By Zachary Paikin & Mark Episkopos, Responsible Statecraft, 1/2/24

As the incoming Trump administration prepares to launch negotiations aimed at ending the current phase of hostilities between Russia and Ukraine, the question of security guarantees is certain to feature prominently in talks.

Talk of security guarantees is nothing new — indeed, it has underscored much of the drama that has unfolded since Russia’s initial military buildup in 2021. Moscow insisted that the United States and NATO undertake legally binding obligations in its two “draft treaties,” published on the eve of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, aimed at guaranteeing Ukraine’s neutrality and rolling back NATO forces in Central and Eastern Europe to where they were prior to the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act. Kyiv, for its part, naturally wants ironclad measures that can ensure it will not fall victim to another war of aggression in the years ahead.

To some extent, however, this is all déjà vu. Thirty years ago last month, the Budapest Memorandum was signed.

Aimed at providing security assurances to Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan in exchange for their entry into the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Budapest Memorandum committed Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom to abstain from military and economic coercion against these three newly independent post-Soviet states. Its lessons offer important clues for how to bring peace to what has tragically become a war-torn region.

The memorandum has become the source of considerable mythmaking following Russia’s brazen violation of Ukrainian sovereignty on February 24, 2022 (though some have asserted that the United States was the first to violate the memorandum with its sanctions against Belarus). Most notably, Atlanticists and pro-Ukrainian advocates often insist that Kyiv gave up its nuclear weapons — the ultimate deterrent and guarantee of one’s own security — in exchange for promises that its borders would be respected.

Of course, these missiles were Soviet — they were never functionally Ukrainian and were beyond Kyiv’s ability to maintain. Lost even more often in this discussion is the fact that the newly minted Ukrainian state prohibited itself from accepting, producing or acquiring nuclear weapons in its 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty, the same declaration in which Kyiv announced its “intention of becoming a permanently neutral state.”

Famously, the memorandum offered Ukraine security assurances rather than legally binding security guarantees, a distinction explicitly stressed by American diplomats during the talks. Indeed, the memorandum was never approved by the U.S. Senate, as treaties must be, because it did not proffer any security guarantees to Ukraine. Nor did it commit the U.S. — or any other signatory — to any specific punitive action in the event of aggression against Ukraine, affirming instead a “commitment to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance” to Kyiv in case of an armed attack.

Given the history of the drafting process, Washington cannot be accused of pulling a fast one on Ukraine with ambiguous language or by using terms that may have been lost in translation. Simply put, the United States has never promised to fight for Ukraine — a position held in 1994 and reaffirmed by the Biden administration since Russia’s full-scale invasion. Any security guarantees offered to Ukraine aimed at bringing current hostilities to a close will be novel ones, not compensation for the West having supposedly failed to uphold its existing obligations.

In this context, Western states will need to weigh carefully just how far they are prepared to go, since Russia has demonstrated its willingness to fight for Ukraine while the West — initial suggestions of European peacekeepers aside — has not. French President Emmanuel Macron’s discussion earlier this year of sending European troops to Ukraine to prevent a Russian victory was promptly shut down by Western allies. One could argue that Ukraine’s status as a security “gray area” is what prompted Russia’s invasion, but permanent neutrality is just as plausible a resolution to this dilemma as NATO membership.

But perhaps the greatest lesson to derive from the history of the Budapest Memorandum is that context matters. The memorandum was agreed at a time when relations between Russia and the West were much more favorable (although by the end of 1994, Boris Yeltsin was already warning of the risk of a “cold peace”). The conclusion is that diplomacy — an evolving mixture of deterrence and reassurance — is consistently needed to tend to international relationships to ensure that agreements are upheld. The same will be true when it comes to “guaranteeing” that Russia will never invade Ukraine again.

By contrast, the Western approach to relations with Russia in the post-Cold War era has often been more legalistic than diplomatic — “throwing the book” at Moscow by pointing out the alleged ways in which it has failed to live up to its international commitments. Yet Kyiv was all too happy not to implement the Minsk agreements, which brought the initial rounds of fighting in the Donbas conflict to a halt, using the intervening years between 2015 and 2022 to strengthen its hand. Similarly, Moscow believed that the post-Cold War status quo was imposed upon it at a time of national weakness — something it sought to rectify by way of its “draft treaties.”

It is easy to say pacta sunt servanda, that agreements must be kept. But this requires building and maintaining trust. Doing so will require all sides to stop airing their tired narratives in public — such as when Moscow dismisses the perspectives of Central and Eastern European states as Russophobic or when Western countries pointlessly insist that NATO expansion is directed against no one — and recognize one another’s security concerns as legitimate.

By Daniel Davis, 1945, 12/31/24

Daniel L. Davis is a four-time combat veteran, retired Army Lt.Col. at Defense Priorities and host of the Daniel Davis Deep Dive show on YouTube.

Donald Trump has been clear since the early part of his presidential campaign that he would end the Ukraine war “in one day.”

He has been even more emphatic about seeking a negotiated settlement since winning the election.

But now, barely three weeks before assuming office, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has publicly put the kibosh on the plan advocated by Trump’s Special Envoy to Ukraine and Russia, retired General Kieth Kellogg.

What does that rejection signal for the likely ending of the Russia-Ukraine War?

The Ukraine War Headed Into 2025: What Happens Now?

Short answer: it’s not suitable for Kyiv – but even that ‘ugly’ deal is better than the alternative: continuing to fight until the Ukrainian Army suffers an outright military defeat in the field.

Here’s the sober truth: too few in the West (and especially in Washington) are still unable or unwilling to contemplate: the war is already lost for Ukraine, and there is nothing militarily that can be done to avert that outcome now. The best that can be done for the Ukrainian side is to conclude the war on the best of the ugly terms Trump can muster for Ukraine.

It is crucial Gen. Kellogg and Trump, along with his entire national security team, understand the ground-truth realities of this war before entering negotiations. 

Thus far, they have not.

According to an analysis of the Kellogg Plan, Trump would seek to force Russia to the negotiation table by a series of carrots and sticks, starting with a ceasefire and then negotiations to end the fighting.

Key to the Kellogg plan is to postpone the thorny issue of NATO membership for Ukraine by a decade or more and the “concession” of allowing Russia to keep the territories it possesses upon the assumption of negotiations.

It would also offer a series of bilateral security guarantees for Ukraine and keep pressure on Russia by continuing to provide military aid to Ukraine until a deal is reached. British advocates have also offered U.K. troops as possible peacekeepers to patrol the final deal.

However, there is a significant problem with these plans: they assume the Russians would submit to such pressures and agree to the concessions.

They will almost certainly do neither.

Russia Response to the Ukraine Peace Plan: Bad News

On Monday, Lavrov rejected some of the key provisions, saying the Russians “are certainly not satisfied with the proposals sounding on behalf of representatives of the president-elect’s team.”

Last week, Lavrov said any talk of a ceasefire was a “path to nowhere” and that the Russian side would not consider one. What they would consider, he said, is what Putin declared on June 14th when he said the war could end if several key conditions were met.

These include the complete surrender of the four oblasts Russia annexed in 2022, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, the declaration of no NATO membership ever for Ukraine, and security guarantees for Russia. Putin has said he is not interested in a ceasefire because he claims NATO would merely use the time to re-arm and retrain Ukraine’s Army and resume the fighting.

Further, an examination of the battle map shows significant portions of those four oblasts still under Ukrainian control. To reach a deal under Russia’s position, Ukraine would have to give up significant swaths of its territory that it had not lost to Russia.

That means to end the war on diplomatic terms the Russians say they would accept, Trump would have to agree to a deal that surrenders even more Ukrainian territory and publicly state Ukraine will never be admitted to NATO – both highly emotional issues that presently no one in the West or Ukraine will contemplate. Here’s the massive problem for Trump and Ukraine: these aren’t ‘maximalist’ desires on Russia’s part; they’re entry points for discussions.

Suppose Trump doesn’t agree to these terms. In that case, the Russians will simply continue the war, slowly destroying the Ukrainian Armed Forces, until eventually they capture by force of arms what they’re seeking to obtain by negotiations. Russia can militarily accomplish these objectives, even if at a very high price. And that’s what the Trump team must understand. Putin doesn’t have to negotiate. He can seize what they want by force, and there’s nothing Trump or Zelensky can do to stop them.

By Glenn Diesen, Substack, 12/13/24

The global economy, including capitalism itself, is currently being transformed by a new industrial revolution, as the digital and technological world start to merge with the physical one. Russia’s ability to remain a great power and even to survive as a state will depend on the extent to which it can develop technological sovereignty in the new age.

Technological sovereignty refers to the ability of a nation to have control over its own technological infrastructure. As digital giants increasingly transform and take over crucial parts of the economy, a state must have a solid national digital ecosystem to enjoy industrial and political sovereignty. The objective of technological sovereignty is to enhance the competitiveness of the production process, to elevate the standard of living for citizens, and to reduce dependency on foreign powers to the extent it diminishes political sovereignty.

Russia’s strength is its maturing national digital ecosystem, although its weakness is the apparent absence of a clear technological and economic strategy as it moves forward. Because of this, Russia is unlikely to take a leading innovating role in the world, although a follower strategy would be ideal.

Russia switched from a Marxist economy to a neoliberal economic model in the 1990s and has since pursued course correction towards a not clearly defined strategy policy of technological sovereignty. While Russia has made great progress in advancing technological sovereignty, one often gets the impression that Russia’s economic model is ad hoc and largely reactive in response to Western economic coercion. What appears to be missing is a wider debate and clearly formulated strategies about Russia’s technological sovereignty as the most important component of its economic and political future.

This article argues that since the Industrial Revolution and the birth of capitalism, there have been concerns over the concentration of economic power domestically, as well as concerns over excessive dependency on foreign actors. The ability of a state to resolve these issues depends on the strength of its technological sovereignty.

The Domestic Economy: The Distribution of Wealth and Competitiveness

With each new technology that increases productivity, the subsequent increased income will be concentrated in the hands of the capital owners. If left unresolved, this may eventually lead to economic hardship, societal fragmentation and political instability. This challenge posed by technological innovations were also acknowledged by liberal economists, such as David Ricardo:

“My mistake arose from the supposition, that whenever the net income of a society increased, its gross income would also increase; I now, however, see reason to be satisfied that the one fund, from which landlords and capitalists derive their revenue, may increase, while the other, that upon which the labouring class mainly depend, may diminish”.[1]

This trend is exacerbated by rent-seeking, in which actors who hold existing resources or favourable market conditions can extract wealth without adding reciprocal value to production. In the age of economic neoliberalism, it is worth remembering that liberal economists such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill all recognised the need to limit the power of the rentier class in order for capitalism to function.

An ideal and stable capitalist system would aim to reduce the concentration of wealth, improve the standard of living for people, and increase economic competitiveness by taxing rent-seekers and use the funds to develop infrastructure. During the rise of America’s version of industrial capitalism in the 19th century, government-funded infrastructure and education development improved the standard of living for many and made industries more competitive in international markets, which ideally could have been funded by taxing the rentier class.

Landlords, banks, and monopolies are the most common examples of rent-seekers, which lay the foundation for an oligarchic class that diminishes economic competitiveness by extracting wealth from the production process. Digital giants can fall within all three categories as digital platforms provide the “land” for digital services, they increasingly become providers of banking and financial services, and digital giants have a proclivity for monopolies.

Digital giants naturally form monopolies due to limited ability for diversification and the convenience of having one platform as a shared marketplace. Capital-intensive monopolies emerge due to high fixed costs and low variable costs of establishing and expanding digital platforms, which resembles the economic thinking that led to the creation of 19th-century railway monopolies. The high fixed cost includes the high processing power and access to an abundance of data, while the variable cost of operating in the digital realm is minimal. Subsequently, digital monopolies emerge due to the high entry barrier for competitors and the incentivise for predatory pricing by the dominant company.

Digital giants represent the key infrastructure that can either function as a public utility to increase the standard of living and increase competitiveness, or as rent-seeking monopolies that undermine capitalism. Amazon as a digital platform made over $50 billion in sales in the EU in 2022 and paid zero tax, just like it had the year before. Similarly, Uber is a platform that connects providers (drivers) and consumers (passengers), which results in a large profit for the company that derives from the platform. Furthermore, the data that acts as the lifeblood for the development of AI, is also extracted and sent across the Atlantic.

Digital giants have become the largest companies in the world, with an immense concentration of wealth as there is no need for a large workforce. Furthermore, programming jobs are often outsourced to a global pool of freelancers or replaced with temporary and contract jobs. The “gig economy” is ushering in an era of neo-feudalism in which today’s labourers become the new serfs. As new technology intensifies the concentration of wealth, some national control over the tech giants is becoming much needed. All the largest digital platforms in Europe are American, which is why Europe’s economic future and ambitions for political autonomy will deteriorate over the next few years.

Tech giants will adopt even greater monopolistic tendencies and subsequent rent-seeking abilities due to their economic scope; leadership in one industry provide a competitive advantage in seemingly unrelated industries. Ricardo’s principle of comparative advantage is turned on its head as it becomes a competitive advantage to do everything in today’s day and age. Digital giants are more capable of using shared technological infrastructure, common development and design processes, complementary data analytics, and overall synergy effects. A new economy is emerging in which digital companies begin to absorb entire industries. Case in point, in both China and Russia: domestic digital companies have launched self-driving cars, taken over large parts of the taxi industry, food delivery and even launched their own payment systems.

In the Fourth Industrial Revolution, digital giants are becoming even more powerful rent-seekers. The Fourth Industrial Revolution can largely be defined by the digital world manipulating the physical world with self-driving cars, automation, robotics, the Internet of Things, Virtual Reality, additive manufacturing, drones, smart cities, smart infrastructure, blockchain, digital farming, biotechnology and digital health solutions. With artificial intelligence, every aspect of the economy and society will be revolutionised, and the failure to establish a domestic digital ecosystem will result in technological colonisation by foreign powers.

The International Economy: Technological Sovereignty and Political Independence

Industrial capitalism of the 19th century linked industrialisation to nation-building as excessive dependence on foreign technology and manufactured goods undermined political sovereignty. Economic interdependence is required to increase economic efficiency and prosperity, yet the political consequence of interdependence is some loss of autonomy and some gain of political influence. States subsequently seek to manipulate the symmetry of interdependence by reducing one’s own dependence on others and increasing the reliance of others on one’s own economy.

Geoeconomics is largely about manipulating the symmetry of economic interdependence as it enables a state to increase both its autonomy and influence. Advanced technology is at the core of strategic industries, given the reduced ability to diversify, which implies higher revenue and dependence. Friedrich List aptly argued that the logic of economic liberalism for market efficiency must be balanced by the political realism of the world being divided into sovereign states: “As long as the division of the human race into independent nations exists, the political economy will as often be at variance with cosmopolitan principles”.[2]

Britain’s hegemonic strategy of the 19th century was, to a larger extent, dependent on a monopolistic position in manufacturing, which produced high revenues and political influence. Barriers to entry, intellectual property rights protection, and anti-competitive practices can be considered rent-seeking activities in which the technological hegemon’s activities result in income. Furthermore, technological hegemony creates asymmetrical interdependence in which access to vital technology can be converted into political influence.

Britain repealed its Corn Laws in 1846, as free trade was instrumental in cementing technological and industrial leadership. Under free trade, Britain’s mature industries (high quality, low cost) could outcompete the infant industries (low quality, high cost) of other countries. Free trade was thus seen as a policy to saturate foreign markets with its manufactured goods and thus obstruct their industrialisation. As argued in the British parliament, with free trade “foreign nations would become valuable Colonies to us, without imposing on us the responsibility of governing them”.[3] David Ricardo’s concept of comparative advantage similarly envisioned that the technological competency of manufacturing would be concentrated in Britain, while the rest of the world could compete for the export of agricultural produce: “It is this principle [comparative advantage] which determines that wine shall be made in France and Portugal, that corn shall be grown in America and Poland, and that hardware and other goods shall be manufactured in England”.[4]

Alexander Hamilton’s Report on Manufacturers laid the foundation for the American System in which the government used protectionist means to industrialise as excessive dependence on Britain would undermine America’s political independence. The lessons learned from the American system were also found in Germany, largely through the work of Friedrich List, who warned against becoming Britain’s technological colony by failing to industrialise: “The mother nation supplies the colonies with manufactured goods and obtains in return their surplus produce of agricultural products and raw materials.[5]

Following the destruction of China in the Opium Wars, Japan also realized that technological sovereignty and industrialisation were required conditions for political independence. Erasmus Peshine Smith, a second-generation economic nationalist supporting the American system, served as an advisor to the Japanese Emperor in the 1870s following the Meiji restoration to assist with the development of a Japanese version of the American system to preserve Japan’s sovereignty.[6]

Russia learned a similar lesson after its defeat in the Crimean War in 1856, largely due to its lack of industrialisation. The subsequent Great Reforms starting in the 1860s eventually led to the industrial policies of Sergey Witte in the 1890s that were inspired by Friedrich List. The lessons of the past were seemingly forgotten as Russia succumbed to neoliberal economic practices in the 1990s. Under Ricardo’s principle of comparative advantage, Russia de-industrialised by exporting its natural resources and importing industrial goods. Making matters worse, the revenue fuelled a rent-seeking oligarchic class that reflected growing corruption within the country, which could be cultivated by foreign powers.

Russia gradually began to rediscover economic statecraft and reverse the energy curse by instead using its revenue from energy to temporarily subsidize infant industries until they became competitive in international markets. However, many of these policies were a response to economic sanctions and its increasingly problematic relationship with the West.

A Russian Strategy of Technological Preparedness

Russia should not embrace a policy of economic and technological autarchy that would render its industries uncompetitive, yet it should also avoid excessive dependence on foreign technologies. The overarching goal must be to balance technological sovereignty with economic liberalism.

Russia’s leading digital platforms are already Russian, and the objective should be to pursue technological preparedness. While Russia can pursue innovative leadership in certain areas, Russia should pursue a follower strategy of “technological preparedness” in other areas. Technological preparedness entails the capability to replicate and adapt foreign innovations rapidly into its domestic digital ecosystem and control its own data. Imitation is essential because it is unnecessary for every company and country to reinvent the wheel. Technological preparedness requires the technological know-how, domestic technological ecosystems, skilled workforce, and government support required to rapidly adopt new technologies and implement spin-offs.

A follower strategy has certain advantages as more resources can be devoted to implementation. A technological hegemon will seek to slow down technological diffusion and extend the first-mover advantage, while technological followers will seek to encourage faster technology proliferation. The emergence of a multipolar international system subsequently improves Russia’s position.

The guiding objective should be to develop a domestic digital ecosystem in which Russia controls a majority share of the dominant platforms. China is evidently the most important partner for Russia, although technological partnerships with other rising powers such as India would enable Russia to diversify and thus avoid excessive dependence on a more powerful actor. Case in point, Russian digital giants such as Yandex developed a partnership with foreign partners such as Uber in the self-driving car and taxi industry, which even enabled Yandex to eventually buy out Uber’s share.

Throughout history, states have sought to establish a certain degree of national control over strategic industries such as shipping, energy and agriculture due to national security. National control over digital giants is evidently an issue of national security as they transform all areas of the economy and society, concentrate wealth, and create dependencies at an unprecedented level. China is building its superpower status based on technological sovereignty, while Europe discusses digital industrial policies and nationalising AI due to its disruptive impact. The prevailing argument in Washington is that what is good for Silicon Valley must be good for America. Russia should formulate a similar policy to strengthen technological sovereignty.

By Lord Robert Skidelsky, The American Conservative, 1/1/25

Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election of November 2024 has shredded the liberal script about the Ukraine war. That script was to offer unconditional moral and material support for a Ukrainian victory, defined minimally as recovery of the invaded territories of Crimea and Donbass. In Britain, it was considered almost treasonable to suggest otherwise.

Even before Trump’s election, the script had subtly changed into “doing what it takes” to put Ukraine in the best possible bargaining position in peace talks with Russia. This shift recognized that, unless the level of Western support were massively beefed up, Ukraine faced imminent military defeat. In the face of military reverses and with no expectation of further military aid from the Biden administration, President Volodymyr Zelensky too has abandoned his maximalist position and now pins his hopes on diplomatic pressure to induce Russia to negotiate. 

Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 22, 2022, I have been one of a handful of advocates in the UK of a negotiated peace.  On March 3, 2022, I co-signed a letter to the Financial Times with the former British Foreign Secretary David Owen which urged NATO to put forward detailed proposals for a new security pact with Russia. On May 19, 2022, I called for the resumption of the “Ankara peace process” in the same paper.  I didn’t then know that bilateral peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, hosted by the Turkish government, had been aborted by the visit of Britain’s then–prime minister, Boris Johnson, to Kyiv on April 6, promising Ukraine all the help it needed to go on fighting. There were several further peace calls by myself, sometimes in good company, in the next two and half years, with increasing emphasis on the danger of escalation unless peace were quickly secured. But the only front-line British politician who agreed with this line was Nigel Farage, the leader of the Reform Party. From the non-NATO world came peace initiatives from China and Brazil. 

Trump’s second coming will bring about a shift from a passive war policy to an active peace policy. This is bound to bring about a ceasefire, possibly by the spring. That the peace terms remain vague is less important than that the killing will stop. Once stopped it will not easily be restarted. The question is why it has taken so many hundreds of thousands of lives, killed and wounded on both sides, to reach this moment. And what lessons can we learn? 

The most obvious lesson is the importance of diplomacy. All nations have their own story to tell. The clash of their stories can cause or inflame wars.  It is the traditional task of diplomacy to reconcile conflicting stories so that like can live in peace with unlike. The Ukraine war resulted from the catastrophic failure of diplomacy—in fact the disappearance of the global class of diplomats—leaving the leaders of belligerent countries free to pursue their ambitions without accurate knowledge of others’ reactions. In the run up to the invasion of 2022, Putin’s pronouncements looked too much like sabre-rattling; the United States and its NATO allies made little effort to try to settle the security issue which lay at the heart of the conflict with Russia. After Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014, there was a complete breakdown of trust. Chancellor Angela Merkel is reported to have said to Vladimir Putin: Can you guarantee that you will not attempt to make further changes of borders? To which the Russian president is said to have replied: Can you guarantee that NATO will not expand further?

It is generally believed in the West that Putin’s stated fear of NATO’s eastward expansion was simply an excuse for Russia to try to regain lands it had lost with the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is too simple. For centuries Russia had seen these “lost lands”—the Baltic states, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia—as part of its empire’s shield against foreign invaders. Putin’s story is not just propaganda. Its roots are to be found in the mixture of 19th-century Russian nationalism and the geographic vulnerability of the Tsarist empire. 

Most of us in the West simply cannot recognize in NATO the “encircling claws” of Borodin’s Prince Igor, or the “insidious enemy” of Prokofiev’s opera War and Peace. NATO, we insist, is a purely defensive organization; countries join to defend themselves against Russia, not to attack it. This, however, is not the general view of NATO in the world outside the alliance, where its extension is largely, though not universally, viewed as an extension of Western imperialism.  The Russian Federation’s hostility to the eastward expansion of NATO has been the most consistent thread in its foreign policy in the quarter century since the collapse of the Soviet Union. How could we in the West, with the notable exception of diplomats like George Kennan and Henry Kissinger, not have understood that when Russia had regained strength this was one wrong it would seek to put right?  

We have here two opposing stories, each with some claim to truth, and no diplomatic mechanism for reconciling them. 

Britain has been Biden’s cheerleader in stoking the Russia–Ukraine war. We must turn to history to understand why. Modern Britain has never been truly “isolationist” because, until well into the 20th century, it had a world empire that needed defending. Outlining the principles of British foreign policy in 1852, the Foreign Secretary Lord Granville wrote that “it is the duty and the interest of this country, having possessions scattered over the whole world, and priding itself on its advanced state of civilization, to encourage moral, intellectual and physical progress among all other nations.” This self-image of Britain as both global policeman and mentor bred a conflict between the muscular and pacifist wings of British liberalism, with non-interventionists like John Bright and Richard Cobden arguing that it was free trade which would civilize the world and the interventionists saying that free trade was only possible in a world made civil by British power and British values. What is striking today is the collapse of that pacifist tradition

So, when Tony Blair, Britain’s Prime Minister said in Chicago in 1999 that “the spread of our values makes us more secure,” he was proclaiming a continuing mission of British foreign policy. The claim to the higher moral ground of democracy and human rights would justify attempts to spread western values to those areas that remained mired in dictatorship and autocracy. Arguably Britain’s most successful export was the export of its moral evangelism  to the United States as America emerged from its isolationism.

Nevertheless, this historical story does not exhaust the causes of Britain’s exceptional belligerence.

One needs to add the shame of the British establishment over the Munich Agreement of 1938, by which Britain ceded the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia to Hitler and thereby helped unleash the Second World War. One can hardly overstate the strength of Britain’s Munich reflex. Thus, when the Egyptian leader Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956, both Prime Minister Anthony Eden and the Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell were quick to compare him to Hitler. And the Tory MP Sir Robert Boothby provided the rationale for a military response, which reasoning also underlies the current British reaction to Putin: “If we were to allow him [Nasser] to get away with it, it would be a damaging blow to the whole concept of international law.” Where does the devil stop?

The comparison of Putin with Hitler comes from a sweeping generalization that sees democracy as the peaceful form of the state and autocracy as its warlike form. Against this we should counterpose the notably “realist” summary of historian A.J.P. Taylor: “Bismarck fought ‘necessary’ wars and killed thousands; the idealists of the twentieth century fought ‘just’ wars and killed millions.” It’s the idealists who are more likely to want to win at all costs, the autocrats who want to stop wars before their thrones crumble. 

At some point genuine western admiration for Ukraine’s struggle for its independence has morphed into a proxy war against Russia, with only a tacit bow to Ukraine’s own best interests. The West’s promise of unconditional support for a Ukrainian victory undoubtedly prolonged the war by blinding Ukrainians to the realistic prospect of a limited victory which nevertheless secured genuine independence Unforgivable is the British and American promise to give Ukraine “all it takes” for victory, when they had no intention whatsoever of doing so, Ukraine was sold a pup by Boris Johnson in 2022 and has been bleeding ever since.

Which brings us back to Trump. Both those who applaud and those who attack his approach to international relations describe it as “transactional.” Supporters argue that it will enable Trump to “do deals” with dictators in America’s interest; opponents deplore precisely its lack of a moral dimension. What both sides miss is that peace itself is a moral objective—in Christian teaching, it is the highest good. Pope Francis has frequently called for negotiations to end the Ukraine war, most recently in his Christmas message.  It is the refusal of our hawks and their passive camp-followers to recognize the paramount claims of peace which is the biggest danger facing the world today; Trump offers the most promising escape from an increasingly dangerous future. 

Robert Jacob Alexander Skidelsky is an independent peer of Britain’s House of Lords, and a renowned scholar on Keynesianism.

By Alastair Crooke, Strategic Culture Foundation, 12/23/24

Syria has been disintegrated and pillaged in the name of ‘liberating’ Syrians from the threat of ISIS, which they – Washington – had installed in the first place.

James Jeffrey, former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and Turkey, in a March 2021 interview with PBS Frontline, laid out very plainly the template for what has just happened in Syria this month:

“Syria, given its size, its strategic location, its historical importance, is the pivot point for whether [there can be] an American-managed security system in the region … And so you’ve got this general alliance that is locked in with us. But … the stress point is greatest in Syria”.

Jeffrey explained (in the 2021 interview) why the U.S. shifted its to support to Jolani and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS):

“We got Mike Pompeo to issue a waiver to allow us to give aid to HTS – I received and sent messages to HTS” -The messages coming back from HTS were: “We [HTS] want to be your friend. We’re not terrorists. We’re just fighting Assad””.

The PBS Frontline interviewer asks: The U.S. was “supporting indirectly the armed opposition”? To which Jeffrey responds:

“It was important to us that HTS not disintegrate … our policy was … was to leave HTS alone … And the fact that we haven’t targeted [HTS] ever, the fact that we have never raised our voice to the Turks about their cohabitation with them — in fact, I used this example the last time I was talking to very senior Turks – when they started bitching about this relationship we [the U.S.] have with the SDF [in eastern Syria]”.

“I said to them, “Look, Turkey has always maintained that you want us in northeast Syria, which they do. But you don’t understand. We can’t be in northeast Syria without the platform, because we only have hundreds of troops there”; … I said: “It’s just like you in Idlib …”.

“We want you to be in Idlib, but you can’t be in Idlib without having a platform, and that platform is largely HTS. Now, unlike the SDF, HTS is a UN-designated official terrorist organisation. Have I ever, or has any American official ever, complained to you about what you’re doing there with HTS? No …”.

David Miller, a British academic, has noted that in 2015, prominent Syrian Sunni Muslim scholar, Shaykh al-Yaqoubi (who is anti-Assad), was unconvinced by Jolani’s efforts to rebrand Al Qa’ida as Jabhat al-Nusra. Jolani, in his al-2013 Al-Jazeera interview twice confirmed his allegiance to al-Qa’ida, saying that he received orders from its leader, Dr Ayman [al-Zawahiri] … and those were to not target the West. He confirmed his own position as being that of hardline intolerance toward those who practiced a ‘heretical’ Islam.

Miller comments:

“While ISIS put on suits; allowed Syria to be carved up by the U.S.; preach peace with the Zionist state; want free markets; and cut gas deals with their regional patrons – their ‘true-believers’… in the Sunni identitarian diaspora haven’t yet clocked that they’ve been sold out – as was always the plan”.

“In private, the planners of this war in NATO states laugh about sending young Salafi cannon fodder from around the world into a meat grinder. The $2000 salaries are a mere speck of sand compared to the gas and construction wealth that is expected to be returned to Turkish, Qatari, Israeli and American coffers. They killed Palestine for this, and they’ll spend the next 30 years justifying it, based on whatever line the very expensive PR firms hired by the NATO and Gulf states shill to them…The Syrian regime change operation is the rug pull of the century”.

Of course, James Jeffrey’s account was nothing new. Between 1979 and 1992, the CIA spent billions of dollars funding, arming, and training Afghan Mujahideen militia (like Osama bin Laden) in an attempt to bleed the USSR dry by pulling it into a quagmire. It was from the ranks of the Mujahideen that al-Qa’eda emerged.

“And yet, by the 2010s, even as the U.S. was ostensibly at war with al-Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan – it was secretly working with it – in Syria on a plan to overthrow Assad. The CIA spent around $1 billion per year training and arming a wide network of rebel groups to this end. As Jake Sullivan, told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a leaked 2012 email, “AQ [al-Qaeda] is on our side in Syria”, as Alan Macleod observes in Consortium News.

Turkish press accounts largely confirm this Jeffrey scenario was the current gameplan: Ömer Önhon, former senior Ambassador and Deputy Under-Secretary in charge of Middle East and Asia at the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, writes that:

“the operation to overthrow Assad’s regime in Syria was meticulously planned for over a year, with coordinated involvement from Turkey, the United States, and several other nations. Through various statements it has become clear that Assad’s departure resulted from an intricate web of agreements between virtually all stakeholders. Whilst HTS is actively working to rebrand itself – this transformation remains to be proven.”

This HTS story has a precedent: In the summer following Israel’s 2006 (unsuccessful) war on Hizbullah, Dick Cheney sat in his office loudly bemoaning Hizbullah’s continuing strength; and worse still, that it seemed to him that Iran had been the primary beneficiary from the U.S. 2003 Iraq war.

Cheney’s guest – the then Saudi Intelligence Chief, Prince Bandar – vigorously concurred (as chronicled by John Hannah, who participated in the meeting) and, to general surprise, Prince Bandar proclaimed that Iran yet could be cut to size: Syria was the ‘weak’ link that could be collapsed via an Islamist insurgency. Cheney’s initial scepticism turned to elation as Bandar said that U.S. involvement might be unnecessary. He – Bandar – would orchestrate and manage the project: ‘Leave it to me’, he said. Bandar separately told John Hannah: “The King knows that other than the collapse of the Islamic Republic itself, nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria”.

Well … that first effort did not succeed. It led to bloody civil war, but ultimately President Assad’s government survived.

So, Jeffrey was simply reiterating in 202 its sequel: the original Wahabbi-led ‘rug pull’ on Syria by the Gulf was simply to be reverse engineered into a HTS hit by a rebranded amalgam of various militia made up primarily of former fighters (many not Syrian) from al-Qaeda/al-Nusra and ISIS, directed – in this second iteration – by Turkish Intelligence and financed by Qatar.

Syria thus has been disintegrated and pillaged in the name of ‘liberating’ Syrians from the threat of ISIS, which they – Washington – had installed in the first place, and which the U.S. then used to justify the north-east of Syria’s occupation by U.S. forces. In the same mode, the unspoken part of this plan is to make secular Syria – with its legal system taken from France – ‘Islamic’ (“we will implement Islamic law”) to justify the Israeli attacks and land grabs, which are being presented as ‘defensive measures against jihadists’.

Of course, it is correct that there is likely money to be made from these events. It was never proven, but seismic surveys before the first Syria war began in 2011, seemed to show that there may well be substrata deposits of oil or gas in Syria, beyond the relatively small fields in the north-east. And yes, re-construction will be a bonanza for Turkey’s languishing construction sector.

Syria’s ailing military was no direct military threat to Israel per se. So you may wonder, why are they tearing the place apart? “Israel’s goal here is to basically wreck Syria”, Professor Mearsheimer opines. “It’s not in large part because of Israel, by the way. I think the Americans and the Turks played a much more important role than Israel did – in wrecking Syria”. “The country is wrecked and I don’t know anybody who thinks that the rebels who are now in control in Damascus are going to be able to restore order in that country … From Israel’s point of view, this is a perfectly fine situation”, Mearsheimer adds.

U.S. anti-Russia hawks also hoped that Russia might take the bait of a wrecked Syria to get enmired into a widening Middle East quagmire.

All of which takes us directly back to Jeffrey’s statement: “Syria, given its size, its strategic location, its historical importance, is the pivot point for whether [there can be] an American-managed security system in the region …”.

Syria has been from the outset – from 1949 – ‘the balancer’ to Israel in the region. That is now over, leaving only Iran to balance the Israeli thrust to a ‘Greater Israel’. It is no surprise then that the Israelis are agitating for the Americans to join with them in another orgy of destruction – this time to be visited on Iran.

Did Russia have foreknowledge of what was afoot in Idlib, and the orchestration of a transition of power? Of course! The very effective Russian services must have known, as this Syria project has been ongoing since the mid 1970s (through the Hudson Institute and Senator Scoop Jackson).

Assad had been signalling over the last four years, his desperate plan with Saudi, UAE and Egypt to a move towards a more pro-Israeli/pro-Western stance, in the hope of normalising with Washington and thereby gaining some sanctions relief.

Assad’s ploy failed – and Syria likely will emerge as ‘Greek tragedy’ whereby tragedy evolves as actors play out their own natures. Quiescent ethnic and sectarian tensions likely will re-kindle; wildfires will catch. The lid is off. And Russia was never going to take the bait of plunging in.

The U.S.-Israeli alliance has long wanted Syria. And now, they have got it. Any concomitant mayhem is down to them. Yes, the U.S. – in theory – may applaud itself for achieving more of “an American managed security [and energy dominant flow] system”.

But the U.S. ruling strata, however, were never going to let Europe be energy independent. The U.S. needs West Asia’s energy assets for itself – to collateralise its debt-overload. European states are left to tumble, as the fiscal crunch bites and European growth tails away.

Others may see a collateral scenario – that a conflicted and possibly re-radicalised Middle East will inflict further strain onto the already ‘livid’ domestic social tensions in Europe.

Israel nonetheless is relishing its ‘win’. Winning what? Former IDF Chief of Staff and Defence Minister ‘Bogie’ Ya’alon puts it this way:

“The current Israeli government’s path is to conquer, annex, commit ethnic cleansing … and to establish Jewish settlements. Polls show some 70% of Israelis, sometimes more, support this – AND for Israel to be a liberal democracy”.

“This [contradictory] path will lead us to destruction”, he concludes.

What other can be the final end to this Zionist project? There are more than seven million Palestinians between the ‘River and the Sea’. Are they all to vanish from the map?

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Alastair Crooke is a former British diplomat, founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum.