“You are gambling with World War 3!” American President Donald Trump growled undiplomatically at his State Guest Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky, his raised admonitory finger wagging dramatically for the rolling news media cameras. This single sentence – dramatic, as the former TV impresario Trump, intended it to be – encapsulates much of decades of geopolitical belligerence by the globally dominant Western power bloc. In fact, Trump, a former Reality TV star, told reporters as he left the room that it would “make for great television”.
As readers familiarise themselves with the uproarious Trump-Zelensky summit, they should also remember that prior to that meeting, also last week the White House hosted summits with France’s President Emmanuel Macron and the UK’s Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. These two meetings were carefully sober and diplomatic but also featured some Trumpian bluntness, if nowhere near as crude as the confrontation with Zelensky.
This past week, then, has been a series of public, blunt, ‘diplomatic’ posturings by the new White House regime that has served to affirm to the bemusedly watching world community three salient things. Firstly and, most obviously, it affirms the glaring incompetence, in terms of governance and leadership, of this new White House as well as the larger Republican Party Government that has taken over Washington and leads the Western power bloc.
Chaotic swings
Secondly, the week’s chaotic swings in global geopolitics publicly affirmed what the previously swayed world community had slowly begun to realise, anyway. That is, the many political, economic and military interventions across the globe made by the Western power bloc this past half-century and more, devastating and globally destabilising as they have been, were undertaken fully knowing the risk of a Third World War.
There are analysts who argue that the many related conflagrations ongoing in several large geographical theatres of war, some with direct, massive Western roles, others through lavishly equipped and supported Western proxy States, now amount to a new kind of ‘world war’. They point out that Western interventions (and embedded Western presence) are at the heart of most, if not all, the major conflicts.
Most respected analysts such as Noam Chomsky, John Mearsheimer and Yanis Varoufakis, among others, all point to this interconnected nature of these parallel conflagrations as evidence of globally coordinated Western belligerence that is taking on a variety of perceived rivals simultaneously in order to preserve Western global dominance. These analysts and many others have, for some years, noted that the Western power bloc is attempting to simultaneously neutralise, if not subdue, several different rival powers or defiant small States on numerous geopolitical fronts. This is the new kind of ‘World War’ of the 21st Century post-modern world.
Even if the ‘ongoing World War 3’ is disregarded, the persistent degree of provocation and brinkmanship in the current Western geopolitics and interventions in Eastern Europe, West Asia, North Africa, South China Sea and the Korean Peninsula has been instructive to the rest of the world community.
As the West continues to arm a genocidal-colonial Israel in the face of world community criticism and repeated strictures by global Governmental bodies, this alone has served to shatter the façade of ostensible Western leadership for peace and democracy. Indeed the regulatory failure of those same global bodies (originated by the Western powers themselves), has also undermined their own stature as guarantors of international peace and justice.
Thirdly, equally saliently, exposed in the White House diplomatic summits last week, was the unprecedented political and ideological gap between the new Washington Government and the entirety of its allies in the Western bloc. Entirety, that is, except for a very few, similarly Radically Rightwing, regimes such as Hungary’s Victor Orban Government.
Many analysts, in the West and in the Global South have been particularly critical of the overt expansionist geopolitics of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) for the past several decades since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the opposing Warsaw Pact alliance of developed European Socialist States led by the Soviet Union (USSR). Critics have pointed out that, initially, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, NATO leaders assured Moscow that they had no intention of expanding NATO membership to formerly socialist Eastern Europe to fill the geopolitical gap created by the end of the Warsaw Pact bloc.
But very early on in the post-Cold War era, NATO began to encourage the former socialist Eastern European states to join NATO. At the same time, Western Europe in particular, persisted in separately treating Russia, not as a potential European friendly country – as they treated the other Eastern European nations – but as a continuing “Great Power” enemy, as if the Cold War continued solely in relation to Russia.
Direct outcome
The war in Ukraine is, thus, seen as the direct outcome of NATO expansionism without any diplomatic effort to reassure Russia. Today, the attrition of the Ukraine War suffered by Ukraine and its supporting NATO allies, has led to divisions with the Alliance over the future of the NATO expansionist project.
While NATO has been ready to exert its military power elsewhere in the world, no matter the human cost, this bludgeoning within the European continent itself has been seen as too costly on ‘home’ ground.
To this must be added the more rapid demoralisation over such external military projects among US citizens. Americans, being distanced from the rest of the world by two oceans – the Atlantic and Pacific – have always been the least among Western populations to favour military adventures, though they were pulled into World War 2 by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, Hawaii.
Thus it is not so surprising that a very large segment of US citizens – the majority it seems today – are not in favour of America’s direct involvement overseas. It is this “America First” electoral mandate that the new White House regime seeks to fulfil.
What happened in the meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky and Donal Trump? The meeting never formally ended because of the heated arguments and undiplomatic accusations, mainly made against the visiting Ukrainian President by Trump and Vice President Vance.
The White House had allowed the news media to enter the meeting room and record the meeting. Thus, it was a virtual live coverage of what turned out to be a shouting match between the Ukrainian and US leaders. “Blow up”, “uproar” are some of the words used by news outlets to describe the meeting.
In addition to the “World War 3” accusation by Trump, the US leaders were seen and heard taunting the Ukrainian leader, the head of an allied country under siege by a powerful enemy.
“You don’t have any cards” to bargain with, Trump told him. Zelensky replied “I don’t play cards” though it was not very clear whether he understood the metaphorical meaning, being a non-native English speaker. Vance demanded that Zelensky thank the US leaders for their support. And both Americans accused Zelensky of showing “disrespect” to the US in trying to counter the accusations by the Americans.
The world is already aware that Washington today is trying to push Kyiv end the fighting without any withdrawal of Russian Forces from Ukrainian territory or any reparations. The US has also indicated that Ukraine may have to cede the territory already occupied by Russia. This crude “deal” initiative by Washington has shocked its NATO allies because it had been initiated directly with Moscow without any prior consultation with NATO or the EU or even Ukraine. In the process, the US perhaps unwittingly ended Moscow’s diplomatic isolation.
Worse, the US hurriedly invited Zelensky to Washington in order to rush him into signing away mining concessions to enable US companies to exploit valuable industrial mineral deposits in Ukraine. To many in the West, this economic pressure on Kyiv amounts to no more than extortion by Washington to take advantage of Ukraine’s militarily weak situation.
Indeed, Trump was heard shouting at Zelensky that he had to sign away the mineral exploitation deal in order to hope for continued American friendship.
Zelensky reportedly stormed out of the room and left the White House, foregoing the banquet that was planned for him.
In retrospect, many analysts have begun to suspect that the White House deliberately arranged for news media to be present at the talks in order to corner Zelensky and publicly expose him as an obdurate leader refusing to cooperate in efforts to end the war. The White House is further suspected of creating a diplomatic disruption between Washington and the current Kyiv regime so that the US could justify its current unilateral negotiations with Moscow for a ceasefire, ignoring Ukraine.
The US’ European allies have already reacted by re-affirming their moral support for Ukraine in the War. Significantly, no one has criticised the US leadership for its unseemly behaviour in publicly humiliating and insulting the Ukrainian leader.
The meetings Trump held with French President Macron and UK Premier Starmer last week prior to the bust-up with Zelensky must now be seen as some kind of psychological build up by the White House for its pillorying of the hapless Ukrainian leader. However, the French and UK leaders were treated to a display of US unilateralism and bluntness.
Ill treatment
That no one in Europe has rejected the White House’ ill treatment of Zelensky in toto shows the continuing dominance of Washington over the Western power bloc. It also shows the readiness of Europe to follow the US in betraying Ukraine wholesale in doing a deal with Russia to end this disastrous Ukraine War.
Zelensky can also be seen to have done his best to be unfazed by the Americans’ bullying. He was seen retorting back to both Trump and Vance and then abruptly terminating the meeting.
It must be remembered that Zelensky was originally a TV impresario and humourist whose immense popularity brought the electoral vote in his favour when he stood for election. Just like TV star Trump, the Ukrainian leader knows to perform for the cameras.
Sadly, while he certainly won sympathy in his own country and across the world, this will not save him from the terrible predicament he now faces of succumbing to Western imperialist manipulations.
