TRICKY TRUMP CARD
Tricky Trump card
The US president’s overtures to Vladimir Putin, overriding concerns of established allies over the war in Ukraine, could be a means to a more sweeping geopolitical end, warns Amit Agnihotri.
US president Donald Trump is urgently trying to end the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. But the move has left the world speculatingas to whether he is simply trying to keep an election promise, or attempting to break the China-Russia axis, a much bigger geopolitical threat for America.
The war started in 2022, when Russia invaded its neighbour Ukraine, and has been raging ever since, despite several attempts to end it. The conflict, which has impacted so many Ukrainian and Russian lives, has divided the world like never before and revived the threat of a third world war.
If Trump’s moves were about keeping an election promise and playing the peacenik, the crude manner in which Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was bulldozed into accepting the peace plan gave the world an indication of the way negotiations would proceed in the days to come.
Trump’s warning that he was ready to drop Zelensky if he backed out showed the US president was eager to reach out to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, even at the cost of overriding the concerns of key allies including the UK, Canada and the European Union, and exposing the gaps in the stance of the collective West.
No wonder the allies were quick to convey their displeasure over Trump reaching out to the aggressor in this conflict, and came out to express solidarity with a beleaguered Zelensky, who was humiliated in the Oval Office in the full glare of the media.
The Trump administration’s single point argument was that the Ukraine war needed to end, and even a temporary truce would be welcome at this stage.That left everyone wondering: if peace in Eurasia is such a noble idea, surely another major conflict – the one raging in Gaza since October 2023 – also deserves the US president’s attention, as it has the potential to further incinerate a volatile West Asia.
The Gaza war was reignited in October 2023 when Hamas launched a sudden attack on Israel and killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians. They also captured 251 hostages. Israel’s retaliatory attacks have since taken the lives of over 48,000 Palestinians and injured over 1.12 lakh, according to reports.
Trump was trying to bring Putin closer so that he could isolate Chinese president Xi Jinping
After a brief interlude, when a ceasefire started on January 19, Israel resumed attacks on the Palestinians in March as the deal went sour over extending the agreement and release of hostages held by Hamas.
Interestingly, Israel resumed the attacks only after due consultations with the Trump administration. Not only was Trump’s approach to the two conflicts very different; so too was his treatment of the respective heads of Israel and Ukraine at the White House.
The courtesies extended to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the chief US collaborator in West Asia, were markedly different from the bullying conduct shown towards Zelensky, who appeared to be a mere pawn in the Eurasian war, which seems to be a replay of the America versus Russia power tussle of the Cold War era.
Soon certain realities began to emerge, as Trump’s peace plan appeared to focus far beyond the impact of Russian aggression in Eurasia, and was more about countering an expansionist China in the strategic Indo-pacific region, home to major shipping lanes across the world.
Trump was trying to bring Putin closer so that he could isolate Chinese president Xi Jinping and break the Xi-Putin bonhomie, forged following the Ukraine war, when an economically powerful China bailed out Russia, heavily hit by Western sanctions. The Beijing-Moscow friendship later extended to North Korea and Iran, posing a serious threat to American supremacy worldwide.
After a brief interlude, Israel resumed attacks on the Palestinians in March
For his part, Putin accepted Trump’s proposal after the two leaders discussed the issue during aphone conversation and agreed upon a limited ceasefire, covering energy and infrastructure installations in both Russia and Ukraine. However,other serious issues such as a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea were to be hammered out only during peace talks, which were to be hosted by America’s West Asian ally Saudi Arabia.
With both sides adopting a hard posture, it seemed the US negotiators would face some tough times in Riyadh. Zelensky wanted security guarantees from the US; Putin, meanwhile, wanted Ukraine to be demilitarised, to drop its ambition to join NATO, and for Moscow to keep the areas it had seized during the war.
As Trump tried to wean Putin away from his war in Ukraine, Russia gave Washington a jolt by joining hands with China in supporting Iran, which is once again in the US’ crosshairs for pursuing a nuclear weapons agenda.
The strength of the China-Russia bond showed at a time when Trump was warning the Islamic republic’s leadership to curtail its nuclear program and revive a deal that he himself had abandoned earlier, during his first term as president.
In 2015, Iran had signed a deal with the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany,to the effect that it would control its nuclear program if international sanctions against Tehran were lifted.
In 2018, during his first presidential term, Trump unilaterally pulled out of the deal but is now pressing Iran to revive it. The issue has been a bone of contention in West Asia, with the US and Israel accusing Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons, a charge denied by Tehran.
Moreover, joint naval drills conducted by Iran, Russia and China in the Gulf of Oman in March have further added to US woes.
Yet, when Trump called Putin in the first days of his second presidential term, they shared the view that Iran should never be in a position to destroy Israel. The two leaders also agreed that improved bilateral relations between the United States and Russia had a huge upside.
That was not all. As Trump got busy with his Eurasian peace plan, America’s allies the UK, Europe and Canada pulled together to counter the geopolitical impact of the US-Russia deal. Wary of Moscow’s ‘real’ intentions, the allies began working out a coalition of the willing, which would provide a peacekeeping force in Ukraine, should the American deal with Moscow gather pace.
They also started working on the finances. The EU council has approved $3.8bn more in financial assistance to Ukraine, totalling $21bn in aid to Kyiv over the past year. Now US vice president JD Vance had asked NATO to fend for itself.
The allies noted that Trump wanted to pull out of the Ukraine war to divert funds towards anti-China operations in the Indo-Pacific. Yet at the same time, Trump attempted to extract a deal from Zelensky to allow America to mine rare earths in the war-torn nation.
That, in many ways, encapsulates the two different approaches that Trump has adopted in dealing with two global hotspots,many miles apart but with a similar human impact and cost.
Amit Agnihotri is a Delhi-based journalist who has worked with several national newspapers and focuses on politics and policy issues