01 Mar Construing “Peace Through Strength”
“What will be the effect of abandoning Pax Americana?” – The Lonely Realist
Donald Trump is reorganizing the world order. If you thought that the Trump Revolution would have a profound impact only on America’s domestic institutions, you were wrong. Trump 2.0 intends to effect even greater change to the rest of the world. As Donald Trump said in his inaugural address, “I was saved by God to make America great again,” and he meant it…, both figuratively and literally. The mission of Trump 2.0 is messianic. It will not be limited to upending America’s domestic order. Donald Trump intends for the Trump Revolution to change the world. America bore the burden of piloting a Western-led global order that resulted in 80 years of international equilibrium and declining conflict. That era is over. The consequences of America’s recusal from global leadership will be deeper and far more significant than the Trump Revolution’s domestic disruptions…, and far more dangerous. Like the domestic consequences, America’s new foreign policy will ignite increasing disorder.
Say “goodbye” to Pax Americana, globalization, free trade and Western alliances. Say “hello” to a world carved into spheres of influence. Russia will have first dibs on Eastern Europe. America will assume hegemony over North and South America (including Canada, Panama and the Gulf of America), Greenland and the Eastern Pacific…, and will seek increasing influence with India, Saudi Arabia, Israel and those countries in Africa and Asia where it can further its commercial interests. China will not be militarily opposed in Southeast Asia, including with respect to Taiwan. Each regional power will be entitled to take what it wants and keep what it takes. Say “goodbye” to pursuing “Western values” and an American security umbrella and say “hello” to colonialism and the pursuit of commercial interests…, the new 21st Century Trump 2.0 definition of “peace through strength.” Say “goodbye” to “corrupt” Ukraine and to Russia’s immediate neighbors (they have little that America needs) and say “hello” to an emerging Russian-American entente. Say “goodbye” to Chinese containment and say “hello” to increasing U.S.-China dealmaking. Trump 2.0 means that America no longer will be the global hegemon, but it will be the global dealmaker.
Evidence of the new world order is everywhere. The leading example is Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelenskyy no longer is treated by America’s government as the validly-elected leader of a democratic America-allied nation (with Vladimir Putin being given an “autocrat pass”). Rather, President Trump has called Zelenskyy a “dictator” who does not have a popular mandate, asserting that his popularity is at “four percent” (the real number is >50%) and threatening that he had “better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.” According to President Trump, it is Ukraine, not Russia, that started the Ukraine War…, that it was Ukraine that side-stepped making a deal to prevent the war…, and that it is Russia, not Ukraine, that “wants to stop the savage barbarianism.” John Bolton, Trump 1.0’s national security adviser, ascribes these statements to “Trump repeating things that the Russians would like the rest of the world to believe that simply aren’t true.” And being messianic, President Trump says that “I could have made a deal for Ukraine. That would have given them almost all of the land, everything, almost all of the land – and no people would have been killed, and no city would have been demolished.” These are the reasons why President Trump decided that Zelenskyy cannot have a seat at the negotiating table (as well as thereafter) (another reason being the Zelenskyy rationale for the first impeachment of President Trump in 2019). However, the Trump Administration had previously expressed a willingness to provide Ukraine with unspecified additional support if it agreed to give America “50% of the economic value” of its resources in perpetuity, including “mineral resources, oil and gas resources, ports, other infrastructure.” Whether or not that happens – it failed to happen as scheduled on February 28th when Presidents Trump and Zelenskyy met –, what is apparent is that America has tacitly determined (prior to the start of substantive negotiations) to surrender Ukraine to Russia…, perhaps in return for a pay-off, perhaps not. America already has conceded that Vladimir Putin and Russia will be absolved from war crimes, that Russia will be entitled to retain all the land it currently occupies (totaling ~18% of Ukraine (excluding Crimea), with Ukraine being compelled to withdraw from Russia’s Kursk region), and that Ukraine will not be permitted to join NATO. In return for brokering such a “peace deal,” the U.S. had demanded 50% of Ukrainian resources (what Larry Summers labeled “beyond Versailles”) as well as Russian investment opportunities seemingly on-offer from Putin. That is, President Trump previously had decided to make a commercial deal to fulfill his campaign promise to quickly end the Ukraine War and to do so irrespective of ramifications, but now seems prepared to simply abandon Ukraine…, which leads to the question of what it means to Make America Great Again.
And what of Western Europe? Trump 2.0 has made it clear that deterring Russia is now Europe’s problem – Europe no longer will be able to look to America for protection. Vice President Vance presented this reality at the Munich Security Conference…, along with the message that the Trump Administration has a preference for European governments led by parties like the Alternative for Germany, Fidesz, Brothers of Italy and Reform UK…, because Trump 2.0 views Europe as a selfish community of decadent, socialist states locked into a decline that can be reversed only by pursuing Trumpian policies. Aside from the messianic Trumpian bombast, the fact is that there might be collateral benefits to America from decoupling from Europe and cozying up to Vladimir Putin. For example, a well-executed, well-coordinated foreign policy might drive a wedge between Russia and China (and between both of them and Iran), which would be to America’s benefit. Achieving that goal will be challenging, however…, to say the least. Quixotic may be the more accurate term. Putin is a ruthless empire-builder and Russia and China are ideologically aligned, enjoy a 2,615.5-mile border, and share long-term strategic, military, commercial and cross-border interests that differ materially from American interests. Moreover, a collateral consequence of the Trump 2.0 U-turn in American foreign policy will further spook already spooked allies that have been relying on American leadership and security assurances against Chinese, Russian, Iranian and North Korean aggressions. They (and those on the fence) might now be more likely to lean towards placating China (and Russia) (noting that Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi recently spoke of the need to “maintain international law” while describing Ukraine as “a friend and a partner”). Peace through strength indeed!
Finally (from a good friend)
jeffcsiegel
Posted at 09:15h, 02 MarchFor existential reasons involving security and demography Russia cares about the 20% of eastern Ukraine that is historically ethic Russian. A great power with an existential threat is a hard thing to address. Unfortunately, Ukraine doesn’t rise to an existential threat to anyone else. The Europeans don’t want to put their people in danger, eliminate cheap Russian gas and oil which makes their economy run, or reduce their generous welfare states to pay for it. The USA is broke. There is no political appetite to increase taxes or reduce benefits in order to continue spending $50+ billion/year to finance the war.
For two years the war was mostly a stalemate. However, in the last six months Russia has begun to win the war, like they always do, by simply exhausting everyone else. The front lines have been moving slowing westward by a few miles a week. While Russian’s are dying in large numbers, so are Ukrainians. Ukraine is smaller than Russia and will run out of people to fight the war before Russia.
While the political rhetoric is dumb, the painful truth is Ukraine needs to recognize they lost, give up the east and make some sort of deal. Apart from the territory, I wouldn’t assume the deal would be a great one for Russia. We have strong cards to play. We can increase pressure on them by flooding the world with cheap American oil and gas, and prevent them from selling to anyone but China. Both the Europeans and the last administration were unwilling to fully do this because of the economic and “climate” repercussions. Perhaps the outcome of the deal will be a new cold war to replace the hot war going on? In any case, it is time for realistic negotiations to really start.
The Lonely Realist
Posted at 11:18h, 02 MarchFrom another reader:
If you asked the world leaders their expectations about Ukraine on February 22 2022, the general response would have been “It will be over in 3 weeks”. The Ukrainians have surprised the world in their courage and determination in repelling the aggressor and have fought to a stalemate. Siimply unbelievable.
But now this stalemate cannot go on forever, and the likelihood that Ukraine can retake the territory lost in the first few weeks is very remote.
Ukraine lost the battle in 2014 when Putin invaded the Crimean Peninsula and Obama and the Europeans did nothing. Putin advertised his intent at the end of 2021 to further grab Ukraine territory and no one did anything to challenge this aggression. The entire European defense capacity is so woefully inadequate because they simply will not spend the necessary funds to make it a real substantial force. Therefore, their guarantee to Ukraine is almost useless and Putin knows this.
See Neville Chamberlain and 1938,Munich conference.
Therefore, how to achieve a settlement before throwing away more billions to repel Putin and as a fascist dictator he can continue to throw away thousands of his and North Korean soldiers with impunity. Both Iran and China are rescuing Putin by buying his oil and providing financial support. Remember Stalin won the eastern front because he could sacrifice 100 Russian soldiers for every 1 German, they have a history of this strategy.
No question Trump’s bullying on Friday was reprehensible and totally unpresidential. This should have been done behind closed doors. He is still a bull in the china shop when it comes to international relations and diplomacy.
Leaving aside the vitriolic event, the key question is how will Europe defend its own interests and spend the necessary funds to transform their military to a real threat to Putin. If that happens then their is a chance that NATO survives. If not then there will be a new world order and this will be very de-stabilizing at best.
We shall see.
jtaussig
Posted at 15:19h, 02 MarchI was a 22 year old company commander in Hue City during Tet because I was the only officer left. A Marine infantry company is supposed to have 216. I brought 46 out. Today, Hue is a World Heritage Site. During the battle, I remembered thinking that it took centuries to build it and we destroyed it in 3 weeks. I was not around to see the aftermath first hand, but it does not take too much imagination to understand that the physical and emotional scars lasted for decades.
As such, I truly feel for the Ukrainians when I see the daily destruction. As a European for the last 25 years, I am further alarmed. People forget that Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal for commitments from Russia and the West that its borders and sovereignty would be sacrosanct. We can see how much Putin honored that commitment and sadly, it looks like U.S.’s commitments are only good if the incumbents stay in power.
Aside from Trump’s bitterness over Ukraine’s connection to his first impeachment, he has to allow Putin’s aggression if he is to justify invading Panama or Greenland later on.
jtaussig
Posted at 15:21h, 02 MarchFrom this weekend’s Financial Times
“Making peace is harder than waging war,” Georges Clemenceau, the French prime minister, said in 1919 of the Paris Peace Conference. It was a lesson those who met at the Congress of Vienna at the end of the Napoleonic Wars knew well, as did those who attempted to end the Thirty Years’ War in the 17th century. The clothes are different today, and their wearers arrive by plane and not by horse. They no longer have powdered wigs or embroidered waistcoats but they still sit around grand tables and they still try to guess what the others want. History echoes, as Mark Twain suggested, and in those echoes there are warnings for today.
The longer and more costly the war, the harder the task is of making a durable peace. More than a century after the Paris conference, as he talks about bringing another European war to an end, it is not clear that President Donald Trump and his top advisers realise this.
All negotiations are challenging, whether over business contracts or buying a house, as we know instinctively from our own relationships. When powers come together to end wars, the stakes are of life or death. Incompatible national goals and the high emotions raised by a punishing and costly conflict make establishing peace a hard and painful process. We are seeing this for ourselves with the discussions around ending the war in Ukraine. Russians and Americans have just met in Saudi Arabia, a country that did not even exist in 1919, and already they are disagreeing about what was said or promised.
For nations, as for individuals or businesses, credibility and pride also matter. None wants to appear weak by asking for a deal, especially from a former adversary, only to be rebuffed. And both sides have to be willing to negotiate at the same time. In the first world war, both the Allies and the Central Powers floated the idea of ending their conflict but never at the same time. And, as their losses mounted up, both sides continued to hope for a decisive victory that would allow for a dictated peace and not a negotiated one.
The Allies finally got the upper hand in the summer of 1918. There were negotiations, difficult ones, at the subsequent peace conference, but solely among the Allies as they tried to reconcile different claims and different visions of a world order. The defeated nations were only invited to Paris to be given their terms and deadlines for signing, something many Germans never forgot or forgave.
Mao’s China and the US had only abortive attempts to open relations from 1949 until the late 1960s, when both were on bad terms with the Soviet Union. The Americans and the Chinese sent each other hints — President Richard Nixon stopped referring to “Red” China and the Chinese dropped references to bloodsucking capitalists — but since they had no direct contacts they could not know if these were being received and understood. When they finally managed to establish a secure channel and agree that Henry Kissinger, the US national security adviser, would secretly visit Beijing, both sides still had the option of deniability.
Such secrecy might be more difficult today when the danger is that diplomacy by hasty remarks at press conferences or by ttweet lock in positions and make the compromises essential to a successful negotiation difficult or impossible. There is a place for publicity: President Woodrow Wilson’s letters to the German government when it asked him to broker an armistice in 1918 helped to persuade the German public that the Americans would show them kindness if Germany agreed to a ceasefire.
St Augustine held that peace should be the aim of war but too often the ways in which wars end help to fuel new ones. We may dream of better and fairer international orders, of making war an aberration and, worse, a crime, but in the aftermath of conflicts, the accumulated hatreds and the desire for revenge and retribution make it hard to take the high road. In wars fought between coalitions, alliances almost inevitably fall to pieces as the war ends and national interests rise to the surface. The Italians walked out of the Paris Peace Conference because they were not getting all the territory they wanted. At the end of the second world war, the Grand Alliance of Britain, the Soviet Union and the US headed into the cold war as the Soviet Union laid claim to the centre of Europe.
What can pre-empt or sometimes help peace negotiations is the involvement of powerful outsiders. In the 19th century, the Concert of Europe — the great powers of Russia, Austria-Hungary, Prussia (later Germany), France and Britain — intervened repeatedly in the Balkans, for example, to impose new borders on the quarrelling countries emerging out of the Ottoman Empire. After the 1973 war between Israel and its neighbours, the US managed to enforce a ceasefire and, after much shuttle diplomacy among Middle Eastern capitals by Kissinger, work out disengagement agreements between Israel on the one hand and Egypt and Syria on the other. The involvement of those affected on the ground helped to make the agreements last.
The talks between the US and Russia about the Ukraine war that took place in Riyadh last week excluded the Ukrainians. What is more, the US has ignored what is surely fundamental to negotiations and that is not to concede at the start to the maximalist demands of the other side. Trump and his spokespeople have apparently assured Vladimir Putin that he is likely to be able to keep land Russia has seized and that Ukraine will not be admitted to Nato.
If Russia and the US impose their sort of settlement on Ukraine (and exploit its mineral wealth as they have suggested), it will leave hostages to fortune — an angry and embittered Ukraine as well as a triumphant Russia. We know from the past how war can be waiting in the wings of peace. When the Germans took the French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, those became the focus of France’s longing for revenge. And victors are often encouraged to go further.
It is hard to be magnanimous at the moment of victory but lasting peace depends either on the total destruction of the enemy, as with Rome and Carthage, or on compromise. To reach that, the parties involved must be clear about their own red lines — what they cannot accept — and know as much as possible about what is essential for the other side or allies.
In Paris, Clemenceau was under huge pressure from the French people to dismember Germany and cripple it with heavy reparations. He agreed instead to measures to reduce Germany’s military power and lowered the amounts demanded. In return, so he hoped, he would maintain the alliance with Britain and the US.
In 1972, when Nixon visited Mao, their two countries issued the Shanghai Communiqué, in which, unusually, they agreed to disagree on the status of Taiwan, as they still do. It helped to open up a new relationship and keep half a century of peace.
The road to peace can be eased through the threat — and it has to be credible — of a renewed war. In the early summer of 1919, as the German parliament hesitated over signing the Treaty of Versailles, the Allied leaders in Paris reluctantly made preparations to invade Germany, something they had refrained from doing. In 1995 the warring parties in the Bosnian war agreed to peace talks in Dayton, Ohio, after heavy pressure from the world’s powers led by the US and Russia as well as a Nato bombing campaign against Serbian nationalist forces in Bosnia.
Such approaches do not always work. In 1940 Hitler offered Britain a peace deal after the fall of France, and when the Churchill government refused, tried to bomb the British into submission. In 1945, as Germany was being destroyed around him, Hitler refused to contemplate surrender.
Ending the fighting is only the beginning. Getting something that resembles success also takes hard work, patience and an attention to detail. I once met an American diplomat who spent two years in Geneva sitting opposite his Soviet counterpart discussing the same details of an arms deal over and over. And there are the subtle and not so subtle ways of applying pressure. Keeping the room too hot is something the North Koreans like. Zhou Enlai, China’s chief negotiator in the early 1970s, once spun out talks with Kissinger, knowing the latter’s plane had to leave.
In August 1942, Winston Churchill made the dangerous journey to Moscow to meet Stalin for the first time. Their first encounter was affable and productive, but at the next ones Stalin was so rude that Churchill talked of leaving, something the Soviets, who had bugged his rooms, would probably have heard. At a final meeting, which lasted for eight hours, the dictator turned on the charm and brought Churchill to his private apartment in the Kremlin, where a lavish feast awaited. Churchill later said he thought he had met the “real Stalin”, a figure he kept trying to find throughout the rest of the war.
That is not to say that personal relations and mutual trust do not matter; the friendship between Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt as well as between many of their advisers was critical in making the wartime alliance work. Wilson, Clemenceau and David Lloyd George of Britain were very different men but as they worked together in Paris they came to appreciate each other and seek for compromise.
Unfounded optimism, however, can be dangerous. President Roosevelt was convinced that he had charmed Joseph Stalin and could make him share an American vision of a peaceful world order. Yet Stalin and many of his successors, including Putin, respected power only and did not care how many others or of their own people died. And does Putin really respect and like Trump, as the latter seems to think? The US has the capacity to assess Putin and his policies, in think-tanks, the State Department or in universities, but this administration appears to have little use for it.
Being well informed — it seems so obvious — is critical to negotiating successfully. At the Congress of Vienna, which ended the Napoleonic wars, the Austrian spies collected the contents of everyone’s waste-paper baskets. A century later, in Paris, the French listened in on British telephone conversations and those of the German delegates when they finally arrived.
Knowledge is key, for understanding what both allies and adversaries hope for, what they might accept and what their assumptions are. We are not all the same, as Robert McNamara, the American secretary of defence, admitted ruefully after his attempts to defeat the North Vietnamese. Interlocutors facing each other across a table at a peace conference have different pasts, different cultures and different concerns. Kissinger and his Chinese counterpart Zhou established a good working relationship, which may have helped in their tricky negotiations, but in the end each represented his own country.
The signed documents and public statements are only the start. Like a garden, peace must be cultivated and maintained. The complex relationships today between former enemies France and Germany, or between the US and China, have taken decades of work. One of the weaknesses of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles was that it did not have realistic enforcement measures, so Germany was able to rebuild its military in secret.
Moreover, the other powers were unwilling to confront Germany after Hitler came to power in 1933 and systematically flouted the treaty’s provisions. They chose instead to appease German demands, and those of other aggressive powers such as Italy and Japan, with the dreadful consequences we know. It is hard not to think of the parallels with today. By treating Putin as a fellow statesman, by publicly praising him and saying that he wants peace, Trump has given him a stature and a credibility that he does not deserve, and may well have emboldened him to probe further into the spaces along the borders of Russia.
The US has sent signals that it may be ready to sacrifice Ukraine as Britain and France did Czechoslovakia in 1938 when they forced it to hand over the Sudetenland to Germany. Hitler promised that he would respect the borders of what was left of Czechoslovakia but showed how worthless that promise was in March 1939. Encouraged by western weakness and secure in a new alliance with his rival in the centre of Europe, the Soviet Union, Hitler invaded Poland, the next country on his list, in September 1939, setting off a world war.
Ukraine may, like Czechoslovakia, agree to sacrifice some of its land, but if it is to preserve its sovereignty it will need more economic and political support than that unfortunate country received. If the US won’t provide a military guarantee against future Russian invasions, then it will be up to Europe and its allies. The talks that are going on may start to produce the outlines of a workable agreement. Or it may be that they are simply precursors to a closer US-Russia relationship.
The president is a great admirer of Nixon, and apparently hopes to emulate him in shaking up the international order by driving China and Russia apart with the US balancing between them. At the recent Munich Security Conference, Trump emissary Keith Kellogg said the US hoped to offer Russia such a good deal that it would break away from China, Iran and North Korea. And what can Russia offer in return: an incompetent military, a failing economy, a declining population? A Putin changing his spots who no longer interferes in other nations’ domestic politics or invades Russia’s neighbours? While such a diplomatic reversal could take the world closer to war between the US and China, for the moment it looks like a non-starter. A much weakened Russia has become increasingly dependent on China and, with its long common border, knows where its interests lie.
The US would lose by such a deal as it was seen to abandon allies and embrace the world’s authoritarian states. Credibility, that intangible but valuable asset, helps to deter enemies and keep allies. Alliances, like peace itself, need work — and trust, once destroyed, is hard to build back up. The world will lose too, as it is divided into competing spheres of influence. As the US bullies near neighbours, it may — inadvertently — be signalling that it is ready to concede dominance in Asia and the Pacific to China. Trump apparently longs for the Nobel Peace Prize. And why not the award for literature, for good measure, for the author of The Art of the Deal?”