Summary
According to the Telegraph, a leaked confidential Trump peace plan delivered to President Zelenskyy has caused panic in Kyiv.
The proposal would grant the U.S. half of revenues from Ukraine’s resource extraction and licensing, effectively amounting to economic colonization.
The Telegraph noted, “Trump’s demands would amount to a higher share of Ukrainian GDP than reparations imposed on Germany at the Versailles Treaty, later whittled down at the London Conference in 1921, and by the Dawes Plan in 1924.”
Simultaneously, the plan would absolve Russia for its invasion that has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.
This is an extraordinarily bad move.
I’m glad to see steps taken toward the war ending, but this is the sort of Big Mac diplomacy that’s just patently moronic. Trump seems to think he can just order up what he wants and it’s going to magically happen without any negative consequences.
Even if you’re a world superpower, there’s only so much you can demand of another country. The Iraq embargo, for instance, gave rise to Al Qaeda and the eventual destruction of the World Trade Towers. (And that was the SECOND attempt, after a group of terrorists tried to bomb them previously in the 90’s.)
I’m quite certain that this deal is intended to be unpalatable to Ukraine - it was cooked up by Trump and Putin after all.
Either way they win:
Ukraine takes the deal: they win; Ukraine says the deal is ridiculous and walks away: then Russia & Trump brand them as unrealistic agitants and delay for more favourable terms and extend the war.
Oh, I get that. Still pretty stupid.
This is a racist narrative that relies on the assumption that Arabs have no control over themselves and “they’re all the same”. Also relies on the false narrative that Saddam Hussein supported Al Qaeda that was promoted during the build up to the Iraq War.
The reality is that Al Qaeda were enemies of Saddam Hussein, because not all Arabs are the same person. And a psychopath like Saddam Hussein doesn’t want other psychopaths around as competition.
Try to see past American exceptionalism and understand that not everything in the world is defined by it’s relation to the US.
Osama Bin Laden literally referenced the sanctions against Iraq in his fatwa justifying his attacks on Americans.
But okay. Thank you for your response and your insights.
Bin Laden would say anything to get recruits. Fact is, Al Qaeda had a lot of operations going on against Saddam Hussein.
But okay, believe everything a mass murderer says. That makes you a very enlightened person LOL
You know what, you’re both idiots. The world has more important things to worry about than something that happened 24 years ago. Stop trying to justify and start trying to fix. This is not a game anymore, if it ever was.
Nah. Even if we assume (which we do) that Arabs, like any other group of people, aren’t all the same, and that they do have (partial) control over themselves, like anyone else … the decisions and fates of a sufficiently large number of them can still be influenced by a sufficiently large external influence, such as revoked access to international trade. Sometimes in chaotic ways. Heck, if billboard ads work in influencing people, it seems difficult to believe more intrusive changes to people’s lifes would have no effect.
Since the article already mentions it, for example Germany between the WWs. The height of reparations was helpful for nationalistic and ultimately again militaristic groups in Germany to gain power. Not as an automatism, not as a justification, simply recognizing a statistical causality. Peace isn’t equal peace. What’s a foul peace worth? We need conditions which support a stable and peaceful coexistence, not plant the seeds for the next war.
Like I simply could not believe he thinks he could add that. Even the most tyrannical warlords of the past didn’t demand that much tribute from people they conquered. The Mongols and Romans would blush at this shit.