President Trump has been shot and handled himself with aplomb. In my book, anybody who has been shot and immediately pumps a fist in the air in defiance, doesn’t have anything to prove to tinpot bullies on the international stage. We know Trump has a deferential psychology towards so-called strong men – yet he all too easily forgets, he is the strongest man on the planet.
There appears a consensus that peace between Russia and Ukraine must be gained, at almost any cost, yet I feel quite strongly that this entire episode has been entirely mishandled. You do not give red carpet treatment to an international war criminal, who actually could have been arrested the moment he stepped onto US soil (except the US doesn’t recognize the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction). There can be no land for peace deal, there can only be a peace for security guarantees, in a context which recognises the innate sovereignty of Ukraine to exist as an independent state. Putin has repeatedly shown he doesn’t respect ceasefires, nor peace agreements, and his entire claim to territory is based on the deluded view that Ukraine shouldn’t exist, and it forms part of a greater Russian empire, he aims to rebuild. Russia is a military superpower; it is not a superpower beyond this. Sergei Lavrov attending the Alaska meeting last week, with a CCCP sweatshirt, parades this delusion. Poland was one of the greatest States in continental Europe; Turkey had an Empire; Britain had the greatest of all Empires.. and now we are a smaller economy than India, one of our former colonies. Things change.
The aggressive expansionist and supremacist mentality of the Russian leadership seems to not want to change, and therefore a land for peace deal will not work.. only a peace for security guarantee deal will work. If the US provides intelligence and the threat of airstrikes, this will be of substantial help. The UK has hinted at putting “boots on the ground” – however we also need to recognize that a likely maximum deployable contingent would barely be greater than 10,000 British troops… (50,000 international peacekeepers were deployed in Kosovo – tiny in comparison to Ukraine). 10,000 is roughly the number that are being killed or injured on the Russian side – every week. That means any security guarantee has to be geopolitically coherent amongst cooperating European States, with a feasible and sustainable logistics supply line. A security guarantee is worthless, unless it illustrates our readiness and preparedness to fight to uphold it.
Bullies only respect strength, and hold quiet contempt for those who would otherwise give them the red carpet treatment.
#Ukraine #peaceagreement #Putin #Trump
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