Donald Trump has said that talks between himself and Putin will start ‘immediately’ about ending the Ukraine war.
It amounts to a full revelation: this was a proxy conflict between two big imperial powers. The US allocated €88 billion, and the EU gave €125 billion to the war effort. Putin threw hundreds of thousands of young Russians into a front line with little regard for human life. It is estimated that over 300,000 Russian soldiers died or were injured and, while figures are hidden, at least 30,000 Ukrainian soldiers died.
Initially it appeared to be an ideal war for Western imperialism. They only had to provide the funds and let the Ukrainians shed their blood. They could then use the war to inject the poison of militarization back into European culture. Suddenly, there was a return to the Cold War rhetoric about ‘The Russians are coming’ and demands to increase military spending to 2% of GDP and higher.
However, the war has not gone well. For the last year, Russia has made major battlefield gains.
Now Trump wants to cut and run. Nobody should be fooled that he is motivated by a desire to ‘save millions of lives’. Initially, he used the same rhetoric in Palestine, claiming to be a peacemaker. But he quickly revealed himself as a true imperialist bully, by threatening that ‘all hell will break lose’ if Hamas does not concede to Israel.
Trump’s motives are simple. He wants to conserve the military power of the US for other purposes. Ultimately, his goal is a fight with China.
But in the meantime, he treats his EU allies with contempt. One EU diplomat summed up his attitude. ‘The Americans don’t see a role for Europe in the big geopolitical questions related to the war. Trump sees us as money.’
He wants European countries to raise their defence spending to 5% of GDP and buy US arms. He will then demand that the EU send tens of thousands of troops to the Ukraine for a ‘security guarantee’.
We need to stand up to the war propaganda that appears more frequently in the mainstream media.
People Before Profit has consistently opposed Putin’s invasion. We are against both colonial powers. The way to defeat thugs like Putin or Trump is not to rush into the arms of their rivals and demand more military assistance. If we have learnt anything from this war, it is that more Western guns and bombs did not reverse Putin’s invasion.
Instead of backing the military ambitions of the Western powers, we should look to the opposition against Putin inside Russia and the resistance of the Ukrainian people themselves.
The contrast between the Western rhetoric about Ukraine and their open and implicit support for Israel’s genocide could not be more glaring. None of the Western leaders would even dream of sending weapons to Palestinians to resist an invasion.
We need to stop our government’s efforts to get us into an EU or NATO army. If they try to erode the triple lock- which limits Irish engagement in wars not sanctioned by the UN to just 12 soldiers- we should hit the streets in protest. Stand ready.