“What Is This? Peace in Our Time?”The Trump regime's 28–point peace plan for Ukraine at last addresses Russia's legitimate interests. The only losers, if negotiations win Moscow's acceptance, will be the warmongers.
28 NOVEMBER—All has been fluid and very few things clear since the Trump regime’s draft of a 28–point peace plan intended to settle the war in Ukraine was leaked (in varying versions) last week. The Europeans quickly put together a 19–point counter-draft they seem to think supersedes the Trump plan. The Ukrainians seem to think they negotiated a new document, based on the Europeans’ plan, with the United States in Geneva last weekend. There have been talks in the European capitals, talks in Kiev, talks on the sidelines of various multi-sided summits. All manner of assertions and all manner of reporting have flowed in the course of these undertakings, as you may have noticed. The shared project is to subvert the Trump plan, which we must count a serious endeavor to address Russia’s interests in the cause of an enduring settlement, in favor of another that, in essence, allows the Kiev regime and its backers in London, Paris, and Berlin to continue pretending Moscow has no legitimate interests and, so, the war must go on. It is important to pay attention to all these developments, but not overmuch. The Europeans and the Ukrainians have been prone to lots of huffing and puffing since the Trump regime began its efforts to bring the war to a close and restore relations with Russia to something resembling sanity. But the Euros and their Ukrainian client have never managed to blow anyone’s house down, and I do not see they have any chance of doing so now. This is simply the kind of thing in which the losers of a war indulge when they are unwilling to accept they are the losers. The Ukrainians did not negotiate a new plan with the United State in Geneva last week, as The Times of London, Le Monde, and other European dailies have reported. They negotiated something or other—we do not know what—with Marco Rubio, Trump’s secretary of state, and that is a very different matter: Rubio is a neoconservative warmonger whose place in Trump’s national-security lineup has been questionable from the first. Volodymyr Zelensky was due in Washington just before Thanksgiving for talks at the White House, but that encounter was abruptly canceled. We have to conclude Trump and he who purports to serve as Ukraine’s president had nothing to talk about just now. Daniel Driscoll, the Army secretary, is to go to Kiev this week for talks, not his first, with Zelensky. So far as one can make out, Driscoll will do the talking and Zelensky the listening. More important, Steve Witkoff, the New York property investor serving as Trump’s special envoy, is due in Moscow in the week to come for talks with President Putin and other top-level officials. It is very safe to conclude the Trump regime’s original plan will be the basis of these exchanges. Witkoff helped develop the 28–point document during consultations with a senior Russian official last month. Trump has on no occasion indicated he has stepped back from this proposal in favor of any of the alternatives that have since floated around. And the Kremlin made it clear this week that the Russian leader expects the 28 points to be the point of departure in Witkoff’s talks with Putin. There are any number of reasons you may not like, or may even condemn, the Trump regime’s draft plan to advance toward a settlement of the war in Ukraine. You may be among those many all across the Western capitals who simply cannot accept defeat on the reasoning—is this my word?—that the West never loses anything, and it certainly cannot lose anything to “Putin’s Russia.” You may think that President Trump and those who produced this interesting document, which became public in the course of some days last week, have once again “caved” to the Kremlin. The outstanding contribution in this line comes from the ever-mixed-up Tom Friedman, who argued in last Sunday’s editions of The New York Times that Trump is to be compared with Neville Chamberlain and Trump’s plan with the much-reviled British prime minister’s “appeasement” of Hitler via the Munich Agreement of September 1938. I cannot think of a klutzier interpretation of history or a more useless comparison, given it sheds not one sliver of light on what the document to hand is about. Or you may stand on principle and attempt the well-worn case that Ukraine is a liberal democracy—let me write that phrase again just for fun—Ukraine is a liberal democracy, altogether “just like us,” and must be defended at all costs in the name of freedom, the rights of the individual, free _expression_, free markets, etc. Or you may think this is no time for the United States and its European clients to relent in their unceasing effort to destabilize the Russian Federation. Those of this persuasion cannot, of course, acknowledge that Ukraine is nothing more than a battering ram in this dreadful cause, at this point much-bloodied. This dodge tends to swell the ranks of those professing the defense of democracy against autocracy as their creed. Anyone paying attention to the reactions to the Trump plan among the trans–Atlantic policy cliques and the media that serve them has heard all of this and more this past week. I find it all somewhere between pitiful and amusing. Pitiful because those who so wildly overinvested in the corrupt, Nazi-infested regime in Kiev prove incapable of acknowledging that Ukraine lost its war with Russia long ago, and this attempt to subvert Russia now proves a bust. Amusing because those who so wildly overinvested in the corrupt, Nazi-infested regime in Kiev now squirm at the thought that the victor will have more to say about the terms of peace than the vanquished. Whad’ya mean we don’t get to dictate a settlement just because we’re the losers? This, in a single sentence, is the position shared across the West and in Kiev. It was Washington’s position before Trump replaced the Biden regime. Trump’s latest sin—and this plan counts as another in many quarters—is that what he and his people now propose favors simple realities over elaborate illusions. Those asserting that the Trump plan caters to the Kremlin are not altogether wrong, to put this point another way. They are merely wrong in their objections. These 28 points, with many elaborations—No. 12 is followed by 12a, 12b, 12c and so on—indeed give Russia a lot of what it has spent years attempting to negotiate. The missed point is plainly stated: It is a very wise and fine thing finally to recognize the legitimacy of Russia’s perspective. It was the West’s long refusal to do so that produced this war. These past three years this… this miscalculation, this blindness to reality, this hubris has destroyed Ukraine and resulted in the deaths of some hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides. At this point what will serve Russia’s interests will also serve Ukraine’s and the interests of anyone who thinks an orderly world is a good idea. ■ A couple of things to note before briefly considering the contents of the Trump plan. I am working from a copy of the text apparently leaked to the Financial Times last Thursday, 20 November, a week before Thanksgiving. One, this is a working document, nothing more. Trump’s people, notably Rubio and Witkoff, have had extensive negotiations with Ukrainian and European delegations since advancing the White House plan. These are to continue. Trump earlier gave the Kiev regime until Thanksgiving to accept or reject its terms. But the Trumpster also stated that if things went well this deadline would be superseded. Now it has been, and no one has shut any doors—not such that this has been public knowledge. All is subjective. Two, Witkoff takes most of the credit for drafting this plan, reportedly in consultation with Kirill Dmitriev, the chief executive of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, who seems sometimes to serve as a diplomat close to the Kremlin. But it has Trump’s name on it, and anything with the Trumpster’s name on it is subject to radical and unpredictable revision or withdrawal at any time. Setting these matters aside: There are numerous on-the-ground provisions among its 28 clauses. No. 19 specifies that the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant along the Dnieper River, controlled by Russian forces since March 2022, less than a month into the war, will be restarted under the authority of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the electricity it generates will go equally to Russia and Ukraine. Russia is to allow Ukrainians to use the Dnieper “for commercial activities” (No. 23). There is to be a prisoner swap (No. 24a) and, a family reunion program (24c). A general amnesty will extend to “all parties involved in the conflict” (No. 26). “Measures will be taken,” No. 24d states, “to alleviate the suffering of victims of the conflict.” These clauses, boilerplate humanitarian provisions and low-hanging fruit, are worthy enough but read to me as greeting-card niceties next to the weightier items in this plan. There is the much-discussed, much-disputed question of territory. Crimea and the Donbas—Luhansk and Donetsk—will be recognized as Russian territory, but de facto as against de jure. Why this distinction, the Russians would be perfectly right to ask. The land from which Ukrainian forces will be required to withdraw will be designated a demilitarized zone that belongs to Russia, but the Russians will not be permitted to enter it. Again, what is this all about? As to Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, the southerly provinces Russia and Ukraine each partially control, they are to be divided and fixed at the current line of contact. No. 22: “After agreeing on future territorial arrangements, the Russian Federation and Ukraine undertake not to change these arrangements by force.” It is hard to say how either side will view these proposed divisions of territory. They award Moscow much of what it has demanded for some time, but in qualified fashion, and take away from Kiev much of what it has long said it will never surrender. So: Not enough for the Russians? Moscow has already signaled this may be the case. Too much for the Ukrainians? Having been stupidly pumped up by the Europeans—and not for the first time—Zelensky now appears to be back to insisting that Ukraine can never surrender any of its sovereign territory. Absolutely pointless. In my read the drafters’ intent here is to set down working language on the territory question as the basis of a lot of horse-trading. If I am correct, the U.S. side is not saying Kiev must accept or reject these terms as written so much as Kiev must agree finally to stop striking poses and do serious business at the mahogany table. Can Zelensky and his people—now fighting for their political lives amid a massive corruption scandal that has been too long coming—at last forego the posturing and get real? You would not think this is a question even worth posing at this point, but the Zelensky regime has not had a healthy relationship with reality since it came into being six years ago. To be noted in this connection: It is long past time to dismiss all the rubbish of the past three years to the effect that Moscow’s intent has been to seize and occupy all of Ukraine. It is as ridiculous as the Europeans’ preposterous assertions—more cynical that paranoiac—that if the Russians are not stopped in Ukraine they will soon be in London and Lisbon. In my view the Russians have never been interested in taking land so much as in buffering their borders against the West’s incessant threats. The evidence here begins with President Putin’s vigorous support of the Minsk Protocols of September 2014 and February 2015. They were to give the Donbas—Russian-speaking, Eastward-facing—autonomy in a federalized Ukraine. This would have been enough for the Kremlin back then. It was when Kiev and the Minsk accords’ treacherous European backers, the French and the Germans, betrayed the Protocols (and, so, Putin personally and altogether the integrity of the diplomatic process) that the course was set. As Kiev shelled its own citizens daily for the next seven years, Moscow concluded that the federalization project would never work and taking the Donbas militarily was its only alternative. Moscow formally annexed these provinces in September 2022, six months into the war, after referenda predictably determined that their citizens approved of this measure. They had understandably had enough of a regime that had outlawed their language and their religion and attacked them daily with heavy artillery. Whatever territory the Kiev regime will now have to give up, in other words, this outcome owes only to its own reckless miscalculations and those of its supporters in Europe and in the Washington of the Biden years. I see no other way to think about this. I am tempted to say, “Serves ’em right,” but I will refrain. What recommends this plan most persuasively and promisingly, at least for my money, is the breadth of its provisions beyond Ukraine’s borders. Until now the Western powers and the repellent slobs in the press who reproduce their nonsense, have impudently dismissed out of hand what Moscow has taken to calling “the root causes” of the Ukraine mess. This document at last addresses them. To put the point another way, the Trump draft acknowledges and attempts to redress all the duplicities and betrayals that began back when Michail Gorbachev sought “a common European home” for post–Soviet Russia only to find that the triumphalists reigning in Washington would serially break their word and that the Cold War had a new look but had not ended. Point No. 2, right up top: “A comprehensive and comprehensive [sic] non-aggression agreement will be concluded between Russia, Ukraine and Europe. All ambiguities of the last 30 years will be considered settled.” Bingo. This is absolutely splendid language. It holds the promise of an enduring settlement between Russia and the West that will benefit not only the Russians but everyone with an interest in global peace. The only losers here are the warmongers. I may as well quote verbatim the provisions concerning NATO, as they rank among the most important in this draft. No. 4: “A dialogue will be held between Russia and NATO, mediated by the United States, to resolve all security issues and create conditions for de-escalation in order to ensure global security…” O.K, an excellent idea, although I do not see how the United State can mediate any such talks given NATO is its creature. But let’s mark this down as easily repaired muddle, or a nod to Donald Trump’s incorrigible vanity. It is No. 7—brief, perfectly clear—that goes straight to the point: “Ukraine agrees to enshrine in its constitution that it will not join NATO, and NATO agrees to include in its statutes a provision that Ukraine will not be permitted in the future.” Point No. 5 offers Ukraine “reliable security guarantees,” and No. 6 is to limit the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the A.F.U., to 600,000 personnel. It is not yet clear what the former may turn out to mean, and the latter is a bit of a deception. Western press reports have it that the 600,000 figure amounts to a drastic restriction. Nonsense. While the A.F.U. force is now put (reliably or otherwise) at 900,000, at the time of the U.S.–cultivated coup in February 2014 it had roughly 130,000 soldiers on active duty; post-coup this figure increased to a quarter of a million. It was only when the Kiev regime began gearing up for war at Washington’s urging that these numbers rose appreciably. For a nation committed to peace, the pre-coup A.F.U. should be the reference. This question leads to another, larger one. Wherein lies enduring security for postwar Ukraine, if, indeed, the Trump plan brings it closer to post-anything? Chas Freeman, the emeritus ambassador who hangs in as a perspicacious commentator on global events, made the point some months ago that sturdy, lasting security arrangements are not to be achieved by way of military victories or permanently stationed arsenals in contentious territories. They come by way of creative statecraft and diplomatic settlements that serve all sides. Chas’s example is Austria, which has prospered since 1955, when Washington, London, Paris, Vienna and Moscow signed the Austria State Treaty, which made post-occupation Austria a constitutionally neutral nation pledged never to join military alliances and never to allow foreign military bases on its soil. It became, then, a Cold War buffer between East and West, just what was needed at the time. All sides understood, all sides agreed, and Austria became Austria as we have since known it. The 28–point plan now on the table makes reference to “a non-aggression agreement.” In the best outcome Ukrainian neutrality fixed in international and national law will be the better term. I suggest this because some of the terms in the Trump document tilt thoughtfully and unmistakably in this direction. No. 18 is a case in point: Ukraine agrees to be a non-nuclear state in accordance with the Treaty on the Non–Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.” There is also the thinking at the social level that appears to have gone into this plan. It calls for education programs, in schools and in civic life, to promote religious tolerance and acceptance of “linguistic minorities.” It calls for the restoration of a free press and freedom of _expression_ in universities. While such provisions nominally apply to Ukraine and Russia alike, their intent seems to me perfectly obvious. No. 20c: “All Nazi ideology and activities must be rejected and prohibited.” This will prove difficult to achieve, given how thoroughly neo–Nazi elements—the neo–Nazi elements the American press pretends to this day do not exist—have penetrated Ukrainian society and institutions. It is altogether weird that de–Nazification remains an objective eight decades after the Reich’s defeat, but Moscow did not declare this one of its primary aims when it intervened militarily three years ago for nothing. It is good this ugly problem now has a formal place in a draft settlement plan. These social provisions impress me because they implicitly recognize the necessity of making Ukraine a new nation and that to get this done requires the cultivation of a new collective consciousness. This is a profound insight. I think of what the occupations in Japan and Germany set as their objectives in the first years after the 1945 victories: Until the Cold War’s onset in 1947, at least, occupation planners understood that the Japanese and the Germans would have to be remade. Cold War corruption changed that in what the Japanese call “the reverse course,” yes, but I take the presence of these clauses among the Trump plan’s 28 points to be a mark of the drafters’ commitment to a settlement that endures. We will have to see. As we went to press today news came that Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s longtime chief of staff, political enforcer, and goon, and lately his chief negotiator on a peace settlement, has been forced to resign after the anti-corruption authority—which Zelensky sought and failed to castrate just a few weeks ago—had raided his apartment. That makes two of Kiev’s diplomatic negotiators now under investigation for corruption, the other being Rustem Umerov, who heads the National Security and Defense Council. The rot runs deep in Ukraine, and all the way to the top. Remaking this putrid, sad, failed nation as a civilized society wherein its people find something to believe in will require arduous and sustained work but is essential to any success. The peace plan betokens a recognition of this reality, too—another of its virtues. ■ The Europeans have been carrying on in their predictable and ineffectual way since the talks in Geneva last weekend. Friedrich Merz and Johann Wadephul, respectively Germany’s chancellor and foreign minister, have insisted that Ukrainian sovereignty, just as it is, remains beyond negotiation—this from Merz in an interview with Deutsche Welle, German radio. And from Wadephul we hear that all questions “concerning Europe” and NATO have been removed from the Trump plan. The counter-proposal that emerged immediately after Geneva includes these provisions. Mice that roar, these two and their French and British colleagues. Point No. 1 in the Trump draft states, “Ukrainian sovereignty will be confirmed,” and what this means has to be reconsidered in view of the Kiev regime’s conduct since the 2014 coup, who has won the war, and what the victor insists must be addressed. The rest is mere delusion, of which there is a surfeit among the Europeans these days. As to Wadephul’s assertion about the removal of clauses to do with Europe and the Atlantic alliance, there is little point paying any attention to this. The Trump draft remains the working document, as earlier suggested. It is now clear Wadephul refers to the European counter-proposal advanced last Sunday evening European time, just after the Geneva talks concluded. And to this we must ask, “So what?” Once again, the Europeans appear content to talk self-referentially to themselves, and we are best leaving them to it. The salient point here, especially given the possibility Rubio is out to subvert the 28–point plan, is simply stated: If Trump and Witkoff are foolish enough to edit this document as the Germans suggest, we can all forget about Moscow taking any interest in all this one-sided diplomacy. My surmise about the provenance of the 28–point plan—and this is not more than a surmise—is that Trump and his people did again what they did in September, when they developed their famous “peace plan” for Gaza: The Russians more or less wrote this document just as the Israelis more or less wrote the Gaza plan. For one thing, neither Rubio nor Witkoff is capable of the caliber of statecraft that went into the thinking and language evidenced in this document. Trump certainly isn’t, to state the very obvious. For another, it is not quite the Russian “wish list” all the hawks in Washington and the Tom Friedmans in the press are now shrieking about, but it is unmistakably in this direction. It is time to accept this as a good thing. It is time to accept that there cannot possibly be a settlement of the Ukraine crisis, or the broader crisis between Russia and the West, without accepting Moscow’s concerns as legitimate. It is time to recognize that at its core the Ukraine crisis has been all along about the emergence of the new world order that fairly bursts through the fabric of the old at this point, and that a settlement between Russia and the West will mark a significant advance in this direction. Remember Molly Bloom’s last word, her famous yawp, on the last page of Ulysses? “Yes!” she declared—an affirmation of life in all its grandeur and imperfection and misery. I don’t know why this line comes to me now, but here goes: “Yes,” I say, to the Trump peace plan for Ukraine—as we have it now, at least—for all it stands to make possible. This is a much-revised and updated version of an essay that earlier appeared in Consortium News. Independent journalism requires investment to sustain itself. If you appreciate what you read at The Floutist please consider making a contribution. You can become a paid subscriber by clicking on the button below. You can also “buy The Floutist a coffee.” Or you can support our work on Patreon. And please share this post. Thank you. Follow us: @thefloutist. You're currently a free subscriber to The Floutist. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. |