By Denko Maleski
In his 28-point peace plan, whose fate is still uncertain, Donald Trump included practically all of Russia’s demands. Unlike European politicians, he knows that peace agreements reflect reality — and the reality is that Russia won, while America, NATO, and the EU lost. The Western plan to topple Putin’s autocratic regime with the strongest economic sanctions ever imposed on a state, and with state-of-the-art weapons for the Ukrainian army, which had prepared for this war over the last decade, has failed.
The wrong assessment by America and Europe of the strength of this vast country to withstand all of that caused a terrible tragedy for the brave Ukrainians who died on the battlefield, and for the future of what remains of their state. The West’s crusading war in the name of democracy ended in a debacle. In international politics, decisions are not made by the moral superiority of “values,” but by military strength. And when a great power demands that its security concerns be taken into account — as Russia persistently did for years — one must listen and seek a diplomatic solution. Otherwise, peace in the world is endangered, and in the nuclear era, so is the survival of humanity.
“You can surround Russia, that enormous Euro-Asian country, with a wall,” one analyst says, “and it will still survive because it has everything it needs to endure.” As we have seen, economic sanctions cannot bring it to its knees. As for weapons — Russia, a nuclear power with the largest number of atomic warheads, 6,000, capable of reorienting its production toward a war economy, and with a population five times larger than its opponent, the source of new troops — simply cannot be defeated militarily. U.S. President Barack Obama was aware of this. In a forgotten interview, he said: “We must be careful what we declare to be an ‘existential issue.’ For us, Ukraine is not that kind of issue — not essential, not strategic. The worst thing we could do is tell the Ukrainians that they can win a military battle against the Russians.” Leadership matters, because his successor in the White House, Joe Biden, did exactly what Obama had warned against. He encouraged the Ukrainians to go to war.
Yet only three months after the start of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in February 2022, Putin was still seeking a peaceful solution to Russia’s security dilemma. Repeating that Russia did not need territory, but Western understanding of its security concerns regarding the deployment of military assets of a rival great power along its borders with Ukraine, Putin was prepared to sign a peace agreement under which Ukraine would today remain whole.
Ukraine’s neutrality and autonomy for the Russian population in Donbas were Russia’s demands.
But Biden’s emissary, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson — known as “BoJo” — dissuaded Zelensky from concluding a peace deal. Only then did Putin launch an offensive, not with the aim of conquering all of Ukraine, let alone Eastern or even Western Europe, but to militarily force acceptance of his demands, which had been on the table from the very beginning of the crisis: no NATO for Ukraine, and rights for Russians in Donbas. Today, with the Russian public united behind his policy, and as the victor in a specific type of conflict called a “war of attrition,” with the blood of young Russians spilled on the battlefield, there is no going back for Putin. As a winner, he does not want things to end with a ceasefire; he demands that the causes of the war be addressed and removed. Trump’s 28-point peace plan, Putin says, is a good basis for peace.
But the EU disagrees, presenting its own version of a plan. One gets the impression that European politicians are in some sort of trance and think they are still living in the unipolar moment when the West, led by America, dictated solutions in line with international legal order. Read carefully what Kaja Kallas, responsible for EU foreign policy, said the other day — and ask yourself what world she lives in: since Russia is the aggressor and Ukraine the victim, Ukraine should dictate the terms of peace!? Yesterday, at a meeting with Marco Rubio in Geneva, the whole alliance continued with the same normative logic. It demands respect for the principle of inviolability of borders, rejects recognition of the occupied territories as part of Russia, and refuses the disarmament of Ukraine. Outside Macedonian politics, I have never seen such a lack of understanding of real international relations — such a normative approach to world politics that has no contact with the real world.
The article originally was published in Macedonian language