LITTLE AMERICA

by Colin Liddell

The latest so-called "peace plan" to come out of the orifice that is the Trump White House has been widely denounced as a farce or even Kremlin-sourced. More pointedly it has been called "amateurish," which is a fairly accurate description.

Essentially it is:

"Ukraine, sign a nebulous deal with a war criminal who is notorious for breaking deals, and give him most of what he wants, in return for some 'security guarantees' from us who provided you with worthless security guarantees in the past."

It is easy to see how this will "plan" will hit the buffers and go nowhere. 

Of course, it's not yet clear exactly how this war will end or who will come out on top. But that may ultimately be a secondary consideration, because what this war is now really about is America's position in the world and more especially its rapid shrinkage in power, credibility, and influence.

Earlier Presidents acted as if they intuited this danger. They seemed to know that America wasn't really a country that could fight wars despite its superpower branding, and so generally avoided them.

The exception was what happened after 9-11. But compare that to what happened after "12-7" (or the 7th of December 1941), when America was attacked at Pearl Harbour. Then America acted like a colossus, taking a dominant role in crushing Germany and Japan, and then changing the world order. This was rebuilt around American power, which was based on the idea that every other country would, more or less, get a fair shake from the system. 

Compare this, then, with what we got after 9-11: merely some inglorious invasions of sandy backwaters, at least one of which was mainly done to please the Israelis, followed by failed exercises in nation-building and pathetic hand-wringing about a few thousands US causalities.

America had to work extra hard to stop the rest of the World finding out just how weak it had become, but largely managed it because it could hide behind its vast array of allies.

Now, however, the war in the Ukraine is showing, with each new development, just how weak America is. It started the war with reasonable caution, because Russia is, after all, a nuclear power, but with a strong commitment to support the victim of Russian aggression. Money and weapons poured in and America almost matched its European allies in this.

In those first two years of the war, it earned its share of the glory in keeping the Russians pinned to relatively small gains in exchange for horrendous losses in both blood and money. If anything, as Russia stalled, America started looking stronger than it really was.

In a nutshell, the cautious support for Ukraine was a relatively low-risk and low-cost means of building up American power and, as we now see with the growing damage to Russia's flailing economy and much-abused military, a continuation of this would probably have seen Russia collapse sometime this year. 

But instead of what would have been a flattering geopolitical victory, we got Donald Trump and his frankly moronic "peace posturing" in which he repeatedly blamed the invaded country for starting the war, while also greatly overestimating Russian power.

Worse then this, there was the total disrespect shown to NATO allies, who were reluctant to give Trump the well-deserved slap in the face that he deserved due to his "madman" tariff terrorism. Instead, they used subtler methods to push back on his Kremling-friendly idiocy or simply decided to wait until Trump's 'shit-plomacy' fell apart under its own internal contradictions.

Being cautious when confronted with a madman is not cowardice or compliance. The Europeans have, individually or collectively, decided to humour the madman at least until his domestic political rivals can place restraints on him or cart him off to electoral Bedlam.

The Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) deal they got out of Trump in July ensures that US weapons continue to flow to Ukraine, while those same nations are working hard to bolster their own armaments industries, along with Ukraine itself, which is now a major armaments hub producing very successful weapons as testified by burning Russian oil refineries.

But the bottom line is this: in the first year of the war American help was vital. In the fourth and fifth years of the war, it is a lot less important.

This means that although Europe and NATO still would like America -- and its lame-duck President -- to be on board, they are quite happy to find alternatives and work-arounds that by-pass America. But, more importantly, they don't think of America the same way they thought of America before.

Now America is simply viewed as an amoral and unpredictable mess; think a bigger version of Saudi Arabia or Nayib Bukele's El Salvador. On a good day, they might view America as a kind of Western Hemisphere version of Modi's India; on a bad day, as a kind of effete Russia with a White House instead of a Kremlin. 

So, whatever happens in Ukraine -- a Kremlin collapse or even a Russian pyrrhic victory (the only one they are capable of) -- the real result of this war is that a formerly dominant global power, liked and admired by most of the World, will be seen as a shrunken husk occupied by a race of midget politicians, regardless of whether they are MAGA or not. 

Some Americans may be happy with this result and say a hearty good riddance to "entangling alliances," but there will be plenty of domestic consequences to this retreat from the world and the torching of American credibility and soft power.

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Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying his book here (USA), here (UK), and here (Australia), or by taking out a paid subscription on his Substack.

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