Author: Barry

By Vijay Prashad

The whole thing is a fiasco. The theatrical drama in the White House’s Oval Office triggered a series of predictable responses around the world. Outrage at US President Donald Trump for his rudeness and ridicule for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy were some of the reactions. Then, the failure of French President Emmanuel Macron to create a European agreement with the United Kingdom’s Keir Starmer and Zelenskyy revealed the absolute dead ends that confront this exhausted war in Ukraine. The question that these discussions provoke is simple: is there an exit for this war?

Permanent war

If the war aims of Zelenskyy and his European partners are to weaken Russia or to overthrow the government of Vladimir Putin, then this war might either go on forever or accelerate into a dangerous nuclear scenario. Opinion polls in Russia show that Putin’s approval rating is now at 87%. Even with a mountain of salt, this is far higher than the approval rating in France for Macron. With Russia’s economy resilient during this war, it is unlikely that it will be further weakened with the continuation of hostilities. What the evidence shows, however, is that Europe’s economy is suffering from war inflation that has not been reduced. If this war is to continue, Macron said, then European states would have to increase their military spending to 3% or 3.5% of their GDP. This would further damage the living situation of most Europeans. Would young, working-class Europeans be willing to go and man the dangerous frontline in Ukraine on behalf of a war aim (weakening Russia) that is impossible? It is unlikely. (There is a separate cruelty of middle-class Ukrainians fleeing the country for Western Europe and then working-class Western Europeans being asked to come and defend that country for them).

A permanent war will lead to unnecessary loss of life in Ukraine and to a permanent economic crisis in Europe. It is also unlikely because the United States will not financially and militarily back such a war indefinitely, resulting in the collapse of any long-term European commitment to Ukraine.

The Korean solution

If neither Ukraine nor Russia are willing to move to a ceasefire and then a negotiated settlement (which would include security guarantees for all sides), then there is the possibility that the current frontline that stretches from northern to eastern Ukraine will become a permanent Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Ukraine would thereby be divided indefinitely with an immense waste of social wealth to maintain a perpetual frontline. This is the most likely scenario, although it might not be palatable for Europeans to have a Korea within their continent.

The South Korean military maintains 600,000 troops along the 38th Parallel, alongside almost 30,000 US troops. Much the same is the situation in the north. Billions of dollars are spent annually on surveillance and logistics for over 900 square miles of territory that is not available for economic use. Europe would have to underwrite this Korean solution for Ukraine for eternity (just as the United States provides guarantees and funds to South Korea, and China does the same for North Korea).

A security consortium

The Helsinki Process that emerged to bring the US and USSR into negotiations in 1975 and that formed the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has played almost no role for peace in the war on Ukraine.

The only interlocutors that have been given permission to speak about the war in Ukraine on behalf of Zelenskyy have been the United States, the Western European leaders, the leaders of the European Union (EU), and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Leaders from Europe’s east – apart from those who are integrated into the NATO-EU – have been either silent or told that their opinions do not matter. But it is these eastern European countries that share with Ukraine the fact of having a border with Russia, and it is these countries that most need to form a security consortium that includes Russia and provides mutual guarantees. Those countries that directly share a border with Russia’s west are – from north to south – Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, and Azerbaijan (Lithuania and Poland share a border with the Kaliningrad Oblast, which is a Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea). Three of them (Finland, Estonia, and Latvia) are members of NATO and of the EU, while one of them (Norway) is a NATO member but not in the EU.

Would it be possible for these eight countries to call a conference with Russia on the broader issues of security rather than the narrow issue of Ukraine? That three countries that border Russia are already NATO members (one of them, Norway, was a founding member in 1949) suggests that the problems in Ukraine are separate from NATO membership itself. Rather, they stem from anxiety about a border line created in a hurry when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 (this impacts Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, and Azerbaijan, but not Norway and Finland, which were not part of the Soviet Union).

In the early 1980s, former Swedish Prime Minister Olao Palme chaired the Independent Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues, whose 1982 report Common Security: A Program for Disarmament made the case that ‘The task of diplomacy is to limit, split, and subdivide conflicts, not to generalize and aggregate them’. In other words, all conflicts cannot be settled at the same time. A ceasefire is good in itself; the issues to resolve need to be separated, and those that are easier dealt with first to build confidence. To bundle all issues into one problem makes a dispute intractable.

The countries that border each other, including those that border Russia to its south and east, must live next to each other. They cannot lift themselves out of their geography and go elsewhere. Ukraine cannot be relocated to France. It must remain beside Russia. In that case, these countries need to find a way to build trust.

To begin with, the assertion that one cannot trust a neighbor is the worst way to build confidence between the peoples of neighboring countries. Neither the EU nor NATO (without full US military backing) can subordinate Russia and force it to bow before Ukraine. A British cabinet minister said last year that his country would last only six months in a full-scale war with Russia. Meanwhile, a Kiel Institute for the World Economy report suggests that Germany is spending its money buying weapons but does not have a standing army capable of self-defense, let alone winning an offensive war against Russia. Europe, without the United States, is a shadow.

It would behoove all parties if a country that borders Russia calls for such a security consortium to be built and if it is able to get guarantees from NATO not to expand further eastward and from Russia to draw back its military from the border regions. There are long relations among these countries, with families on both sides of the border. Any lessened tension in general is good for humanity, and if such a maneuver will lead to peace in Ukraine, that would be far better than a permanent scar on this part of the European continent.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are On Cuba: Reflections on 70 Years of Revolution and Struggle (with Noam Chomsky), Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism, and (also with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of US Power.

This article was produced by Globetrotter and No Cold War.

By Peter Mertens

What US President Donald Trump did on February 28 to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy typically happens behind closed doors. Now, in Trump’s words, it was “great television.” This is how the US has treated countries in the Global South for years: as neo-colonies expected to meekly say “Thank you” for imposed agreements that plunder their resources. It’s no different from how Trump speaks about Panama, Greenland, or Gaza, complete with repulsive AI animations. The US sees the world as a giant globe of resources that belong to it. This has a name: imperialism. It never truly left; it has simply returned naked and unashamed, trampling the last remaining counterforce that once restrained it—international law.

Domestically, Trump does the same. He seeks to revive the 19th-century capitalism of the “robber barons,” a capitalism without counterweights: no unions, no labor protections, and absolute power to make decisions affecting millions, up to and including deportation. To win this war, he has enlisted Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team.

Zelenskyy’s calm and controlled demeanor in the face of the world’s most powerful president commanded respect, particularly among Global South nations all too familiar with US bullying. But this brings us no closer to peace. “The unwinnable war,” I wrote in Mutiny, “has already fed tens of thousands of young men into the meat grinder at the dawn of their lives.” On the eve of the Trump-Zelenskyy meeting, a deal seemed imminent through which Trump would shift the cost of war to Europe while the US would receive control over Ukraine’s resource-and-mineral extraction via a new fund. This laid bare that this dirty war was never about values—only geostrategic interests and control over resources and fertile land. The question is: Why did the deal collapse at the last minute?

One possibility is that the US aims to further weaken Zelenskyy’s position, humiliate him, and ultimately push for regime change. This has been the hallmark of US foreign policy for decades: orchestrating regime changes whenever and wherever US interests are deemed unserved. This was the fate of Manuel Noriega in Panama and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. One day, a trusted ally; the next, overthrown. Former US diplomat Jeffrey Sachs reminded me last week of an alleged Henry Kissinger quote: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

Even one of the United States’ strongest allies, the European Union, is learning this. In September 2023, I wrote in Mutiny that Europe is losing the continent precisely because it blindly follows Washington. “It’s a kind of Stockholm syndrome,” I told Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever in Parliament last week. “The more the US humiliates Europe, the tighter Europe clings to Uncle Sam’s coattails.” Our Defense Minister, Theo Francken, insists on maintaining privileged ties with Washington at all costs, claims inspiration from the US “social model,” finds it normal for Trump to attempt to annex Greenland, and happily wants to order more unaffordable F-35 fighter jets from the US.

How many shocks does Europe need for it to grow up? The German recession post-sanctions wasn’t enough. Elon Musk’s meddling in election campaigns? Not enough. Humiliation by US Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in Munich? Still not enough. Trump’s new tariff war? Even less. Today, Europe’s establishment panics again, charging off like a wild horse escaping a barn—more weapons, more war, preparing for World War III! Europe must not become a clone of the US. It does not need a domestic Trump. Instead, it must dare to chart a new course.

Meanwhile, the EU’s Foreign Minister Kaja Kallas insists in statements on prolonging the dirty war in Ukraine, feeding it with weapons and young men and women. Kallas lacks the democratic legitimacy to engage in such incendiary talk. Europe needs fewer warmongers like Kallas and more maturity to truly change course and unite with Global South nations like Brazil and China, which have long pursued negotiated solutions.

As I wrote in Mutiny, this war has always been Janus-faced. On one side is the violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, the flouting of international law through Russian aggression. Global South nations understand this. On the other is a US-Russia proxy war on Ukraine’s soil, where tens of thousands of young people are cannon fodder for geostrategic conflict. Washington now shamelessly admits this was a proxy war fueled by the US. Trump, however, claims it was the “wrong” proxy war—that Russia isn’t the US’s real adversary, and all efforts must shift to the coming war his administration is preparing against China. This is solely because Washington sees its economic and technological hegemony challenged by China.

The latest fashionable sophistry is that “if you want peace, prepare for war”. It sounds catchy but is catastrophic. History shows that when economies gear for war and minds are primed for conflict, war draws closer. Step by step, hysteria replaces sober analysis. More politicians chirp about war; fewer dare speak of peace. Thinking stops, diplomatic solutions are dismissed, and global peace is gambled away. Europe has no future as a war continent. Militarization will gut its manufacturing industry, and permanent tension with eastern neighbors won’t inch us closer to peace.

“My experience teaches that you must talk to the other side. You can’t say, ‘We won’t talk—we know what they think.’ Diplomacy is essential, especially in tense moments,” Jeffrey Sachs told me.

Europe must find its own path. Russia isn’t moving; you can’t erase it from the map. Instead of sinking deeper into the vortex of hysteria and platitudes, Europe must develop mature diplomacy – one that charts an independent course with a vision for its manufacturing sector, respect for international law, and pragmatic relations with all economic giants: the US, China, India, Russia, Brazil, and South Africa.

Peter Mertens is General Secretary of the PVDA-PTB (Workers’ Party of Belgium) and a member of the Belgian Chamber of Representatives. His latest book, from LeftWord Books (India), is Mutiny: How Our World is Tilting (2024).

This article was produced by Globetrotter and previously published here by Peoples Dispatch.

By Wang Wen

The following article by Wang Wen was originally published in Australia and then republished in 13 languages including Chinese, Arabic, English, Indonesian, Japanese, Malay, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian. Wang Wen is Executive Dean of Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, Executive Director of the China-US Humanities Exchange Research Center, and an influential writer on foreign affairs in China. It therefore represents an important analysis of the new Trump presidency from a Chinese perspective.

Donald Trump’s second term may not be all bad for all nations, including and especially China. For many Chinese internet users, Trump’s policies have unwittingly strengthened their country. This is why he has earned the popular nickname “Chuan Jianguo,” which means “Make China Great.”

Trump’s first term made at least three notable contributions to China’s rise.

First his presidency shattered the image of the US as a paragon of democracy for many Chinese, revealing political chaos and deep societal divisions. For decades some Chinese idealised the United States as a “beautiful country”: the literal translation of the Chinese name for the US. However, Trump’s actions provided what some describe as a “political lesson,” reshaping perceptions and fostering greater appreciation for China’s stability and governance.

Second, Trump helped accelerate China’s push toward technological independence. Over 20 years ago, the Chinese government began promoting innovation in science and technology, though many believed there were no borders in this field.

It wasn’t until events like the 2018 arrest of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou and the crackdown on Chinese tech firms that the country fully committed to innovation. By 2024, China had achieved significant strides in tech independence, including breakthroughs in semiconductor manufacturing. This shift was underscored by record-high chip exports in 2024, which surpassed $159 billion, doubling 2018 figures.

Third, Trump’s tariffs and trade restrictions pushed China to strengthen its ties with the non-Western world. Through initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative, China deepened its relationships with Global South nations. Between 2018 and 2024, trade with these nations grew by over 40 percent, while China’s reliance on the US for trade fell from 17 to 11 percent.

Trump’s trade war with China has driven a rapid restructuring of global trade, leading more Chinese to recognise that the world is far larger than the United States.

Looking back, the combined experience of Trump’s first term and Biden’s policies to contain China over eight years has strengthened the country in the medium term.

From a long-term perspective, China has gained a strategic psychological advantage in dealing with Trump 2.0.

China’s media and think tanks have responded to the possibility of Trump’s return with relative calm compared to the growing anxiety in Europe and Canada. Beijing seems confident, having already weathered trade wars and technological blockades during Trump’s first term.

China won’t actively provoke Trump 2.0, but if aggressive US policies like trade wars or technology restrictions persist, China will respond with calculated countermeasures ‒ and ultimately, become even stronger.

On January 7, 2025, both China and the US experienced natural disasters. A 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck Dingri county in Tibet, while a major wildfire broke out in Los Angeles.

In Tibet, Chinese authorities swiftly transitioned from emergency response to recovery, relocating 50,000 residents within a day. Meanwhile, the wildfire in Los Angeles raged for over 10 days, worsened by political infighting and mismanagement. This stark contrast highlights the differences in governance and crisis management between the two nations.

China’s rapid response to the earthquake, efficiently moving from rescue to resettlement, stands in sharp contrast to the prolonged crisis in Los Angeles, where political leaders traded blame while the fire caused damage surpassing the 9/11 attacks. These contrasting responses underscore the weaknesses in US crisis management and governance.

While much of the non-Western world remains relatively at ease, Trump-style neo-fascism is provoking panic across the Atlantic, particularly in Europe and Canada. Questions now surface at the highest levels of international diplomacy: Will Denmark lose Greenland? Will NATO lose US military support? Will Canada become the 51st state? These once-crazy notions are now openly discussed.

For many in China, the global impact of Trump 2.0 is unlikely to surpass that of Trump 1.0.

In fact, in 2025, many in non-Western countries believe Trump 2.0 will focus mainly on domestic affairs while occasionally stirring up trouble among Western allies. Non-Western observers know full well that Trump 2.0 will not end the Russia-Ukraine conflict in one day. He will not resolve the Palestinian-Israeli dispute anytime soon. He will not prevent China’s long-term trade growth with 60 percent tariffs. He will not, and cannot, curb China’s continued rise.

Trump 2.0 will likely continue withdrawing from international agreements, including climate accords and the WTO. The result? The gradual disintegration of US global hegemony. If this trend continues, Trump 2.0 could push the US into regional power status, embracing isolationism.

Regardless of the scope of Trump’s impact ‒ whether through trade wars, technological conflicts, or treaty withdrawals ‒ China is well-prepared for the worst. As it has done in the past, China has the ability to turn challenges into opportunities.

By 2028 the Chinese will be more confident than ever in saying: “Thank you Trump.”

US President Donald Trump called Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and told him that his government is committed to a peace process in Ukraine. As part of the deal, Trump’s administration made it clear that sections of eastern Ukraine and the Crimea would remain in Russian hands. Speaking at the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), Trump’s Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said that it was ‘unrealistic’ to assume that Ukraine would return to its pre-2014 borders, which means that Crimea would not be part of any negotiations with Russia. NATO membership for Ukraine, he said, was not going to be possible as far as the United States was concerned. The United States, Hegseth told NATO, was not ‘primarily focused’ on European security, but on putting its own national interests first and foremost. The best that the European leaders at NATO could do was to demand that Ukraine have a seat at the talks, but there was very little said against the US pressure that Russia be given concessions to come to the table. Ukraine and Europe can have their say, Hegseth said, but Trump would set the agenda. ‘What he decides to allow and not allow is at the purview of the leader of the free world, of President Trump’, Hegseth said with characteristic midwestern swagger. The cowboys, he said with his body language, are back in charge.

While Hegseth was in Brussels, Trump was in Washington, DC with his close ally Elon Musk. Both are on a rampage to cut government spending. Over the past five decades, the US government has already shrunk, particularly when it comes to social welfare provision. What remains are areas that have been jealously guarded by the large corporations, such as the arms industry. It had always seemed as if this industry was inviolate and that cuts in military spending in the United States would be impossible to sustain. But the arms industry can rest easy (except Lockheed Martin, which might lose its subsidy for the F-35 fighter jet); Musk and his team are not going to cut military contracts but go after the military and civilian employees. During his confirmation hearing, Hegseth told the Senators that during World War II the United States had seven four-star generals and now it has forty-four of them. ‘There is an inverse relationship between the size of staffs and victory on the battlefield. We do not need more bureaucracy at the top. We need more war fighters empowered at the bottom’. He said that the ‘fat can be cut, so [the US military] can go toward lethality’.

There is a fundamental misreading of these moves by the Trump administration. They are sometimes seen as the idiosyncratic flailing of a far-right president who is committed to putting ‘America First’ and so is unwilling to pursue expensive wars that are not in its interest. But this is a short-sighted and erroneous assessment of Trump’s phone call with Putin on Ukraine and approach to the US military. Rather than see this as an isolationist manoeuvre, it is important to understand that Trump is attempting to pursue a Reverse Kissinger Strategy, namely, to befriend Russia to isolate China.

Trump understands that Russia is not an existential threat to the United States. The US government does not fear Russian energy sales to Europe, since these primary commodity sales do not pretend to undermine the overall US control of the global economy. However, China’s rapid development of technology and science as well as of the new productive forces genuinely poses a threat to US domination of the key sectors of the global economy. It is the US perceived ‘threat’ from China that motivates Trump’s approach to alliances and enemies.

Kissinger’s strategy: Befriend China to Isolate Russia.

Henry Kissinger (1923-2023) was one of the most influential US foreign policy bureaucrats. During the presidency of Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1974, Kissinger essentially ran the foreign policy of the United States. Both Nixon and Kissinger closely followed the dispute between the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). When Nixon became president, the USSR-PRC border dispute around Zhenbao Island almost escalated with a potential Soviet nuclear strike against Beijing. Kissinger had recognised that this dispute was of great value to the United States since it prevented the two large Eurasian countries from building an essential union against the Atlantic alliance encapsulated by NATO. If Russia and China had come together, Kissinger wrote, then they would be able to undermine the foundation of Western power in the world. To prevent that alliance was essential and to use the Sino-Soviet dispute to build a deep wedge between the two countries was the essence of Kissinger’s policy. Rapprochement with China also allowed the US to attempt to close the logistical supply line for the Vietnamese national liberation forces in their war against US aggression.

It was for that reason that Kissinger began secret talks through Pakistan with the Chinese government in 1970, made a secret trip to Beijing in 1971, and thereby opened the door for Nixon to visit China the following year. In his secret verbal report to the White House staff after his visit to China, Kissinger made the following important comment: ‘The Chinese were extremely serious people. They don’t wish us well. We have no illusions on that score. But in terms of our overall situation, with Soviet pressure and with the situation in Southeast Asia, it is in our interest to bring the Chinese in’. Nixon’s epochal visit to China was entirely driven by US interests to divide Russia and China so that the US could establish its power around the Asian continent.

Long after the USSR collapsed, Kissinger continued to make the case that the United States should befriend China, isolate Russia, and subordinate Europe to continue its long-term dominion. That is the underlying argument in Kissinger’s 600-page epic, On China (2011).

Trump’s Reversal: Befriend Russia to Isolate China.

With the fall of the USSR, the United States establishment developed a strategy to befriend both Russia and China, but more Russia. It was thought amongst the foreign policy elite that Russia’s subordination to the United States – under Boris Yeltsin’s presidency from 1991 to 1999 – was total and that the Russians would become a minor player on the Eurasian continent. Russia’s entry into the G7 in 1998 was the pinnacle of that subservience. The return of Christianity in public in Russia as well as the promotion of Russia’s Europe-facing culture suggested that Russia had embraced its Western heritage and moved away from either sovereignty or from Asia, and therefore China. In 1993, US President Bill Clinton phoned Yeltsin and said, ‘I want you to know that we’re in this with you for the long haul’.

A far-right wing section of the US establishment identified two elements in the late 2000s. First, that Chinese technological development of their productive forces seriously threatened the intellectual property domination by US firms. Second, that Russia’s new nationalism had been premised both on sovereignty (identified by the emergence of Putin’s patriotic parties) and on white supremacy and Russian Orthodoxy (such as anchored by the theories of Alexandr Dugin). There is an entire bloc in the US far right that sees in Russian patriotic nationalism its own ideology, and it sees in Chinese Communism its adversary.

Even in his first term, Trump sought to befriend Russia to isolate China and subordinate Europe. This reversal of Kissinger’s strategy is not progressive, but similarly reactionary and dangerous. The unifying goal is to ensure the supremacy of the United States with the same strategy of division with the actors reversed. Trump was then accused of being a beneficiary of Russian interference.

What the United States is now doing is to attempt  to break the relation established between China and Russia since 2007, when Putin made his official break from the United States at the Munich Security Conference. Good cooperation between China and Russia has moved swiftly and the two countries have a security agreement underneath the transfer of goods and services in roubles and renminbi. Breaking up this relation will not be easy but it is now the strategy Trump has decided to attempt to carry out.

It is worth remembering Kissinger’s assessment of the Chinese leadership in 1971: ‘Their interest is 100 percent political…..Remember, these are men of ideological purity. Chou En-lai joined the Communist Party in France in 1920, long before there was a Chinese Communist Party. This generation didn’t fight for 50 years and go on the Long March for trade’. This view captures not only Zhou En-lai and Mao Zedong, but also Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. They too have been steeled in a struggle against the United States over the course of the past decade. It is unlikely that a few baubles will attract Putin to adopt Trump’s reverse Kissinger strategy.

The New Cold War is rapidly heating up, with severe consequences for people around the world. Our series, Briefings, provides the key facts on these matters of global concern.

From the beginning of the Ukraine war in 2022, countries in the Global South – which contains the overwhelming majority of the world’s population – have opposed US policy towards that conflict. A recent survey found that only two Global South countries have actually implemented US sanctions against Russia over the war, and India increased its oil imports from Russia tenfold during the war’s first year. Global South leaders, such as South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, stated that the US policy of expanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) into Eastern Europe lay behind the war.

But, until recently, support for the war seemed firm in the US and among its European allies. This is now changing significantly. Media speculation has focused on Trump’s unsubstantiated claim that he could end the war within 24 hours, but much more substantial is evidence of a sharp change in popular attitudes to the war. This provides the basis for hopes to permanently end the war.

The Necessity to Restore Economic Links Across Europe

The first pressure changing the situation is economic. On 1 January 2025, for example, a five-year gas transit agreement between Russia and Ukraine expired, ceasing Russian gas exports to Europe via Ukraine entirely and ensuring that the Ukrainian government will shut the pipelines across its territory. The US’s gradual success in achieving its decades-long objective of cutting the direct export of Russian gas to Europe has reduced the living standard of Europe’s population due to soaring energy prices and has simultaneously dealt a huge blow to Europe’s economy. Price shocks from the war spread out to affect many developing economies as well.

US liquid gas exports, on which Europe is now reliant, are on average 30–40% more expensive than Russian gas. Moreover, this Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is mostly sourced via the devastating fracking method and transported to Europe in an equally ecologically unfriendly way, on huge LNG carrier tankers.

The tremendous economic damage done to Europe has now created increasing opposition to the war, not least among the working class and households at large. More and more people have come to understand that they pay twice for the war in Ukraine: their taxes underwrite the enormous war and militarisation efforts, and at the same time they bear the brunt of the concomitant rising energy prices and imposed austerity measures.

In Germany, the leadership of Christian Democratic, Conservative, Social Democratic, and other ‘centrist’ parties implemented such US-enforced policies, thereby deeply damaging their own economies and societies. This sort of complicity has defined the approach in most European countries until recently and has continued despite the immense unpopularity it created for their own parties. The overwhelming majority of governing parties in Europe are now deeply unpopular, and there has been a sharp rise of xenophobic and overtly neofascist/fascist forces. In Germany and elsewhere in Europe, there is a sharp rise of support for parties opposing the war. Lately, an increasing number of politicians have openly stated that it is vital for Europe’s economy to break with this disastrous US policy and resume direct supply of gas from Russia, as well as to reinstate normal trade and investment relations with the Global South and BRICS countries, particularly China. Former Finance Minister Oskar Lafontaine summarised this sentiment by saying there should simply be a phone call to Russia to restore the gas supply.

NATO Cannot Win the War in Ukraine

The second factor changing public opinion is that the US and NATO are suffering setbacks in the Ukraine war.

NATO’s expansion into Ukraine is, of course, not the only example of US-supported aggression in the present world situation. Notably, in Gaza, Israel and the US are able to carry out unbridled military massacres, atrocities, and genocidal policies against the Palestinian people and other countries in the region. In Europe, however, the US and its allies are confronting Russia, which has the most powerful army on the continent and nuclear forces essentially equal to those of the US. The latter appears incapable of winning this proxy war; only direct intervention by NATO military forces, risking global nuclear war, would turn this around.

The dragging on of the Ukraine war, which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of victims –including thousands of children – and widespread devastation, has led to a sharp change in public opinion. In Ukraine, polls now show that 52% of the population supports the position that ‘Ukraine should seek to negotiate an ending to the war as soon as possible’. Only 38% support the view that ‘Ukraine should continue fighting until it wins the war’.

In Romania’s first-round presidential elections in November, after Diana Șoșoacă, a candidate opposed to the war, was banned from the election, Călin Georgescu, who also opposes the war, came in first place. Romanian authorities, with US support, responded by cancelling the election.

In December 2024, a YouGov survey of Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and Denmark showed a sharp increase in support for a negotiated settlement. In four of these countries – Germany, France, Spain, and Italy – the position to ‘encourage a negotiated end to fighting, even if Russia still has control of some parts of Ukraine’ had more support than the view to ‘support Ukraine until Russia withdraws, even if this means the war lasts longer’.

In the US, only 23% of the population thought ‘supporting Ukraine’ should be a US foreign policy priority.

The Situation in Ukraine

Re-establishing normal, mutually beneficial economic ties across Europe is necessary for the region’s economy but is only a first step in bringing an end to the disastrous Ukraine war that US imperialism has imposed on Europe.

NATO’s expansion effort is interrelated with the situation within Ukraine, which has a very large Russian-speaking minority (around 30% of the population) that is a majority in the East and Southeast of the state. Experiences in countries such as Canada and Belgium confirm that bilingual states can only be held together by strict guarantees of linguistic and other rights of the different communities and avoiding policies which are totally unacceptable to either.

Nonetheless, from the 2014 Maidan coup onwards, the Kyiv government, supported by the US, has set out to suppress the rights of the Russian-speaking minority. As the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission, which cannot at all be accused of being pro-Russian, stated, ‘the current Law on National Minorities is far from providing adequate guarantees for the protection of minorities… many other provisions which restrict the use of minority languages have already been in force since 16 July 2019’.

Both the attempt to oppress the Russian-speaking population and the question of NATO membership for Ukraine are two issues that must be resolved in order to bring a permanent end to the war.

The Conditions for an End to the War in Ukraine

Europe should undertake honest, serious efforts to bring the Ukraine war to an end. Building on public opinion that is longing for peace and progress and on a peace movement with a strong working-class component, European social and political forces must promote the following steps to end the war in Ukraine:

1. Opening peace negotiations without preconditions.
2. Calling for a ceasefire.
3. Opposition to NATO membership of Ukraine.
4. Recognition of language rights across Ukraine and the rights, including self-determination, of the Russian speaking majority in the East and Southeast of Ukraine.
5. End of involvement by NATO countries in the Ukraine war, including a halt to all arms sales and withdrawal of all military personnel and trainers from Ukraine – the money saved to be used for strengthening social spending and public services.

It will take a significant period for Europe, and the world, to recover from the disastrous effects of US policy in the region. Permanently halting the war in Ukraine is an indispensable first step.