “discussed a very similar 20-point plan to peace”.
Witkoff added that “the president will give me a lot of space and discretion to get to the deal”... Witkoff’s characterisation of Trump’s mindset confirms that Trump has no substantive policy red lines. His real objective is the Nobel Peace Prize. Perhaps he worries that the Nobel Committee’s rules require he be nominated by January 31 for a Ukraine deal, hence the rush before Thanksgiving.
Accordingly, for whatever bizarre reasons, the West is again faced with preventing this latest Trumpian diplomatic irruption from working to the Kremlin’s advantage. To succeed, Ukraine’s friends must finally acknowledge that Trump couldn’t care less about the impact of any settlement on Ukraine. He cares about its effect on him.
It has been reported that the White House will not consider security guarantees for Ukraine until the “peace deal” is concluded. This makes sense for Trump, since he cares about the here-and-now, not the far-distant future, such as three years from now when he is no longer president. For Ukraine, however, any “peace deal” without embedded security guarantees is not merely hopelessly incomplete, but existentially threatening. Separating security guarantees from a potential “peace deal” is what Russia wants, not Ukraine or presumably NATO..."
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