In mid-July Trump delivered a 50-day ultimatum: if Putin doesn’t agree to a ceasefire in the Ukraine by 2 September, Trump will punish Russia with any number of the Plagues of Egypt.
If Trump expected a reaction, none came, not a verbal one at any rate. Putin’s response took the shape of missiles raining on Ukrainian cities with renewed intensity, and Trump’s disappointment deepened.
He upped the ante, cutting the 50 days down to 10-12, with the ultimatum now expiring on 7-9 August. Yet again Putin said nothing, other than remarking that Trump’s disappointment came from excessive expectations.
A longer reply was delivered by Putin’s poodle Medvedev, who issued yet another nuclear threat to the West. In response, Trump announced that he was moving two Trident-bearing nuclear submarines closer to Russia.
Nuclear blackmail has, of course, been a standard feature of Russia’s dialogue with the West for at least 20 years. The message is simple: we are prepared to take millions of casualties and have our major cities incinerated. Are you? Are you ready to swap New York and London for Moscow and Petersburg? You aren’t, are you? So watch your step.
The blackmail has worked. The West watched its step in 2008, when Russia attacked Georgia. It did so again in 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimea and parts of Eastern Ukraine. Yet again in 2022, when the full-scale invasion began. And ever since.
That’s why NATO hasn’t even mooted a direct military involvement in the Ukraine. And even military supplies to the beleaguered country have been carefully measured out not to provoke Russia into a cataclysmic retaliation.
Hence there was nothing new about Medvedev’s threats, but America’s answer with subs rather than just words supposedly signalled a change. Trump’s announcement looked like America’s substantive response to nuclear blackmail, but that impression is illusory.
The US Navy keeps on permanent patrol seven or eight of its 18 Ohio-class subs, each capable of carrying 24 Trident ICBMs. I don’t know where they tend to sail but, at a wild guess, I doubt they concentrate on the coast of Argentina or New Zealand.
Thus, they can’t be very far from Russia anyway and, even assuming they’ve now shortened the missiles’ time to target by a few minutes, the difference is trivial. As is Trump’s much-vaunted toughness provoked by Putin’s intransigence.
What’s going to happen at the end of this week, when the 10-12 days of America’s ultimatum have expired?
Steve Witcoff, the sorriest excuse for a strategic negotiator I’ve ever seen, will fly to Moscow a day or two prior, but he is unlikely to get anything other than yet another run-around designed to gain time for Putin.
What will America do then? Introduce tougher sanctions on Russia? Putin has already announced the country is immune to them – with a little help from her friends in China, India and some EU members.
Hit all those friends with secondary tariffs? Trump already threatened astronomical levies on China once but backed off when the latter retaliated in kind. Competent economists have explained to Donald that America can afford a trade war with China no more than she can afford a nuclear war with Russia.
How else can Trump make good on his threats and ultimatums? I doubt he knows, mainly because his understanding of global relations doesn’t allow him to know.
Trump has raised his transactional, property developer’s view of the world to an absolute. Every little problem of life can be solved with a deal, he believes, an offer the other side either likes or at least can’t afford to refuse.
That’s why Trump was sure he could end the war in the Ukraine within 24 hours of his inauguration. All he had to do was make Putin an offer better than anything that demented villain Biden could even think of.
Sure enough, the offer Trump ended up putting on the table made Munich, 1938, look like a resolute stand on principle.
All Putin had to do was agree to some, any ceasefire. In return, he was welcome to keep the 20 per cent of the Ukraine’s territory he already controlled.
The Crimea was to be declared Russian in perpetuity. The rump Ukraine would become a neutral country forfeiting all plans of joining NATO or the EU. All sanctions on Russia would be rescinded. All American military aid to the Ukraine would cease. Trump even advanced that last offer on spec, as a gesture of good will. Military supplies to the Ukraine slowed down to a trickle and even stopped altogether for a while.
No other president, not Biden, not Obama, not Clinton, not even Nixon, could have offered Russia a better deal. There was no better deal imaginable, short of US troops going into action on Russia’s side.
Trump fully expected Putin to gobble up the deal and bite Donald’s arm off. Instead, the man Trump had always admired told him, not in so many words, exactly where he could shove his offer. Excessive expectations indeed.
Neither Trump nor Witcoff nor, alas, most Western leaders and commentators understand what Putin wants to get out of this conflict. That’s why they are perplexed: Trump is giving Putin what appears to be victory on a platter. But the US president doesn’t realise that, for the Russian chieftain, that offer is tantamount to defeat.
The KGB rulers of Russia don’t want 20 per cent of the Ukraine. They want to extinguish the Ukraine’s sovereignty and incorporate 100 per cent of the country into the empire they strive to recreate on the ruins of the Soviet Union. The KGB didn’t oust the Communist Party and dismantle the USSR to turn Russia into an essentially Asian country, a vassal to China in all but name.
And without the Ukraine, Russia has no claim to being an empire and a European power. In fact, the Duchy of Muscovy only became Russia, and eventually the Russian Empire, when the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth began to fall apart in the 17th century. Much of the Ukraine was then incorporated into Russia, with the rest to follow after the three partitions of Poland in the 18th century.
The Ukraine became the westernmost part of the Russian Empire not only geographically but also civilisationally. Quite apart from the strong Catholic influences west of the Dnieper, the Ukraine has always been more Western than Russia.
Even her Orthodox bishops were culturally and intellectually closer to their Western colleagues than to the Russian clergy. In fact, when Peter I set out to westernise the Russian Church, he had to rely on two Ukrainian bishops, Stefan Yavorsky and Theophan Prokopovych, to provide the theological and philosophical impetus of the reform.
Nevertheless, the Russians have always looked down on the Ukrainians with the condescending smirk of an imperial bully. Ukrainians have been treated as Little Russians boasting no culture of their own and speaking a corrupted Russian patois, not their own language.
When, towards the end of Yeltsyn’s tenure, the government of Russia de facto moved from the Kremlin to Lubyanka, the recreation of the Russian Empire moved to the forefront of the country’s desiderata.
In 2005, Putin described the collapse of the Soviet Union, which is to say the communist version of the Russian Empire, as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century”, and one he was implicitly committed to reverse. And his Munich speech of 2007 made the imperial ambitions clear: Russia wasn’t going to accept any world order in which she played no dominant role.
Both Yeltsyn and Putin knew from the start that an independent Ukraine was a major obstacle to their far-reaching imperial ambitions. Russia couldn’t recreate her 19th century role of “the gendarme of Europe” or especially her 20th century domination of half of Europe if a sovereign Ukraine stood in the way.
Without incorporating the Ukraine, Russia can’t be an empire. Without being an empire, its ruling KGB/FSB can’t lord it over Europe. Whether an independent Ukraine is neutral or allied with blocs like NATO or the EU is immaterial. Her very independence in any form is stuck in Putin’s craw.
I mentioned Munich, 1938, earlier. That attempt to appease an evil aggressor turned the dial of world war from possible to inevitable. True to form, the West never learned that lesson – history is more likely than any other science to have its lessons unheeded.
The countdown for another, more devastating, war has been started, and no ‘deal’ will stop the timer’s ticking. Some military analysts believe that Russia will be ready to test the West’s courage with nuclear blasts by 2036. Others insist Putin will want to settle matters during Trump’s tenure.
Making such predictions is their job, not mine. All I can suggest is that the danger is real, I’d even say imminent. And it can’t be averted by haggling with Putin, on the assumption that a good deal could bring him round.
However, just as the Second World War could have been prevented by a resolute show of united force, so, one hopes, can the Third one be averted by reminding Putin in tangible, physical terms that the West’s military potential is several times greater than Russia’s.
The West has greater numbers, more sophisticated and numerous weapons, much stronger and bigger economies, more advanced technologies, greater financial resources. Yet these matter nothing without spiritual and moral strength, and I hope our deficit in such qualities won’t prove fatal.
Putin’s silence is thunderous. As far as he is concerned, there is nothing to discuss. I’ll be curious to see what will happen in the next few days, if Witcoff is sent home empty-handed. I do hope I’ll live to see my next birthday (10 August).