MARK ALMOND
It’ll be the endgame for brave Ukraine if Trump tries to checkmate the Beijing-Moscow axis
For Donald Trump Ukraine is just one piece on the international chessboard
PRESIDENT-ELECT Donald Trump pledged on the campaign trail that he would settle the Ukraine war “within 24 hours” of taking office.
While he won’t be sworn in until January, it seemed as if he was making good on that vow when he apparently took a call from Russia’s Vladimir Putin last week and warned him not to escalate the war.
6
6
6
6
Now the Kremlin has denied such a call took place, calling it “pure fiction”.
Trump’s people say they’re not commenting on “private calls”.
Whatever the truth, even rumours that Trump could already be negotiating with Putin behind their backs has set alarm bells ringing across Europe, and not least, of course, in Ukraine.
For European Nato countries like ours, the US is our key ally — but for embattled Ukraine, American backing is its only real hope of surviving Putin’s ever-more brutal onslaught.
Read More on Opinion
Trump has form in unsettling his allies. Some of what worries them now is more nasty surprises could be coming.
Arm-wrestling in Pacific
Putin’s veteran foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, remarked snidely that it was smart for an American President to take rivals like Russia by surprise, but it was a unique way of handling your allies.
The problem for Ukrainians is that the war with Russia is life or death for them, but for Donald Trump Ukraine is just one piece on the international chessboard.
His advisers blame Joe Biden for America’s current foreign policy problems, from Ukraine to Israel’s war effort against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran in the Middle East, and arm-wrestling in the Pacific with China at the same time.
Most read in The Sun
America is over-stretched.
Trump’s hero among US Presidents is Richard Nixon.
Trump’s ‘plan to end Ukraine war’ emerges after Zelensky holds ‘great’ call with Don - and Putin launches drone blitz
Nixon’s greatest achievement was turning the Cold War upside down by peeling Mao’s China away from the Kremlin in 1972.
That meant it was Moscow, not Washington, which had to split its attention and military resources to face challenges from China in the East as well as the West.
But since 2022, Trump’s people say the Biden White House has pushed Russia and China back together.
An alliance between the world’s second-biggest economy (China) and its biggest country (Russia) creates a powerful bloc across the top of the earth from eastern Europe to the Pacific.
Other awkward customers for the West, like the Islamic regime in Iran and North Korea’s nuclear-armed dictator, Kim Jong Un, are happy to fall in with this Beijing-Moscow axis for their own protection.
To Trump’s team, weakening, even splitting them is a key to re-asserting America’s role as the world’s No1 superpower.
America’s role as No1 superpower
Washington will have to offer carrots to get Vladimir Putin to stop his war against Ukraine.
But Trump will also want the Kremlin to drop pariah regimes like Iran and North Korea.
The tragedy for Ukraine after losing hundreds of thousands of men fighting Russia is that Trump could sacrifice their country or a big slice of it to get Putin to do the global “big deal”.
It is always important to remember that for Donald Trump, politics is very personal
Putin will probably calculate that America and the Europeans won’t renew their military and financial aid to Ukraine if or when round two of his aggression restarts.
But a deal with Russia to realign it away from rogue regimes such as Iran and North Korea, even to loosen its ties to China, could make strategic sense in Washington.
But it is always important to remember that for Donald Trump, politics is very personal.
Ukraine left scars on Trump
And Ukraine left scars on Trump in his first term. Remember, he was first impeached over his handling of the country when he was President last time.
Then, he wanted Ukraine’s then new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to dig up dirt on Biden’s son Hunter’s business dealings there.
That was supposed to scupper his main Democrat rival Biden’s chances of defeating him in the 2020 US election.
The scandal almost destroyed Trump’s first presidency, but enough Americans had forgotten it by this November to see him re-elected.
Trump doesn’t forget. He may be more thin-skinned than an elephant but his memory for injuries is just as long.
To Trump, Zelensky and Ukraine are on the “enemies list” for causing impeachment woes on him in the past.
His son, Donald Jr, has tweeted that Zelensky’s multi-billion dollar “allowance” will run out on his father’s inauguration day.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
If Trump pulls off a diplomatic masterstroke by sacrificing Ukraine, he’ll get personal pleasure as well as political points.
How long he’ll bathe in the glow of such a triumph is a different matter.
6
6
Topics