The times are out of joint. That is an understatement, of course. But there's no other way of looking at the situation after the bust-up which took place at the White House last week. It is something which ought not to have happened. What happened was bizarre, with President Trump and Vice President Vance taking it in turns to berate President Zelensky in the full presence of the media. There has hardly ever been a time in living memory of a visiting head of state subjected to such indignity by his hosts.
And it all began with a newsman, conveniently positioned near Trump, asking Zelensky why he was not attired in a suit. That was uncalled for and certainly premeditated. No reporter has the moral authority or should have the affront for that matter to question a dignitary on his attire, but this newsman did it. It certainly did not enhance his reputation. And it was JD Vance, the young American Vice President, who took over from there. He wondered loudly why the Ukraine leader had not demonstrated any gratitude for American support for his country in its war against Russia.
And then Donald Trump had his cue. He went on speaking over Zelensky, who was unable to get in a word edgeways. It is to the Ukrainian leader's credit that he did not lose his temper even as Trump lost his. Zelensky was fully aware of how the American President regarded him --- as a dictator holding on to power without going through an election. He also knew of the antipathy Trump's Washington had for Ukraine, a reason being the strong support Kyiv had garnered from Europe and Canada in the last three years of the military conflict with Russia. Trump accused Zelensky of gambling with World War Three, which was not true. He was indignant that Zelensky was disrespecting the United States (US) when the exact opposite was true. It was Trump and Vance subjecting Zelensky to disrespect.
In the past, there have been foreign visitors, Presidents and Prime Ministers and Foreign Ministers, who have met US Presidents in the Oval Office, exchanged pleasantries before engaging in hard closed-door negotiations. Political scruples and diplomatic convention did not allow those negotiations to dwindle into shouting matches in public. John F Kennedy knew in 1962 in advance of the Soviet missiles in Cuba and yet carried on a decent conversation with the visiting Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. President Lyndon Johnson was unhappy that British Prime Minister Harold Wilson was not amenable to the idea of sending British troops to Vietnam. Their arguments took place away from the public eye.
On Friday last week, it was diplomacy that took a bad beating in Washington. The spectacle, culminating in President Zelensky and his delegation being asked to leave the White House, left an entire world disbelieving, unable to imagine that such a scandal had indeed taken place. And then the world spoke up, for Zelensky. French President Emmanuel Macron spoke for millions around the globe when he laid out the facts in stark, unapologetic terms: in a conflict which has gone on for three years, Russia is the aggressor, Ukraine the victim. Much as one might be critical of Ukraine's NATO ambitions and condemn the systematic way in which Moscow's adversaries have been inching their way to Russian borders, the truth is one that cannot be upended. It is that President Vladimir Putin sent his army into Ukraine in the belief that Kyiv would capitulate in a matter of days.
That has not happened. In these three years, to give Trump his due in his concerns over why nothing was done to bring the conflict to a halt, no diplomatic measures were undertaken towards a resolution of the crisis. The Biden administration, NATO and the European Union (EU) all were adamant that Ukraine be armed, that such arming could well compel Putin to walk back and concede defeat. In reality, Russia has seized chunks of Ukraine and is in little mood to give them up. And with Trump now back in power, Putin knows the pressure of the West on him has been easing to a point where he can hold on to territory his forces have already seized. Assuming Trump compels Ukraine to arrive at a settlement it is uncomfortable with, it will be a situation hardly any different from appeasement of Moscow.
So what are the stakes in the Ukraine situation today? The summit of European leaders convened by Sir Keir Starmer in London on Sunday had really nothing tough on offer. Toughness was not possible because Europe knows that to be tough with Donald Trump would be counter-productive. More crucially, any settlement of the Ukraine-Russia conflict must of necessity have the Americans taking part in the enterprise. President Trump may have decided to cut off all funding and military equipment for Ukraine, but that does not absolve him of his responsibilities in Europe. It is now up to Europe's grandees to persuade Trump, despite the humiliation President Zelensky was subjected to at the White House, to provide leadership in the search for a solution to the conflict. For Europe, for Ukraine's backers, it is an unenviable situation: they are caught between a rock and a hard place.
And from such a position Europe looks to Trump's leadership in the search for a solution to the conflict. It is a job its leaders ought to have done earlier rather than bring conditions to this pass. Now, despite everything that Trump and his team have been saying about Ukraine, despite castigating Joe Biden for everything, it is for Trump to inform the world that on his watch America is not receding into isolation, that it will abandon theatrics in favour of diplomacy in order for a rules-based world to be upheld and promoted. Of course, there is an important caveat: Washington must not begin to believe that a solution to the war can be arrived at by forcing President Zelensky from power. And then there is another caveat: while the Americans might not want Ukraine in NATO, they must at the same time reassure Europe and Ukrainians in particular that there will be iron-clad guarantees of Ukraine's security as an integral part of any solution to the crisis.
Diplomacy must be restored, both in Europe and in the new order Donald Trump and JD Vance have inaugurated in Washington. A lack of it makes for a dangerous world, obviously. Europe is in sore need of a new balance of power.
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