There has been much and justified focus on the implications of a likely deal between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and the overwhelmingly negative consequences this will have for Ukraine and Europe.
But if Trump and Putin make a deal, there is much more at stake than Ukraine’s future borders and Europe’s relationship with the US.
As we are nearing the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s future is more in doubt than it has ever been since February 2022. For once, analogies to Munich in 1938 are sadly appropriate.
This is not because of a mistaken belief that Putin can be appeased but rather because great powers, once again, make decisions on the fate of weaker states and without them in the room.
Similar to the pressure that Czechoslovakia experienced from both Germany and its supposed allies France and Britain in 1938, Ukraine is now under pressure from Russia on the battlefield and the US both diplomatically and economically.
Trump and his team are pushing hard for Ukraine to make territorial concessions to Russia and accept that some 20% of Ukrainian lands under Russia’s illegal occupation are lost. In addition, Trump demands that Ukraine compensate the United States for past military support by handing over half of its mineral and rare earth resources.
The American refusal to provide tangible security guarantees not only for Ukraine but also for allied NATO troops if they were deployed to Ukraine as part of a ceasefire or peace agreement smacks of the Munich analogy. Not only did France and Britain at the time push Czechoslovakia to cede the ethnic German-majority Sudetenland to Nazi Germany.
They also did nothing when Poland and Hungary also seized parts of the country. And they failed to respond when Hitler – a mere six months after the Munich agreement – broke up what was left of Czechoslovakia by creating a Slovak puppet state and occupying the remaining Czech lands.
There is every indication that Putin is unlikely to stop in or with Ukraine. And it is worth remembering that the second world war started 11 months after Neville Chamberlain thought he had secured “peace in our time.”
The Munich analogy may not carry that far, however. Trump is not trying to appease Putin because he thinks, as Chamberlain and Daladier did in 1938, that he has weaker cards than Putin.
What seems to drive Trump is a more simplistic view of the world in which great powers carve out spheres of influence in which they do not interfere.
The problem for Ukraine and Europe in such a world order is that Ukraine is certainly not considered by anyone in Trump’s team as part of an American zone of influence, and Europe is at best a peripheral part of it.
Trump-eye lens on the world
For Trump, this isn’t really about Ukraine or Europe but about re-ordering the international system in a way that fits his 19th-century view of the world in which the US lives in splendid isolation and virtually unchallenged in the Western hemisphere.
In this worldview, Ukraine is the symbol of what was wrong with the old order. Echoing the isolationism of Henry Cabot, Trump’s view is that the US has involved itself into too many different foreign adventures where none of its vital interests were at stake.
Echoing Putin’s talking points, the war against Ukraine no longer is an unjustified aggression but was, as Trump has now declared, Kyiv’s fault. Ukraine has become the ultimate test that the liberal international order failed to pass.
The war against Ukraine clearly is a symbol of the failure of the liberal international order, but hardly its sole cause. In the hands of Trump and Putin, it has become the tool to deal it a final blow. But while the US and Russia, in their current political configurations, may have found it easy to bury the existing order, they will find it much harder to create a new one.
The pushback from Ukraine and key European countries may seem inconsequential for now, but even without the US, the EU and NATO have strong institutional roots and deep pockets.
For all the justified criticism of the mostly aspirational responses from Europe so far, the continent is built on politically and economically far stronger foundations than Russia and the overwhelming majority of its people have no desire to emulate the living conditions in Putin’s want-to-be empire.
Nor will Trump and Putin be able to rule the world without China. A deal between them may be Trump’s idea of driving a wedge between Moscow and Beijing, but this is unlikely to work given Russia’s dependence on China and China’s rivalry with the US.
If Trump makes a deal with Xi as well, for example over Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea, let alone over Taiwan, all he would achieve is further retrenchment of the US to the Western hemisphere. This would leave Putin and Xi to pursue their own, existing deal of a no-limits partnership unimpeded by an American-led counterweight.
From the perspective of what remains of the liberal international order and its proponents, a Putin-Xi deal, too, has an eerie parallel in history – the short-lived Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939. Only this time, there is little to suggest that the Putin-Xi alliance will break down as quickly.
Stefan Wolff is professor of international security, University of Birmingham
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Prof Wolff, Donald wants to annex Canada and Greenland, how is that grab isolationist?? And then Gaza being swept of Palestinians is not isolationist either. A mobster pressure on Panama is not isolationist. The China goal is to keep them from progressing, no one is allowed to be as good or better than the US. Allowing China to be a regional power is not realistic.
“There is every indication that Putin is unlikely to stop in or with Ukraine.”
There is absolutely zero evidence to support such an obviously statement. It is so bad that it is not even wrong.
Yes because the Putinkim Army has been decimated. It will take >5yrs to rebuild.
Time Putin doesn’t have.
That was by a semi NATO trained army with NATO cast-offs. Poland alone would destroy the Red Army and then take Moskau.
Keep away from those windows on the upper floors, Vlad.
Does anyone here want to discuss Soviet FM Maxim Litvinov’s tireless but fruitless efforts to build an anti-fascist united front with Britain and France? Does anyone want to discuss the USSR’s offer to send troops to defend Czechoslovakia, only to be rebuffed by Czech-led Benes and Nazi-friendly Poland’s refusal to allow Soviet forces to cross its territory? This history has all gone down the memory hole of historians in the West.
And after 40yrs of Soviet occupation it looks like the Poles and Czechs were right.
The only difference between the Germans and the Russians, is that the Germans built things in 4yrs while the Russians destroyed things in 40yrs.
Visit Poland/Czech and find out how much they like you Russians.
The fact is every war college and intelligence community globally all say Poland is the military too thrash Russia including China’s why do you think XI warned Putin off expansion past Ukraine not that Russia could everyone has forgotten Ukraine wasn’t still isn’t a modern military nation had Biden given real weapons in time Russia would have been defeated that problem is Putin would use Nukes effective destroying Russia
Every nation has a past including the US great Russia helped stop the Nazis only too become them and the US isn’t far behind at the current political environment however we are Armed and we love too fight Americans won’t stand for a tyrant we will revolt and fight it is what we are good at