The United States U-turns on Ukraine

Colin Wilson looks at the long-term issues underlying Trump’s Ukraine policy, and argues that the left must side with neither imperialist camp.

Three years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the return of Donald Trump to the White House has meant a dramatic shift in the US government’s approach to the war. Trump’s Oval Office shouting match with Ukrainian president Zelenskyy at the end of February was followed in March by US withdrawal of shared intelligence with Ukraine, leaving the country vulnerable to Russian missile and drone attacks.

Trump’s behaviour, as ever, is inconsistent and narcissistic. He called Zelenskyy a dictator and then denied doing so. He threatened to use sanctions and tariffs against Russia for its attacks on Ukraine, but also described making those attacks as ‘doing what anybody else would do’.

But behind Trump’s antics there is a rationale for his administration’s policy, which was laid out in an interview with Secretary of State Marco Rubio by the far-right Breitbart news website in February. Rubio explained that ‘The big story of the 21st century is going to be U.S.-Chinese relations’ and that ‘if Russia becomes a permanent junior partner to China in the long term, now you’re talking about two nuclear powers aligned against the United States’. US competition or confrontation with China is thus the key issue. The US wants to improve its relations with Russia so that Russia’s links to China are weakened, and dropping support for Ukraine is part of doing this.

This makes several things about Trump’s policy clear. On the campaign trail, Trump talked about ‘ending the era of endless wars’ such as the one in Ukraine. But ‘America First’ is not an isolationist policy which seeks to reduce US intervention around the world – it’s about projecting its economic and military power more effectively. In many ways this isn’t new. It’s a continuation of the US imperialism that led it to support Israel, for example, a reliable ally in a strategically important region with major oil reserves. Trump is a thug, but Biden armed Israel in its genocide of Palestinians, and the charming and urbane Barack Obama increased US use of drones in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen ten-fold, killing over 3,700 people.

What has changed is the way that Trump presents US imperialism to the world. Since 1945, US administrations have sought to justify their power in moral terms, as support for a rules-based global order or as part of a defence of ‘Western values’. In 2001, for example, George Bush claimed the US’s reasons for invading Afghanistan included the liberation of Afghan women. Now Trump talks openly in terms of power politics, arguing that Ukraine ‘don’t have the cards’.

Trump’s approach also highlights a new US approach to European powers – as does JD Vance’s disparaging description of British and French plans to send troops to Ukraine as coming from ‘some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years’. This reflects, again, shifting patterns of global politics and the centrality of China. After the Second World War, conflict between the US and the Soviet Union structured world politics – Europe, divided between the two superpowers, was strategically important, and NATO linked western European powers to the US. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the US was left as the sole superpower, and aimed to include countries, including those of Europe, in the international order it managed. The US is now retreating from that global role, as Rubio explained to Breitbart: ‘We thought our job was to be some sort of global government. We’re not a global government. We’re the government of the United States. Our number one priority needs to be our national interest.’ Europe has little influence when it comes to US-China competition – in Trump-speak, it doesn’t ‘have the cards’ – so it doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously.

This is, then, a historic shift, not just about the US seeking to push a bigger share of NATO costs onto European governments. It poses huge problems for Europe, highlighted in a Financial Times article with a headline which would have been unthinkable only two weeks ago, ‘Can the US switch off Europe’s weapons?’ The issue is not only that 55 percent of European defence equipment imports since 2019 have come from the US, but that hi-tech military hardware depends on regular software updates from manufacturers, which US suppliers can block at will. And what’s more, there is discussion among defence consultants about the possibility that US-made software systems include ‘kill switches’ which can immobilise them if that suits America.

European powers thus need to move as rapidly as they can – and defence procurement typically takes years or even decades, so this is a problem – to reduce their reliance on the US. Doing so will mean doubling average levels of arms spending, but even more difficult to achieve will be winning agreement on defence strategy between European leaders – in the last week, for example, we’ve seen German Chancellor Merz committing to independence from America, while Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has vetoed any EU-wide intervention in support of Ukraine.

Here in Britain, Starmer’s approval ratings have hit a six-month high as he acts the international statesman, doing his best to rescue what’s left of the Atlanticism so beloved of the Labour right by seeking to act as a ‘bridge’ between Europe and the US. Even the Telegraph, still struggling to accept that Britain is no longer a great power and the empire is no more, is thrilled to see him pull together twenty nations in a ‘coalition of the willing’ in support of Ukraine. For once, Labour’s strategy of acting as the voice of a ruling-class consensus is paying off. But those gains may be short-lived. The huge increases in arms spending Starmer now advocates are to be paid for by international aid and welfare cuts – the cuts in benefits targeting, it appears, disabled people and those with mental health issues. Starmer will attempt to justify this savage reimposition of austerity by citing concerns about national security, but there is no guarantee that those claims will be widely accepted.

If there’s a silver lining to the current dark clouds, it’s the headache which Trump’s Ukraine policy creates for the British and European far right. Nigel Farage, who has been setting the political agenda for months, sided with Trump over Zelenskyy when it came to the Oval Office row – no surprise, when last summer he told the BBC that he ‘admired’ Putin. It’s a position which goes against the views of Reform voters, two-thirds of whom support Ukraine, and also against Farage’s carefully constructed image as the voice of right-wing common sense. More generally, the European far right, linked to the Republicans by conferences, publications and think-tanks, seem to have assumed that Trump would want to help their cause. But, as with Ukraine, Trump is much more transactional. He’s happy to have co-thinkers in Europe if they can help him – but he’s not going to let their concerns influence his policies, which are focused on the US, not the far right internationally.

So, what attitude should we take to the deal Trump is forcing on Ukraine, and on Starmer’s ‘coalition of the willing’? Ukraine is caught between imperialist rivals, the US and Russia. Invaded by Russia, Zelenskyy turned for support to its opponent, the US, and its allies in NATO. As he put it in 2022, his strategy is for Ukraine to become a ‘big Israel’, a US client state in a strategically important part of the world. The longer the war has gone on, the more this inter-imperialist aspect to the conflict has outweighed Ukraine’s struggle to defend itself against the Russian aggressor. This means that we can’t agree with Starmer, with a wide range of other politicians and commentators or with parts of the British left when they call for arms to Ukraine – that would be to take the side of our own rulers against an imperialist rival. Not just that, strategies involving British boots on the ground not only mean welfare cuts but risk further escalation of the war.But, equally, we can’t accept the approach now shared between Russia and the Trump administration that Ukraine has to accept its weak position and accept the deal lashed up between imperialist rivals sharing a passing convergence of interests. It was startling to see an article republished by Stop the War taking that view – that, while Trump should have disagreed with Zelenskyy in private, Zelenskyy needs to understand that he is the ‘one in the weak position’, and that if the deal can be improved a little, ‘Ukraine would be well advised to accept it.’  Here a determination not to side with Starmer brings Stop the War all too close to siding with Putin and Trump. We need to align ourselves with neither camp. The tragedy is that the forces which could translate those principles into something meaningful on the ground – such as a stronger Ukrainian left or a Russian anti-war movement – simply don’t currently exist.