Another false dawn? Or does the Trump factor assure us that the United States will quietly slip out of Ukraine?
The spin-masters at BBC were working overtime a couple of days ago to put a good face on the election of Mike Johnson as House Speaker. Their guest political analyst explained to the BBC audience that Johnson’s links with Trump are greatly exaggerated. Yesterday morning’s Financial Times took a more serious view of the situation, identifying Johnson squarely as a “Trump ally” and reminding us of his vote back in 2020 in the Electoral College to overturn Biden’s victory. Considering that Johnson has consistently voted against any further aid to Ukraine, in line with Trump’s thinking, the FT is preparing its readership for the second shoe to drop. In a separate FT Magazine article yesterday reviewing journalist Sylvie Kauffmann’s new book Les Aveuglés (‘The Blinded Ones’), the argument was made that the re-imposition of Russian control over Ukraine will be no big deal.
I will deal with Kauffmann further on. But first let us just consider what the installation of Mike Johnson likely means for the war in Ukraine. He has already made it clear that the House will not proceed with Biden’s call to package aid to Ukraine together with aid to Israel, with funds to improve defense of the U.S. southern borders from illegal migrants, and with several other contentious appropriations in a single bill. Now, the various elements in Biden’s proposed legislation will be dealt with separately, with first priority given to helping Israel.
We cannot say with certainty that Johnson will succeed in preventing any further funds going to Ukraine, because a strong majority of both chambers supports Ukraine. But we may assume that any further aid to Ukraine will be substantially lower than Kiev has hoped for. We may assume there will be major cuts to continued funding of the entire pension system and payroll of state employees in Ukraine, which many representatives find particularly repugnant at a time when U.S. finances are greatly stretched, when the national debt is rising to dangerous limits and when needy Americans are being overlooked as a result of curtailed welfare programs.
Now what would cut-off of funding for the Ukrainian government payroll mean? It would be a good prompt for there to be a regime change movement within the Kiev establishment. Zelensky’s primary utility has been as deliverer of a cornucopia of Western financial assistance as well as military hardware. If you take this away, all that is left of Mr Zelensky is a deliverer of Ukrainian males to their slaughter on the battlefield in hopeless offensive maneuvers which he ordered at the instigation of Washington.
Note that while American’s continued assistance to Ukraine is placed in doubt by the new constellation of power on Capitol Hill, with Trump’s hard right taking the whip in hand, there is also a revolt taking place in Europe. Hungary’s Viktor Orban is now joined by the newly elected prime minister of Slovakia Fico in publicly declaring opposition to further sanctions on Russia and on further arms deliveries to Ukraine. We heard this loud and clear yesterday at the gathering of EU leaders at a summit in Brussels. Since the EU budgetary laws require unanimity of all member states, the stated opposition of these two puts all the promises of Borrell, of von der Leyen to keep supporting Kiev “as long as it takes” on hold.
The prospect of an early end to the war in Ukraine under Moscow’s terms rises by the day. It is buoyed by domestic political conflict, power struggles within the USA, within Europe in the jockeying for position ahead of general elections on both continents in 2024. The undeniable failure of Kiev’s counter-offensive that began on 4 June is surely one important factor. But greater still was the unforeseeable outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war and threat of a regional war in the Middle East with devastating economic consequences for the West. This has provided a convenient diversion from the bleating of Kiev for help and papers over an admission of Russia’s superiority in men and hardware on the field of battle.
From these obvious facts, I am obliged to add the following conclusion: If indeed Kiev fails militarily and politically in the days ahead for lack of material aid from the West, it will not be thanks to the efforts of our feeble anti-war movement and to the intellectuals off and on campuses who have countered the lies about Russian “aggression” with well documented historical analysis of the sources of the conflict. It will be due to the calculations of self-interest and also of national interest by politicians in the West on two continents, with the accent on the USA.
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The review article in The Financial Times of Sylvie Kauffman’s latest book has the title “The west appeased Putin once. They’ll do it again.” Of course the looming “appeasement” is over the fate of Ukraine, which the author assumes will move back into the Russian orbit. The take-away of reviewer Simon Kuper is:
I finished her book feeling that, yes, western leaders were often blind to Putin. And like him, they treated eastern Europeans as second-tier nations that needn’t be consulted. But in appeasing Russia from 2008 to 2022 westerners were also pursuing their interests. I suspect they’ll do it again.
Not having read Les Aveuglés, I cannot say if the concluding paragraph in the review was taken from Kauffmann or if it was the contribution of the review author. But its inclusion in this featured review in the FT tells us clearly that the viciously anti-Russian newspaper is appealing to the cynicism of its readership in finding a tolerable spin on what they will see as the unfavorable denouement to the war in Ukraine.
Since the west won’t bring down Putin, it will have to live with an imperialist Russia. It learnt from 1945 to 1990 that it can, even as it knows that eastern Europe cannot. When British soldier Fitzroy Maclean was fretting in 1942 about postwar Yugoslavia going communist, Winston Churchill asked him, “Do you intend to make your home in Yugoslavia after the war?” No, Maclean responded. “Neither do I,” said Churchill. Substitute Ukraine for Yugoslavia, and traces of that western attitude linger: no longer blind, just selfish.
So much for the 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers and officers who will have died for nothing thanks to the West prolonging the war with escalation after escalation of military supplies.
For those who are unfamiliar with Sylvie Kauffmann, she has a substantial biography in Wikipedia. What is most relevant for our purposes is her longstanding position at the top of the editorial committee at Le Monde, the newspaper of French intellectuals that like all once Left-leaning publications is now borderline Neocon in its views on global politics. She was once published frequently in The International Herald Tribune, later renamed The International New York Times (now simply The New York Times) by the acquirer of that Paris-based paper. She also appears from time to time in the FT with op-ed articles.
I have followed Kauffmann over the years with a certain contempt for what I saw as her complacency or garden variety intellectual laziness. See my essay “Push-Back to Sylvie Kauffmann’s op-ed page essay ‘How Europe can help Kiev’ in The International New York Times,” p.91 ff in Does Russia Have a Future? (2015). However, if the latest FT review is correct, this time she may have done proper due diligence.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023