NEW DELHI: Their reactions to the Putin-Trump summit in Alaska provide further confirmation of the fact that it is President Zelenskyy and his partners in Europe who are behind the self-defeating proposal to damage India-US ties severely through unprecedented sanctions on our country for buying Russian oil. India with its 1.4 billion people and the Global South more generally are wholly expendable for the Eurocentric Ukrainian President, who through a futile war has cost the lives of countless Ukrainians.
Now that progress is finally being made towards a durable end to the conflict through the cordial and open discussions between two of the four Great Powers of the world, it is less likely that President Trump will obey the wishes of the pro-war cabal in Europe and impose undeserved and unprecedented US tariffs on India. Such a move would have been a boon to China, propelling forward its efforts to lower growth and internal stability in India.
An agreement on ending the war in Ukraine cannot come in just one meeting but only after other rounds of similarly candid discussions. Disconcertingly for CCP General Secretary Xi, President Putin has resumed a working relationship with President Trump that Ukraine war zealots were seeking to undermine and destroy. “Unconditional ceasefire” in Ukraine by Putin would in effect have meant the surrender of Russia to those countries in Europe that are still fighting Cold War 1.0 in an era of Cold War 2.0. Some countries in Europe continue to believe in the fantasy that Ukraine can win back the territories lost to Russia in 2014.
A temporary ceasefire that would provide some respite to Ukraine to rebuild its depleted capacities has not emerged from Anchorage. It is wrong to claim that lack of an immediate ceasefire by Russia is a setback for the US. Such a proposition is the opposite of the truth, for it is the European powers backing Zelensky that have suffered a setback. The US is not just concerned about Europe in the way Eurocentrics are, it is a quadricontinental power.
As such, it has salience in not just Europe but in South America, Asia and Africa as well. President Putin signalled his trust in President Trump by travelling in the car of the US President from the airport to the summit venue. President Trump showed his trust in Putin by brushing off warnings from the Euro-centric elements who have thus far fuelled the war.
They had claimed that merely by meeting Putin in Anchorage without the presence of EU leaders, President Trump would hand a “victory” to the Russian President. How will any peace agreement come about unless the same is discussed with Russia? Enthusiasts in Europe of the war in Ukraine themselves refused to invite the Russian side to any of the several “peace conferences” they had on the Russia Ukraine conflict. Such conferences were held in several countries in Europe, but the same powers that excluded Russia are unhappy when the same medicine is now being given to them. As the champion of the Global South, which has so far been brushed off as collateral damage in the war being waged by some European countries on Ukraine, India will be happy that the end of the conflict is now in sight.
President Putin acknowledged to President Trump that there would not have been a war had he been President and not Biden. It was the US President at the time who, together with then Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the UK, instilled the fantasy in Zelenskyy that with their help, the territories seized by Russia in 2014 could be recovered. Were Trump the US President, he would not have joined with Johnson in goading Ukraine into a disastrous war. Zelenskyy won the Presidential polls in 2019 on the promise that he would work for peace with Russia.
Instead, he has done the opposite. Small wonder that few outside his narrowing circle of friends believe he is a genuine partner in peace. At the SCO meeting in Tianjin, Prime Minister Modi would be able to convey his congratulations to President Putin for finally agreeing to an end of the war, once the latter secures what he set out to do in the first place. Not the conquest of Europe or even Ukraine as friends of Zelenskyy in Europe aver, but the Russian-speaking territories in Ukraine that had been handed over to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic by its Russian counterpart at a time when both were part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, otherwise known as the Soviet Union.
Experts in Washington have called the flurry of threats directed against India by the White House the biggest foreign policy disaster of Trump 2.0. Although it is risky to predict anything about President Trump, the Alaska Summit bids promise of finally affixing a timetable agreed to by President Putin not in years but in weeks of an end to the conflict with Ukraine, which has been assisted by a section of the EU.
Although they may gripe in public, even the champions of the cause of fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian would be heaving a collective sigh of relief, as taxpayers are beginning to fret at the costs to them of the war. Their money is sent to Ukraine, which uses it to buy US weapons, to the political benefit of President Trump as well as his domestic weapons industry.
PM Modi has welcomed such a development, having been from almost the start of the conflict a votary of peace superseding war. At the forthcoming SCO Summit in Tianjin, PM Modi would be able to personally congratulate President Putin on the Alaska Summit. He had welcomed the Alaska Summit wholeheartedly when it took place in Anchorage.
President Trump would be unlikely to implement the sanctions and super high tariffs on India that he had spoken of before the meeting, now that he has scripted a summit that merits the word “Historic”. The Era of Peace sought by PM Modi seems to finally be on the horizon.
