Cutting the American apron strings
She was asking for it. The rapist’s rationale. A woman is raped. It goes to trial. She’s blamed for wearing a short skirt and smeared for being a “loose woman”. The defendants are acquitted.
This, not to put too fine a point on it, is how the 47 th President of the United States, land of the free, home of the brave, justifies Russia’s unprovoked invasion of a sovereign neighbour and its multiple war crimes.
We shouldn’t be surprised. It’s a short leap from “Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything”, Donald Trump’s celebrated aside to a TV interviewer in 2005, to sexual assault, which a New York jury found him guilty of in 2023.
Shortly after the US and Russia concluded talks to reset their relationship and end the war in Ukraine in Saudi Arabia, Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida that he was ”very disappointed” that Ukraine’s President Volodymir Zelensky was complaining about being left out of the talks.
“Today I heard,” he goes on, “‘oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years … You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”
Sean Savett, National Security Council spokesperson for Joe Biden, Trump’s predecessor, posted: “Sounds like Trump bought Putin’s propaganda hook, line, and sinker.”
That implies naivete by the US President. It’s not naïveté. It’s pure, undiluted cynicism: the art of the deal with the fate of an entire nation as a bargaining chip. Not for Ukraine’s benefit but solely and purely for America’s, or more precisely for American big business.
Adding insult to injury Trump’s “deal” involves Ukraine handing the US half its revenue from minerals extraction, in perpetuity. This is not in return for future protection against another Russian invasion under a peace deal, but for military aid already given by the previous administration. Some deal.
This sounds suspiciously like old-fashioned imperialism, the kind practiced by 19 th century Belgium in the Congo, stripping that country of its rubber and ivory. What would Ukraine get in return for handing over what would amount to half the value of its annual GDP? Nothing. No additional aid. No security guarantees. No future membership of NATO. Nothing. Leaving it wide open to a second assault by another imperialist state: Russia.
High fives all round in the Kremlin. With one leap Putin is free. Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s morose Foreign Minister, with breathtaking hypocrisy, says his country will refuse to accept “foreign” troops in Ukraine as part of a peace deal while 75,000 Russian (not to mention North Korean) troops sit on Ukrainian soil.
What’s going on? And how should Europe – or for that matter any nation that values its sovereignty – respond?
Let’s look at this from America’s point of view. Trump wants to end the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza. That seems like a reasonable ambition. He wants stability, without which the world economy will struggle to flourish. America’s late 20 th and early 21 st century wars have not done the world many favours. They’ve torn America apart and been a huge drain on its resources.
Trump figures that, in order to get this done, he has to reset his relationship with Russia, the world’s most disruptive superpower. That too is a reasonable, if cold-blooded, argument. The greatest challenge to US supremacy over the coming decades will come from China. The US needs to focus on that.
So, on the face of it, cutting a deal with Putin seems like a good first move. There are precedents: the secret talks under President Richard Nixon to engage with communist China; the talks to end the Vietnam war. In Trump’s mind, Making American Great Again equates with America First. Nations ultimately act in their own best interests. We can’t blame him for that.
But at what price to Ukraine, which has been doing the fighting and dying to preserve its survival – an act of heroism for which we should be deeply grateful — and in doing so protecting Europe’s eastern flank? At what price to Europe? And, for that matter, at what price to other countries vulnerable to aggression, such as Taiwan?
If Trump’s gambit works its way through to its intended conclusion we shall see a new world order dominated by three great spheres of influence: the US, China and Russia. Underlying that order will be a simple premise: might is right.
This is all very depressing. This is not Churchill and Roosevelt conceding a sphere of influence to Stalin at the end of World War II out of necessity. Churchill and Roosevelt were champions of freedom and democracy. Trump and Putin are predators pure and simple.
But there is a silver lining. Europe (and the UK) can use this opportunity to do what it should have done long ago, which is to take responsibility for its security and wean itself off the US.
Eighty years after the end of WWII, it’s time to cut, or at least reduce, the apron strings. Three quarters of a century of unlimited liability backing by the US is coming to end.
This will involve building up Europe’s defence industries and finding a way of integrating its forces (including the UK’s) into something approaching a co-ordinated command structure. Europe also needs to reshore as much of its defence procurement it currently outsources to the US as it can.
The EU-US economic relationship is huge: more than £1 trillion a year. The US dollar remains the world’s pre-eminent currency. It accounts for nearly four fifths of all worldwide exchange transactions. The new relationship would involve increasing the role of the euro as an international currency.
A recent paper by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace wrote: “It is high time for Europe to step up and forge a strategy that is grounded in reality, backed by commensurate budgets, and that embraces innovative solutions. The war in Ukraine has shown that modern war is a hybrid war that has no geographical borders.”
Keir Starmer, the UK’s Prime Minister, has taken a lead, offering to contribute to an international peacekeeping force in Ukraine. He is to be commended. So is President Emmanuel Macron of France, who has taken the lead in starting the process by gathering EU leaders to talk about developing a comprehensive response to Russia.
It will not be easy or cheap. There will be countries, like Hungary, which are sympathetic to Russia (although goodness knows why) which will try to sabotage a united response.
The reality of where Europe finds itself is now crystal clear: America is pulling in its horns. A future President may reverse the process but the direction of travel has been clear for some time. Beset by the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and Covid, the US is struggling to grow its economy to offset the damage done by those two events.
Russia, well, Russia is hell-bent on reversing the flow of history by fair means or foul. It poses a clear and present danger to Europe. Is Europe seriously willing to gamble on Putin stopping at Ukraine’s border?
The argument made by some that Russia is merely looking after its interests is absurd. It does have legitimate security interests. These need to be addressed. But rewarding the Kremlin for aggression – for rape – against Ukraine, Crimea, Georgia and Chechnya is shortsighted and foolish.
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