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.”
