Trump’s senseless capitulation to Putin is a betrayal of Ukraine – and terrible dealmaking | Timothy Garton Ash
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It's a betrayal of Ukraine, Europe, NATO, the western world and America.
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He is a traitor by definition.
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The United States is a second world country.
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How dare you! We are third world at best! And looking at creating fourth and fifth as well.
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I'm assuming you mean this Krasnov.
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He is simply doing whatever will make him the most money, same as always. Musk, Zuckerberg etc who are in boot-step with Trump are doing the same. Capitalism moment.
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It's not necessarily terrible deal making, we might not be privy to what Putin has offered to trump personally in return. Maybe a dacha here, or a casino in Crimea?
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Nah, what he promised him is exactly what we see: $500B in rare earths, every year. Trump's always been a terrible dealer, and this is no exception: he doesn't do back-and-forth, he just tosses his entire hand on the table and says "here's what I want", then bullies you into accepting. If you don't, he'll either harass you, or back out saying YOU sabotaged the deal because you didn't give him what he wanted immediately.
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I accept that the dirty rock I was thinking about voting for would have made a bad deal too by asking for nothing. I admit it. But every once in the entire history of a people, there comes someone who is more idiotic than a dumb rock could ever wish it could have. That's us right there. Best country in the world.... Worst asshole president a country could ever have. We're at 3 years and 10 months to go.
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I’m starting to think European leaders are relived Trump is putting an end to the war as it hit European economies hard, especially in terms of access to cheap energy. They are happy to let Trump take the blame and maintain a facade of moral superiority.
Or maybe I’m completely wrong and the European leaders really believe Russia is an existential threat to Europe, in which case they will now dramatically ramp up support and actually join Ukraine to fight the war against Russia?
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That would be a correct assumption about 3 months into that invasion.
All it takes to disprove that idea right now is to listen to what Macron has been saying, and the guy is a Hard-right Neoliberal whose government is supported by the French Front-Nationale (France's main Far Right party).
By now most of the energetic transition in Europe is either done or the money for it is already invested (with temporary measures in place until the things being built with that money come online), and Europe is already over the peak economic impact point of weaning itself from Russian fossil fuels.
Further, a lot of the forced transition away from Russian fossil fuels was to energy sources which are cheaper or well on their way to become cheaper than fossil fuels, such as electricity from renewable sources. That transition just hadn't happenned before because it costs a good amount money to merelly do the change and people, companies and governments were content to keep on paying just a bit more for Russian gas than for Renewables to avoid paying a big one off amount to transition, but by now that cost is sunk and large parts the Economy have made changes needed to transition (for example, look at how Germans have been replacing their gas house warming systems with things like heat pumps).
At this point there is very little to gain in going back to the suckling from Russia's fossil fuel tit (except perhaps for a handful of Chemical Industry Conglomerates in Germany who had massive profits from using that as inputs for many processes) and in a lot of cases it would actually be a net loss in pure Financial terms (so, if not counting the geostrategical and military risks of giving money to Russia) because the energy sources they use post-transition are already cheaper that even Russian gas and getting cheaper by the year.
Also, lets after 2 years of pretty much all of Eastern Europe as well as the likes of Finland reminding us of what Russia did to them while Russia is trying to do the same to Ukraine, Russian government politicials themselves talking about invading the rest of Europe ("from Vladivostok to Lisbon") and continued coverage of Russian missiles killing civilians in Ukraine who to Europeans "look like us", the idea of Russia as a dangerous out of control beast that Ukraine is holding off from attacking the rest of us is in the minds of the European Public in general, not just politicians, plus like in Canada, European nationalism and anti-Americanism have started ticking up in Europe in response to Trump, so just bending over to Trump and Putin and giving Russia a win in Ukraine wouldn't be a good career move for mainstream European politicians and those who might go for it - Far-Right parties in Europe - mainly get stuck at just over 20%, even in countries like The Netherlands and France where they've been present for decades, so they're not going to be in a position to work in the interests of Russia and Trump's America and if they tried to do it via public pressure, they would open themselves to accusations of being Traitors To The Nation from their very own natural supporters, fragmenting the Far-Right.
Then there's also all the extra military investment all over Europe that was started with Ukraine as a justification, which makes going back on the justification for all the money already spent and all the pro-military talk a pretty dangerous career move for any politician that did it.
But yeah, as I said at the start, had this happenned in the very beginning of the war, I agree with you that European politicians would have been relieved and just concede more of Ukrainian Sovereignty to Russia, same as they did back when Russia invaded and took Crimea from Ukraine.
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I do not agree with you that European countries have replaced Russian energy with cheap energies. You said some are on their way to become cheaper, which might not be anytime soon.
Germany is heavily reliant on cheap energy. The country has been in recession since the war started. I would not be surprised if it goes back to cheap Russian gas soon.
There were peace talks in March April 2022 that were reportedly close to find an agreement to stop the war but Boris Johnson encouraged Zelenskyy to give up the negotiations and fight instead, promising him lots of support.
Now, let’s say you are right, why aren’t the European countries ramping up support for Ukraine and joining them in the war?
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Germany has definitely been spending money in becoming independent from Russia on the energy front, though indeed whether they've right now passed the peak in terms of cost for their Economy and on the other side of that specific hill or not, is something that only Historians will be able to tell in some years' time, and neither you nor I can prove it either way.
However Germany is not the whole of Europe.
In fact for all its size as a nation Germany is only about 5% of Europe (8% of the EU) both in number of people and economically. Further, it was one of the most deeply tangled with Russia and is one of the most behind in becoming independent of Russian hydrocarbons (all of which probably explains why Germany was so hesitant to start supporting Ukraine at the beginning of the Invasion and in entering every new stage of military support - like sending tanks and sending fighter jets - since, and why in proportion to their GDP their support to Ukraine is at best mild (the really winners how much of their GDP did they spend in supporting Ukraine are all Eastern European nations).
You might have had a good point in your original statement if you wrote "German leaders" but you didn't, you wrote "European leaders" and no matter how good the case you make for German alone, that's not the same as all of Europe, and Germany being in the worst possible starting position of all of Europe (except perhaps Hungary) when it comes to dependency on Russian fossil fuels means that even if you had actually proven a willingness in the German political class to "just let Russia have it" when it comes to the Russian invasion of Ukraine because of Economic reasons (which you didn't, although you did make a good case for it to be so), that has no relevance for the other 95% of Europe, of which already the leaders of two large countries - France and the UK - who together easily add up up to more than Germany have very loudly voiced their wish of continuing to support Ukraine and started testing the waters with Public Opinion on sending their own troops there, with most of the Eastern European nations and even the Scandinavian nations having also loudly confirmed their continued support.
Back during the Leave referendum campaign, the Brexiters repeatedly claimed that the UK after leaving was going to still get full access to the single market in almost as good conditions as an EU member, but without obligations such as Free Movement "because German car makers will make the EU do it as the UK is such a large percentage of their Revenue". Ultimately what was proven was that by itself the Economic interest of Germany and its large companies won't move the whole of the EU to do something that's against the interests of most of its nations unless there is a large block of countries predisposed to it, and in this the leaders of most EU nations have come out strongly in favor of continued support of Ukraine, and even the newly elected German Chancellor has made statements to that end (though certainly not as strong as the likes of Macron). Given the proportion of Europe who are EU members, even if all the non-EU European nations sided with Russia (as the likes of Servia have done) it would still be a small fraction of the total and far from enough to justify your broad statement about what "European leader" might be feeling.
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I would like to point out that Germany represents about 25% of the EU GDP and as such has carries more weight than most countries in the union. Several European countries have already ruled out joining the UK and France is sending troops, which would only be sent after a peace agreement has been concluded; That's a far cry from actually sending troops today to help Ukrainian soldiers to fight Russia.
