Trump’s Ukraine ‘peace’ move shows US is focused on China

Trump isn’t the first Western leader to do deals with Putin in the interests of Western imperialism

This week will bring further confirmation that the Ukraine war was never about the West standing up for “freedom” or “self-determination”.

It was always a proxy war between United States (US) imperialism and Russian imperialism.

What better illustrates that than the planned meeting between Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday?

They were set to discuss the carve-up of Ukraine without Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky at the negotiating table.

The mainstream media says it shows Trump is “pro-Putin”—and that’s the reason he has thrown Ukraine under the bus. But nothing could be further from the truth.

Trump isn’t the first Western leader to do deals with Putin in the interests of Western imperialism.

In 1999-2000, missiles, bombs and shells rained down on Grozny, the capital of the break-away republic of Chechnya in southern Russia

But there were no demands from European politicians to “arm Chechnya”. Britain’s Labour prime minister Tony Blair flew to Russia to congratulate Putin on his action against “terrorism”.

At the time, the West feared that a victory for the Chechen resistance would be an inspiration for other movements taking on imperialist powers.

So it backed Putin’s war on Chechnya that bludgeoned the republic into submission.

But the US still tried to pull some of Russia’s neighbours into its sphere of influence in the 1990s.

From the 2000s, competition between the West and Russia increased in the region. This flowed from the dynamics of imperialism, a global system of competition among capitalist states.

Ukraine’s rulers had balanced between the West and Russia, but this became harder as the ­imperialist rivalry increased.

When Ukraine seemed like it would pivot to the West in 2014, Russia stepped in. It annexed Crimea and backed separatist insurgencies in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine.

The US and Russia poured in weapons and support for their proxies. And, despite peace agreements in 2015, competition increased and culminated in Russia’s brutal invasion in 2022.

Former US president Joe Biden’s administration saw Ukraine as an opportunity to overcome US defeats in the Middle East and put it on a war footing with China.

As one US official said back in 2021, “Ukraine’s strategic value to Nato can enable US and Euro-Atlantic aspirations for competition with Russia and with China.”

But Ukraine has turned into a stalemate—and Western sanctions on Russia have pushed it into a closer relationship with China.

As US secretary of state Marco Rubio said, “The big story of the 21st century is going to be US-Chinese relations.

“A situation where the Russians are permanently a junior partner to China is not a good outcome for America”.

All those who have said, “Russian troops out, no to Nato,” stand vindicated.