There seems to be a real surge of "America is the good guy" in this thread. For me, little has changed. It is now time to carve up Ukraine as far as the USA is concerned, and the USA is furious with Kiev for not being okay with that. But now it is Trump in the White House, blame all falls on Zelensky and how he dresses. As if Trump is actually deciding foreign policy based on a lack of tie. Frankly, if he were that would not be a mark in Trump's favour.
I have a counterpoint I would like to hear your opinion on. If it is true a s you say, why did Z>elensky then afterwards say he was willing to sign it anyway. What is your take regarding this?
I don't know, frankly. My first instinct is to check the fine print because Zelensky was saying he was willing to sign before the meeting as well - on the condition that he gets security guarantees for Ukraine. Has he changed on that afterwards or is it just selective quoting? My trust in the MSM is low, as should anybody's be. Alternately, he was simply doing the exact same thing Trump routinely does which is start from a high offer and then try to negotiate from there. Only instead of being willing to negotiate on that, Trump drags him over coals in front of the world as a humiliation ritual to remind him that Trump holds "all the cards". Learn your place, Ukraine!
Nah. The “deal” was just a framework for future discussions. It didn’t give away anything and isn’t a legal contract in any sense of the word.
Which means that the gorilla in the room gets to decide when the agreement is meaningful and when it isn't. "You agreed to a 50% split, we will sanction / use force / annex / freeze assets to enforce that" when the USA wants and "we never committed to providing you weapons / boots on the ground / satellite targeting data" when the USA doesn't want.
We know this because the West has had these sort of non-enforceable agreements with Ukraine before. That's why Ukraine is at war with Russia right now - because the West gave all its promises of being there for Ukraine.
You're right, it is a framework for discussion, but discussions with
Russia. Ukraine is being told it doesn't get a say. And Trump needs Kiev to jump when he says jump because if he can't demonstrate control over Ukraine, the deal is worthless as a framework for discussions with Russia. That's why the fury with Zelensky for even attempting to negotiate with the USA as partners. You will be a vassal of the USA or die. When did people here start to see that as a good thing?
It also seems to me that a group in this thread hold contradictory beliefs. The one is that Europe will be "buck-broken" and doomed if the USA pulls out (and seems to be largely Americans who think this), and the other is that Russia doesn't want to invade and isn't the aggressor. Well the latter belief is one that is largely true. It's not even in Russia's interests to occupy all of the Ukraine, let alone proceed to Berlin - who would want it? Europe is a poisoned challice. So why should Europe need American troops occupying it for its protection? Its problems are all internal ones of demographics and globohome leadership (put in place by America to begin with). Our interests would be better served by trading with Russia. Indeed, the USA or its proxies blew up our pipelines to prevent that even being allowed as an option. It would take two decades for Europe to build up a passable army. But so what. Nobody is going to invade militarily in that timespan. So Americans can give it a rest with all the "Europe is buck-broken without us". I frankly find Eastern European culture a lot closer to my beliefs than modern Globohomo America. Russia is not a threat to us not because of disparity's in war-readiness, but because Russia doesn't have reason to be. We'd be far more valuable as partners than subjects which is why the USA goes all-in on making sure that never happens.
I don't think Ukraine can trust the USA's firm handshake gentleman's agreement. History amply proves that. The agreement as written, i.e. without any security guarantees, is an agreement that would only be enforced at the will of the party that had the monopoly on force. I.e. the USA. Ukraine needs security guarantees. You suggest the deal is a framework that opens up the door to such things later on? No, you don't give up the only bargaining chip you have in the hopes that you'll get a better deal later when you have nothing left to bargain with. Especially to a New York style businessman like Trump. Trump cares about one thing and one thing only - American interests. I respect that. But I'm not American so his interests are not mine. Nor the average Ukranian's. They'd be better off negotiating with Russia directly and they can only do that if they're not actually a vassal of the USA, oddly enough.
People can't have this both ways. America can't be the saviour and the cause, it can't be the benefactor and the mugger; and as regards Europe, we can't say "Russia isn't trying to invade Europe" and "Europe is defenceless without daddy USA". Europe needs to get its act together, no doubt about that. But for eighty years its the USA's patronage which has largely prevented it doing so. Nobody here should be naive enough not to see the USA's globohomo puppet strings in the EU and Britain. The fact that the USA has had a localised and potentially temporary shaking off of the more social-progressive aspects of globohomo doesn't make that country not the source of it. The USA under Trump wants to ramp down its military spending (allegedly) and focus more on a defensive military. Well that works for the EU too. We don't need to spend equivalent to the USA to cover the shortfall because the USA is focused on enforcing global hegemony and needs to be able to threaten worldwide. Europe just needs to be prickly enough that it's more valuable to trade with us than to get into a conflict. That's a lot cheaper. Especially as at least some of our nuclear weapons probably still work.
The idea of pinning all this on Zelenksy, who is after all an actor and subject to some pretty dangerous forces behind him, is clearly of tremendous appeal to some, though.
