An observation over the morning cup of coffee
There is something revealing about Donald Trump's apparent view that the future of Ukraine might best be negotiated by someone other than Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
This is more than a disagreement between allies. It is a demonstration of rank. A reminder that the power to influence the course of a war may also bring with it the ambition to decide who gets to negotiate its conclusion, and on whose terms.
One may, of course, invoke Ukrainian sovereignty, President Zelenskyy’s democratic mandate, and the right of a nation to determine its own destiny. These are respectable concepts. They look particularly impressive in official documents and communiqués issued after international summits. Their explanatory value, however, diminishes rather sharply when one turns from the printed page to the actual distribution of power.
A country may retain its flag, parliament, government and president while losing much of its practical freedom to determine its own future. No formal annexation is required; nor is an occupation necessarily needed. Dependence on weapons, intelligence, technology and money may prove quite sufficient, particularly when the supply of all four rests on decisions made elsewhere.
In such circumstances, the question of whether Ukrainians would approve a future settlement may be less important than whether anyone will leave them a meaningful option to reject it. The same applies to Zelenskyy himself. Replacing a leader does not necessarily change the policy of the great powers. It may simply make that policy easier to implement.
The central question, therefore, is not whether Trump can persuade Zelenskyy to leave office. It is whether Washington believes it can afford to demand such a thing — and whether Kyiv possesses the means to ignore the demand. These are two quite different questions, although they may lead to much the same result.
And what of Europe?
Europe may protest, proclaim solidarity with Ukraine, increase its defence expenditure and insist that it will not accept an international order arranged over its head. Yet if it cannot independently provide the means required to carry out its own policy, its position may remain just that: a position.
In international politics, sound arguments do not always lose because they are unsound. Sometimes they lose because those advancing them lack the power to make them count.
This is why I am not convinced that the emerging world order will offer Ukraine and Europe the place to which both aspire. Neither need disappear from the map, nor cease to exist as a subject of international law. They may simply find themselves reduced to territories whose future is settled chiefly in the calculations of stronger players.
There is no need to imagine a secret understanding between Washington and Moscow — with Beijing conveniently omitted from the picture — to recognise the possibility. The interests of great powers can produce outcomes whose costs are borne by others. World politics does not require the unanimous consent of everyone affected. It requires, above all, the capacity to impose terms and persuade the rest that no better alternative is available.
There remains one further consideration, perhaps the most important of all.
Those who wield power often behave as though the possession of strength entitles them to define reality as well. The two things, however, are not quite the same.
A great power may impose an unfavourable settlement, extract concessions and even declare a political victory. None of this proves that it has resolved the problems that produced the conflict. Still less does it guarantee that the resulting order will endure.
Reality is under no obligation to comply with the calculations of presidents, the resolutions of summits or the carefully worded assurances of diplomatic communiqués. It may return in the form of another conflict, a broken alliance, or consequences that the authors of the settlement had not thought to include in their calculations.
Perhaps, then, the most important question is not what Trump ultimately expects of Zelenskyy, nor whether the Ukrainian president ought to oblige him.
It is this:
Do those who propose to run the new world order actually understand the world they propose to run?
The answer may be found in a truth almost as old as politics itself.
Power can win the contest. It cannot guarantee that the victory will last, that the settlement will work, or that the world will obediently become what its architects intended.
Reality, after all, has one rather inconvenient habit: it does not require anyone’s permission to have the final word.
TL, in collaboration with ChatGPT AI and Copilot AI
