eastwestaccord

The United States reached deals on Tuesday with Ukraine and Russia to pause their attacks at sea and against energy targets, with Washington agreeing to push to lift some sanctions against Moscow.

In August of 2014, Professor John Mearsheimer wrote an essay for Foreign Affairs entitled “Why the West is to Blame for the Ukraine Crisis”. There he wrote that no Russian leader would tolerate a military alliance by a mortal enemy with Ukraine. Therefore, the USA should abandon its attempt to bring Ukraine into the Western alliance. If they did not, Russia would wreck Ukraine rather than let it go that far. On February 8, 2015, he wrote in the New York Times that America should not arm Ukraine, because it would risk escalation of the war in the Donbas. Ukraine should stay neutral for the sake of everyone involved.

This article explores the contours of European Union politics as they are emerging in the course of the disintegration of the European Union project.

Dr. Anatol Lieven of The Quincy Institute and ACURA, talks with Professor Glenn Diesen on the latest developments in the Ukraine War.

In a recent interview, Boris Johnson admitted that the Minsk 2 agreement fell apart because ‘the Ukrainian nationalists couldn’t accept the compromise’ that President Zelensky wanted to agree with President Putin. It also failed because sanctions policy against Russia both disincentivized Ukrainian compliance, and actively incentivised Ukrainian non-compliance.

The UK is clinging to the mantra that it will “support Ukraine for as long as it takes.”  The UK, France and some lone outposts of Empire are still serving up the “boots ok the ground” rhetoric, when it has become utterly clear that this war is lost. To discuss the UK’s policy towards Ukraine, Pascal Lottaz talks with Lord Robert Skidelsky.

Trump did not agree to Russia’s prior demand that during a ceasefire the US stop arms supplies to Ukraine. For any US and European critics of Trump who are still capable of thinking objectively about the peace process, this should lead them to question the hysterical condemnations of the US President as a “traitor” and “Putin ally”.

Why is Trump being so agreeable to Russia? And why is Putin so eager to end the war through peace dealings, contrary to people’s perception of him wanting to conquer Ukraine?

Steve Witkoff, White House special envoy to the Middle East, talks about the phone call between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on ending the war with Ukraine. He says the leaders are likely to meet and a full ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine could be reached in a couple of weeks. Witkoff speaks on “Bloomberg Surveillance.”

On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine with a small force of around 142,000 troops. Not enough to conquer Ukraine, the invading force was sufficient to persuade Ukraine to the negotiating table. Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed that was the original goal of the military operation: “[t]he troops were there to push the Ukrainian side to negotiations.”

President Zelensky should have pressed ahead with peace talks in August 2024, rather than invading Kursk. Ahead of talks between Presidents Trump and Putin this week, he has no cards left to play.

Early in 1973, Brezhnev expressed his happiness that the ‘Cold War’ was finally over. This turned out to be premature…

Part 2 of Professor Petro’s conversation with Pascal Lottaz.

There is a serious risk that even if the political establishment of Ukraine (Parliament and Government) came to the conclusion that only a surrender could save the country from complete annihilation, the ultra-right wing with its willingness to kill their own people, might be able to seize power if the army sides with them. That is a real fear that Professor Nicolai Petro expresses in this interview. Beyond this, they discuss the future of both Russia and Ukraine as the war is drawing to a close.

Last week came news of a Ukrainian “intelligence gathering” service called MOLFAR with an “enemies list” that includes, among other notables, the current vice president, JD Vance.

What makes this all the more galling is that it was ( is?) being funded by the US government though USAID. Whatever sympathy we may (and do) feel for people who have lost their jobs at USAID and at USAID-linked contractors, the Trump administration was absolutely right in pulling the plug on this kind of nonsense.

Benjamin Abelow’s book has garnered praise from the likes of ACURA’s own Jack Matlock who praised How the West Brought War to Ukraine as “A brilliant, remarkably concise explanation of the danger that U.S. and NATO military involvement in Ukraine has created.” And Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. wrote: “This is such an important book. I have read it three times. It is extraordinarily clear not only in language but also in thought. I can’t recommend it highly enough.” A link to the PDF is here, courtesy of Ben Abelow.

Russia’s position on the battlefield is getting better and better, but the US still insists on Moscow forfeiting its advantage to negotiate an end to the entire conflict. Why does Trump think this approach could work and what are the Russian calculations to not flatly reject this idea? To discuss these points, Pascal Lottaz is talking again to Dr. Nicolai Petro, a Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island and the author of the magnificent book, The Tragedy of Ukraine: What Classical Greek Tragedy Can Teach Us About Conflict Resolution.

Ideology is dead. We have entered the Age of Transactionalism. So far, Trump’s foreign policy has been shorn of the hypocrisy that came to characterize Washington’s engagement with the world during so much of the post-Cold War period. It’s now: I’ll scratch your back, if you scratch mine.

Video features Pascal Lottaz talking with Dr. Pietro Shakarian and Lasha Kasradze. Pietro is a historian at the Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburgh, Russia, and Lasha is an international relations analyst working in the US as a liaison officer for Georgia‘s Sokhumi State University.

It is crucial that US and international diplomacy to achieve a Ukraine-Russia ceasefire that leads toward a sustainable peace can then serve as a stepping stone toward a new and more constructive US-European-Ukrainian-Russian relationship.

Peter Ford is deputy leader of the Workers Party of Britain which bills itself as something quite unheard of in America: socialist and socially conservative. 

Ford was a career British diplomat, serving as Ambassador to Bahrain (1999-2003) and Syria (2003-2006). Until 2015 he served as representative of the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestine Refugees in the Near East in Amman, Jordan.

He is that rarest of creatures of the British (or any) foreign policy establishment: principled and fearless.

—James W. Carden

 

Carden: Today I am talking with Ambassador Peter Ford. So Peter, I understand you might soon be standing for office for the Workers Party. Can you tell us a little bit about the Workers’ Party?

Ford: Well, the Workers’ Party hasn’t been around for very long, only four or five years, but it came to prominence a year ago when the leader, George Galloway, who is a veteran actor in British politics on the left, last year got himself elected in a by-election in Rochdale, and made quite a splash because he is an extremely effective orator and he dedicated his victory to the people of Gaza. And that is an important part of the Party’s appeal, as it is pro-peace, anti-imperialism, anti-militarism while being common sense socialist.

Hopefully we can repeat that success in Runcorn [an industrial town of about 60,000 near Liverpool] although the odds will be stacked against us, folks in my hometown not being overly concerned about Gaza.

Carden: You described the Workers’ Party as pro-peace. What other parties would you say occupy that kind of space in the UK? 

Ford: Amazingly, historically the British Labor Party occupied some of that space and used to campaign for nuclear disarmament and was generally pro-peace when it was in opposition. But whenever it was in power, it would become very centrist if not downright right-wing and very pro-NATO and would go into any war that was led by the United States. 

[Read more…] about ACURA Q&A: Peter Ford: Ambassador, Dissident…Future MP?