While Trump & Putin deal bilaterally ...

It looks for all the world as though Trump, against all his self-vaunted reputation as a dealmaker, has rather publicly gone into bilaterals with Putin on a basis that may be designed to achieve something for "America First", but nothing whatever for Ukraine.  And maybe that's exactly the correct summary of the situation.

But even if he has, Putin has also made some capital errors in this process: he's wetting himself with such pleasure at being talked to again by someone other than China and NK, it's not clear he can help himself.

Just count his well-advertised desiderata:  I'm not sure which, if any, count as Red Lines, but just look at the list.

• Russia gets all of the oblasts of Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson (Kharkiv has sometimes featured on this list, and we know what he really wants is Odessa, for a free crack at Moldova and total blockade of Ukraine from the Black Sea)
• Ukraine to undergo regime change (we must assume he has a List of Names), and a programme of 'denazification' which is a long list of demands in itself
• Ukraine substantially to disarm
• NATO to withdraw from X, Y, Z (list varies), and deploy no forces whatever to Ukraine
• Ukraine never to be admitted to NATO (sometimes demand extends to EU) 
• end of all sanctions etc
• return of all assets (no doubt "+ interest" etc)
• end of all blacklistings, charges of war crimes etc etc
• return to the comity of nations in all dimensions, G8, sports, etc etc: (we may guess he has a list of specific showy performative demands to seal this)
• tickets to the Oscars, Wimbledon, Pope's funeral 
• I have probably forgotten a few

So: how many of these could Trump conceivably deliver?  (without at very least expending every last drop of personal credibility in the RoW, and US political capital with the EU.)

So Putin won't get all this (that's putting things mildly): so he risks looking like he's spent a helluva lot of blood and treasure for equivocal results.  May not go down well back in Moscow.

OR: he simply wants to set Trump at the throats of Europe.  Now that, he might achieve.  But not all of Trump's merry men are knaves or fools, by a long shot.  And not necessarily the bombastic, unequivocal, easily-understood 'victory' Putin would be hoping to celebrate in Red Square, even though it might be epoch-making in the long run.

This ain't over by Xmas. 

PS, I didn't miss the interesting BTL suggestion from Mr Cowshed that Trump wants to set Putin up against Xi.  Nice theory!  Even more difficult to imagine, though.

PPS:  Forgotten a few?  Didn't even mention return of the small Kursk salient held by Ukr since last August!

ND

What is NATO For?

When I was a boy, world was better spot

What was so was so, what was not was not

Now I am a man, world has changed a lot

... 'tis a puzzlement!

When I was a boy ... a couple of the great pillars of existence were the Conservative Party and NATO.  Everyone knew what they were for and, revealingly, their raisons d'être were negatively defined.  In the case of the Party this was explicit in its rulebook: "Membership of the Conservative & Unionist Party is open to all who oppose Socialism and Communism".  NATO managed to avoid name-calling in its concise founding treaty of 1949, but no-one was in any doubt it existed to be in opposition to Soviet Russia.

Well, the world has certainly changed a lot.  NATO command structures were seriously deployed in a shooting war for the first time in the first Gulf War 1990-91, in the service of George Bush Senior's grand coalition force.  (The Russians were mightly impressed with the salutory technical success this represented: they'd believed the sheer volume of air traffic implied by the Air-Land Battle doctrine was infeasible.  It also became clear that France's long period of refusal to commit troops to the NATO frontline in Germany hadn't dimished her operational ability to fit in nicely when it mattered.)  NATO qua NATO actually went into action in Bosnia / Herzegovina in 1995, and errr, Afghanistan, following the first-ever invoking of Article 5 (who attacks one, attacks all) in respect of 9/11.

Additionally, for some while now NATO has had an 'enlargement' policy:

NATO membership is open to “any other European state in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area.”

And of course it has followed through with this, accommodating most of the former Warsaw Pact states notwithstanding the 'verbal agreement' given to Gorbachev that NATO would not push eastward.  Well, Turkey has long been a member, so perhaps Bulgaria isn't such a provocative inclusion after all.  And Poland, Hungary & the Baltics are EU and historically fairly 'European'...

But now we find NATO - and its playground pal the EU - playing silly-buggers, so that its website offers translation into French, Arabic, Russian and yes, Ukranian, even though Ukraine explicitly doesn't qualify for membership (though incidentally, neither did Croatia and Slovenia, having an active border dispute between them).   Russia, of course, has finally taken the bait and decided (albeit when oil was still at $115) there's nothing in practical terms to prevent them re-drawing the borders of the 1991 dispensation if they choose.  Plus or minus some financial sanctions, annexation of Crimea and the latest events in Ukraine lend credence to Putin's judgement on this.

So what are we to make of Mr Fallon and the rather bellicose Jens Stoltenberg warning us that the Baltics might be next ?  C@W commenters have suggested this is just a ploy to boost defence spending, which is plausible enough but not, I think, the whole story.  Just as the neocons have decided the cheapest strategy against Russia is to bait it along its borders, so Putin will have noticed that two can play this game.   Sending subs into the North Sea and Tupolevs to Cornwall (sic) is flamboyant and fairly cheap, too: but in the Baltics there's the prospect of real turmoil. 

Obviously the correct answer is for both sides to row back from this childish provocation, and get on with trade and other important things we all have in common.

But, pace Hatfield Girl, I'm no advocate of a 'Russia-in-Christendom' policy: I've lived there, their culture is different and they're capable of crazy things.  Also, if my theory is correct, that the USSR held back from a first strike partly because their Marxism told them they were going to win anyway, well that particular restraint obviously no longer applies.  So NATO it is, but without the mission-creep.  Being negatively defined is just fine.  'Attack is the best form of defence' may be a maxim worth considering for a general in the field, but not for statesmen in countries of such wealth (and strength) as the USA.  What was wrong with 'speak softly, and carry a big stick' ?  It saw off the USSR handily enough.

ND 

NATO: This Is How The World Ends

The US defence secretary Robert Gates has delivered himself of a blistering and long overdue broadside against Germany and the other sleeping member of NATO. (It's mostly Germany since the UK, Canada, France and Italy are generally onside at the moment when it comes to actual fighting, if sometimes variously deficient in the contributions they make. But we all fall short in some way or other.)

In a blinding instant of shock-and-awe clarity we can see how the cosy western world comes to an end. There will come a moment - who knows when, but China plays a long game - when some ghastly, Europe-threatening crisis arises (Iran ? Turkey ? or another financial meltdown ?) and Europe is confronted squarely with its own flabby uselessness. Couldn't face down Libya unaided, as Gates has gently pointed out: & certainly can't face this putative future challenge, without contemplating some seriously bloody bayonet-work (and/or precipitous standard-of-living reduction). No stomach for that - and the US has decided it's had enough.

And then ... and then China or India has a quiet word in Brussels. Leave it to us, they say: and all we want in return is ... look, we've written it on a piece of paper for you. Territory. Technology. Resources. Disarmament. Debt. 'Environmental' transfer payments. Work permits. Migration rights ...

You think not ? Consider how patiently the US pursued its anti British Empire strategy. But they saw us off in the end - and we were friends !

Germany's extra-EU foreign policy today consists in one simple imperative: keep Russia onside because that's where the gas comes from. In itself, that's not entirely wrong: but it is pathetically limited in its vision. For the rest, they are just looking to achieve some intra-EU deckchair re-arrangements.

Not good enough. Every one of Europe's Big 5 needs to step up to the plate. The world ain't getting any more tranquil or civilisation-friendly that I can see.

ND