Trump blames Zelenskyy & Western backers for starting the war, saying they were unreasonable in refusing to make a deal.

Trump says the war with Russia could have been easily and cheaply avoided by recognising “the loss of some land”. Instead, says Trump, by refusing to give way, Zelenskyy and his Western backers, including Biden and the EU, embarked on a hopeless and disastrous war. Thus, suggests Trump, it is because of their stupidity, stubbornness or corruption that Ukraine will now have to surrender a large percentage of its territory, and hundreds of thousands of its people have been killed, and millions more have moved abroad, and its economy is in ruins.

Is Trump right Zelenskyy could have easily done a low-cost deal by giving up some land?

Recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea and Donbas would have solved two problems for Putin:

(1) It would have brought to an end the fighting in the Donbas, which, fuelled by Nato weapons and training, was becoming ever more dangerous for Putin.

(2) It would have brought to an end the economic standoff between the West and Russia, which was becoming ever more painful for Putin. Between 2014 and 2021 the USA, Canada and the EU imposed numerous sanctions on Russia hurting many important Russian companies and blocking important projects such as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Putin was deeply frustrated by this escalating economic standoff and desperate for a resolution.

Jeffrey Sachs, a senior American policy expert who worked with the Biden administration on Ukraine, says in this video, Putin’s invasion was driven by the two problems above together with:

(3) The problem of Nato expansion. Sachs explains, in 1991, the West promised Gorbachev, “Nato will not move eastward. Nato will not take advantage of the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact.” However, beginning in 1994, the USA started playing a sort of “chess” game with the Russians. After countries such as Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, and Slovakia were added in 2004, “Russia was pretty damn upset. It was a complete violation of the agreed post-war order” Then, in 2008, the United States started promoting the enlargement of Nato to Ukraine and Georgia as a “long-term project”. Sachs says he begged senior figures in the Biden administration such as Jake Sullivan to at least try to stop the war by announcing the dropping of that project in the days before Putin’s 24th February 2022 invasion, but they stupidly and arrogantly refused saying there was no need. Sachs said they confidently predicted Putin would not go to war because he would be intimidated by their threats of massive additional sanctions in the event of war.

But why did Putin invade despite their threats? Realise, although neither problem (1) nor (2) above, had necessarily become absolutely intolerable, still, they were extremely painful, and getting more painful all the time, and, short of all-out war, there seemed no escape from them. That was because Russia was not willing to give up Crimea and the Donbas, yet that is what the US and Ukraine were insisting on, and there was no prospect of a new Minsk III being agreed, nor any prospect of Ukraine stopping its fight to recover the Donbas, nor any prospect of the US rolling back the sanctions, instead the US and Ukraine were all in on the hope of Russia cracking and walking away. Furthermore, time was against Russia, for Ukraine, fed by Nato weapons and training, was constantly becoming stronger militarily, also, politically, Ukraine was constantly becoming more anti-Russian.

Consequently, Putin’s rational course of action was to declare war and in doing so either force the US and Ukraine to negotiate a solution, or, if necessary, win a military victory. Of these two options, Putin hoped much more for the former, and he did indeed come very close to achieving a deal in March 2022, though in the end, of course, Zelenskyy, encouraged by Boris Johnson, as well as battle field success and angered by accusations of Russian war crimes in Bucha, walked away from the negotiations. Putin’s decision then seems entirely rational, and if anything, he probably waited too long to make his move.

Although Putin has often talked about keeping Russia, Belarus and Ukraine united, and Ukraine’s desire for a new life outside the Russian orbit in the EU was fundamentally opposed to that political vision, there was was no mention of preventing Ukraine from joining the EU in the March 2022 peace talks. On the contrary, draft texts broadly agreed by both sides specified Kyiv’s path to EU membership was to be left open, and guarantor states including Russia would explicitly “confirm their intention to facilitate Ukraine’s membership in the European Union.” Again, the lead Ukrainian negotiator, Arakhamia, gave a November 2023 interview on a Ukrainian television news program in which he said “They were ready to finish the war if we, like Finland, [simply] adopted neutrality and undertook not to join Nato.” The main complexity in the deal revolved around Zelenskyy’s search for security guarantees which nobody was really willing to give (e.g. could simply become a free pass on bad behaviour in the future). Still, Arakhamia suggested Ukraine and Russia were getting close to a deal, then “Boris Johnson came to Kyiv and said that we won’t sign anything at all and let’s just keep fighting.”

Why does this last point matter? It shows that Putin’s goals were strictly limited to the three goals mentioned above—ending the fighting in Donbas, lifting the sanctions, and stopping Nato expansion. So whilst we all know Putin would have much preferred Ukraine to stay within Russia’s sphere, the reality is he was not actually trying to force that outcome in March 2022. By agreeing to Ukraine’s EU membership in the peace talks, he was, in effect, like a man granting a divorce to a wife he still loves because she insists on leaving and he cannot persuade her to stay. He went to battle not to try and stop her moving on, only to secure what he saw as a fair division of the marital property.

In summary: The answer to the question, “Is Trump right Zelenskyy could have easily done a low-cost deal by giving up some land?”, is obviously “yes”.

Western misinformation propaganda and mass ignorance

In the video, Sachs says many of the popular opinions expressed in Western newspapers are “absurd” and “childish” and clearly the result of want of intelligence and “propaganda”. For example, many in the West claim Russia was clearly in the wrong simply because it invaded, yet anyone with any intellectual sophistication at all knows full well that the one who is in the wrong is actually the one who acts unreasonably, not simply the one who seems to break the rules. For example, when a boy strikes another boy in the playground, he is not automatically guilty of injustice, if the other boy was trying to steal from him or bullying him, and he hit him in a reasonable way, he should instead be commended and the other child punished. Again, of course, the US has invaded many countries that it claims were acting unjustly. Thus the whole Russia is clearly wrong simply because it invaded argument constantly pushed and widely accepted in the West is totally and utterly mindless, yet almost nobody in Western politics or journalism is trying to educate their audience by pointing that out so they can move on and properly examine the issues involved. Instead, all the politicians and journalists seem to care about is making the people opine what they want them to opine (e.g. Putin is a bad guy), even if their reason for so opining is totally slavish.

Again, Sachs attacks the popular Western opinion the failure of the Minsk Agreements occurred because of “failures on both sides”. Sachs says Minsk II specified “autonomy for the Russian-speaking regions in the east of Ukraine. It was supported unanimously by the UN Security Council. [But] The United States and Ukraine decided it was not to be enforced. Germany and France, who were the guarantors, let it go.” In other words, the United States and Ukraine walked away from Minsk II because they were unwilling to grant autonomy to the Russian-speaking regions in the east of Ukraine, and in doing so they, not the Russians, turned their back on the international community and the agreements they had made, thus the United States and Ukraine actually acted unlawfully, and the EU let them get away with it, yet this is not at all what you read in Western newspapers.

Sachs says ordinary people in the West do not even realise the United States was deeply involved in the 2014 overthrow of the Russian-leaning Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, and the US government still denies it, yet there is, in fact, no doubt about its involvement at all. Sachs plays an intercepted American telephone conversation in which the overthrow of Yanukovych is discussed, and also talks about what he saw with his own eyes after he was flown to Kiev by his administration in the aftermath of the revolution. Sachs says he was amazed by all the busses that had brought protesters into the city indicating it was clearly a well-organised and well-financed operation backed by the USA. Why does it matter? If Western audiences come to decisions without knowing the facts, they can not properly participate in the debate and may not see the evils of their rulers. For example, in 2016 US voters were greatly angered by accusations of Russian interference in US elections. In actual fact, there was no truth to these allegations, but even if they had been true, Sachs suggests they would have been far less significant than the US’s interference in Ukraine. Thus the moral fury US voters felt in 2016 suggests US voters today might think, if they knew the truth, that the way their government behaved in Ukraine in 2014 was despicable and might have changed the rightful course of Ukrainian politics. For example, as we often criticise busybodies and do-gooders for getting involved in other people’s marital problems and splitting up their relationship at a time of stress when they were actually destined to recover and remain happily married.

There are many other such arguments I could go over. E.g false claims Putin made no attempt to minimise civilian casualties in Ukraine, or Putin is embarked on some sort of genocidal lebensraum policy. E.g. American politicians claiming they are supporting their friends in Ukraine one minute, then brutally claiming they are simply using them to destroy Russian military power without spilling US blood the next. E.g. Western politicians utterly denying they pushed Putin to go to war or suggesting the population of Donbas was not really overwhelmingly Russian and either unhappy to have ended up belonging to Ukraine when the Soviet Union collapsed, or unhappy to remain part of Ukraine when it turned away from Russia in 2014 and started to focus on becoming more ‘Ukrainian’ (e.g. brutally abolishing the multilingual government culture forcing people in Crimea to switch to Ukrainian even though most in Crimea didn't even speak Ukrainian, creating massive protests and armed resistance movements and pleas for Putin to invade).

Instead, I will simply finish up as follows: Sachs says of the popular “idea that Putin is reconstructing the Russian empire, [well] this is simply childish propaganda. Excuse me.” He continues: “What was Putin’s intention in the war? I can tell you what his intention was. It was to force Zelensky to negotiate. And that happened within seven days of the start of the invasion. You should understand this, not the propaganda that’s written about this.”

I will add two extra points of my own:

Even though many Western politicians and journalists vehemently deny Putin went to war because he was a reasonable man focused on security concerns, their support for threatening Putin with increased sanctions in the days before the invasion makes no sense of their denial. If Putin were really the unreasonable man they pretended, that is someone obsessed with nationalism who disregards expediency, how would threatening him with increased economic sanctions possibly hold him back? As therapists often say: their own arguments and actions betray the dishonesty of their claims.

Some complain that Putin now seems to be embracing more grandiose goals than those outlined in draft texts from March 2022. That does not mean the analysis above is wrong, only that it may no longer still be right. After so much Russian blood has been spilt, and given his winning hand, Putin may now prioritise keeping Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine united. Putin also seems to have changed over the course war, he now seems much more religious and idealistic, and this is something that can happen to people over the course a terrible war that profoundly tests their resolve. The most dangerous possibility is that the fantastically childish accusations Putin went to war because he is a budding Napoleon bent on conquering the whole of Europe, now start coming true. The idea the war was Europe’s fault, combined with lack of remorse and compensation, together with military helplessness, could actually start to drive Putin, and even a future pro-Russian Ukraine, to seek revenge.

What are the implications for Western democracy?

The WSJ just published an important editorial entitled “Trump Tilts Toward a Ukraine Sellout” which includes the words: “The war began not because Mr. Putin had legitimate security fears—but because the ageing former KGB agent wanted to reassemble the Soviet empire...”

How are we to interpret this editorial in the light of the arguments above? Clearly, the editorial board at the WSJ is composed of either: (1) profoundly ignorant people, or (2) propagandists engaged in sustaining and exploiting the profound ignorance of their readers instead of educating them so they can properly participate.

How could (1) be the case? Sachs explains in the video that organisations like the Pentagon are now filled with people who do not engage in diplomacy, so they never debate their opponents; instead, they “game theory” scenarios internally. This nerdy approach to geopolitics makes them, he says, exceptionally stupid and accounts for their appalling track record. E.g. the disastrous war in Ukraine follows many other US foreign policy disasters, such as the war in Iraq. More generally, the decline of debate, the rise of political correctness, the everyone is entitled to their opinion, the everything is relative intellectual culture and the decline in attention span has infected mankind with stupidity generally.

What about (2)? It seems to me the widespread use of childish propaganda and misinformation is fundamentally antithetical to democracy. It even seems to me to mean that democracy in the US is already dead and the people are being reduced to something like the dragon’s teeth ghouls of Greek legend. Equality was absolutely critical to the concept of democracy in Ancient Greece, but in modern Western democracy, Sachs suggests, the people are now simply treated as slaves who must be manipulated by ghastly journalism. If you think about it carefully, this is philosophically absurd; real democracy logically depends on true and reasonable debate. The propagandist will, of course, argue ordinary people are incapable of functioning in such an environment, but in that case, surely the only logical solution is to shrink the citizen class.

I believe, following Ancient Greek ideas, a genuine democracy cannot function unless its citizens are treated as rational beings and fellow leaders. The problem with modern Western democracy is not just that people are misinformed and lied to—it is that those in power no longer even attempt to engage in rational and honourable argument. They do not debate; they propagandise. They do not educate; they manipulate. Consequently, democracy today seems to have become nothing more than a fa?ade—an illusion of choice with no real political substance. And if democracy is really a system of equals, can we still say the West is truly more democratic than Putin’s Russia? Surely it is better to be an ordinary humble man in a community led by a King than a hollow puppet filled with delusions of grandeur in a sophist led pseudo-democracy.

In conclusion, I rather ambitiously suggest we create a new post-liberal democratic system in which the sort of childish arguments above, which are totally dominating today’s political debates and destroying our democracies and belittling participants, should be outlawed as fake and trash news, creating a more enlightened democratic system that runs on reason and patriotism not childishness. Still, even that reduction will not end all conflict and confusion.

Realise politics is often filled with policy anomalies caused by a disconnect between fast moving reason and inertia prone heartfelt opinion.

For example, I have long compared the situation in Crimea to the situation in Northern Cyprus. The reality is that Western leaders such as Kissinger signed off on the Turkish invasion. Why? Very briefly: the population of Cyprus in the mid-1950s under British rule was approximately 70% Greek and 30% Turkish, and the British basically offered the people of Cyprus independence under either a two-state or one-state solution, and they chose a one-state solution, but the Greeks were by far the most powerful counterparty, and they did not live up to the constitutional bi-communal agreements they had agreed, and by July 20th 1974 when the Turkish invaded, the President of Cyprus was a convicted terrorist who was embarked on genocide, and there was no way the Americans or British were going to allow that, so they gave Turkey permission to invade and even reputedly assisted by providing potential invasion plans and intelligence.

The upshot is that in the minds of the men at the top of the Western world, such as Kissinger, the Greeks were in the wrong and the Turkish invasion was justified. However, public opinion in the USA and Europe generally was not in harmony with this intellectual analysis, for it instead considered the Turkish the aggressors. Why? Likely simply due to national sensibilities, as Greek culture is historically deeply loved by Christians, Turkish culture reviled, hence ordinary Westerners are naturally inclined to take a biased view in a Greek Turkish community dispute.

Now instead of trying to turn that unjust public opinion around, Kissinger simply neutralised it by dismissing any talk of sanctions on Turkey, thus creating a stable but unpopular and frozen peace. “Northern Cyprus” has remained in legal limbo ever since. Today, even though it is fully controlled by Turkey and the Greeks have no chance of ever getting it back, is technically described not as a Turkish possession, but only “an occupied area of Cyprus”. Again, even though intellectuals think Northern Cyprus deserves some sort of recognition and the Greeks were really the bad guys in the war they lost, still most people in the Western world are of the opinion the Turks are the bad guys and they should give Northern Cyprus back, and the debate has been stuck that way for generations.

Understand, in terms of their occupied status, Northern Cyprus and Crimea are the same, but in terms of the neutralisation of negative emotions, they differ dramatically, and this is the reason why, in one case, there is peace and stability, but in the other, fighting and crisis. Whereas for Turkey the occupied status of Northern Cyprus is simply an annoyance, for the border is peaceful and tourists cross it and there are no sanctions on Turkey, for Russia the situation in Crimea and the Donbas gradually became intolerable due to ever-increasing sanctions and ever-deadlier fighting supported by ever more challenging Nato weapons, training and intelligence. Ironically, I think, the pressure for resolution ramped up dramatically in Trump’s presidency when he abolished Obama’s prohibition on military assistance, and upped the sanctions.

Due to the continuing disconnect between mind and heart, Kissinger still gets a lot of bad press on Cyprus, and so does Margaret Thatcher on Ukraine, e.g. many attack her famous declaration she could no more open an embassy in Kiev than she could in San Francisco. Thatcher is hated because she was vehemently opposed to Ukrainian nationalism and worried deeply that it would exploit the chaotic breakup of the Soviet Union. For example, in the same sort of way the United Kingdom is composed of three pieces, England, Scotland and Wales, each historically with their own language but at the same time historically really one people, so she saw Russia, Belarus and Ukraine as one people, and she feared the Ukrainian independence movement would split up their union and set up a future war for the sake of reunification. She therefore, both tried to help Mr. Gorbachev preserve unity in the breakup of the Soviet Union, and warned others in the West against aiding nationalists. However, her wise words were, and still are, out of sync with the negative emotions toward Russia that have their origins in past times and have inappropriately lingered on due to inertia and intellectual weakness.

That is why I think less-worthy politicians such as Boris Johnson supported Zelenskyy, namely either he lacked the intellectual capacity to rise above the crowd, or he swam in the same swamp for the sake of their votes. Meanwhile, in Ukraine, in the same sort of way Greek Cypriot politics today remains rabidly anti-Turkish and self-deluded, so Ukrainian politics is hopelessly unwilling to come to reasonable terms with Putin. If you think about it carefully, you can also argue the crisis was precipitated by the election of Zelenskyy because under him, Azov Brigade style aggressive primitive Ukrainian nationalism was able to find a partner in the sort of Eurotrashy aspiration to EU membership that Zelenskyy comically portrayed in his TV series before becoming President. For example, in one of his TV shows, there’s a famous sketch involving Angela Merkel in which she calls him on his phone to tell him she is giving him EU membership, and he and his supporters start celebrating wildly, until they realise she has accidentally called the wrong Eastern European country! There is no Azov style nationalism in that sketch, on the contrary, like so many economic migrant types, it seems to come from a deeply culturally demeaning and economically shallow desire to escape one’s cultural roots and join the rich man’s club.

What Trump is still getting wrong

The media is now full of attacks on Trump, calling him an “appeaser” and an “apologist”, and perhaps most hurtful of all for his reputation, a “bad negotiator”. It’s partly due to their corruption, but it is also due to his weak and mixed messaging.

It seems to me that if he were a real strong man, he would decisively and completely blame the war on Zelenskyy and Zelenskyy’s Western backers; and he would toast Putin as a hero for winning a great victory, indeed, an almost David vs Goliath like victory considering how much money Biden and EU spent defending Ukraine. Doing so would bring about the Eastern-Western Europe rapprochement many great minds such as Thatcher have so long dreamed of. To do this, I suggest Trump should end the sanctions, return Russian assets with interest, give Putin free rein to take the whole of Ukraine, and force Eastern European countries to hold re-unification referendums in places like Transdniestria. Trump should also purge all those in Western politics who supported Zelenskyy, calling them dummkopfs with no place in power etc; thus destroying the left-wing and neocon types in America that oppose him as well as putting like-minded Post-Liberal thought leaders such as Viktor Orbán and Nigel Farage in power in Europe.