Zelensky has a weak hand

Express Tribune

06-03-2025

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Volodymyr Zelensky is the third in line among leaders of modern Ukraine around whom country's fate has evolved. Vladimir Putin is his neighbour in Russia who has ruled his country for the last twenty-five years, four of which were as the prime minister. Around 2000, at the turn of the millennium, with globalisation taking effect when the Soviet Union stood dissolved, the US was the only pole left in the new world. Or at least this is what the Americans thought. The age of China had yet to manifest, and Americans were the masters of the universe. This remained true for all of ten years till China rose from its shadows and became a global factor in no uncertain terms in the 2010s. Former Soviet states that had regained their independence were in the meanwhile scampering to join the only party in town, NATO, for fear of being reembraced in the enveloping clutches of an agitated Russian bear. From sixteen NATO nations rose to thirty-two in quick succession over time.
Russian influence reduced infinitesimally from its Soviet days till it began hurting Russian vanity. NATO had its eyes on two nations that would complete Russia's coup de grace – Georgia and Ukraine, both soft underbellies of Russia. These two were Russia's declared red lines. NATO violated agreements with Putin when it sought to enclose Russia with creeping expansionism threatening security of Russian federation. Georgia, a member of NATO's Partnership for Peace program since 1994, five years after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union dissolved – a waiting-in-line status for full potential membership – has been in persistent tumult under one completing influence or another.
Ukraine however held out well, first under Victor Yanukovych, who was a Russian and Putin ally, and then under Petro Poroshenko who was a consummate neutral. A country of only thirty-odd million people but the second largest area-wise in Europe, once a crown jewel of the Soviet Empire, the bread-basket of the world in an interconnected global market, and the softest underbelly of Russia whose people spoke Russian and were once bona fide Russians of great pride – Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev and many more were Ukrainian Russians – it was largely understood that Ukraine is better left alone. But then another prospective cold war loomed. China's rise was contentious and fearful challenging American exceptionalism. The bigger fear was what if Russia and China joined hands, which in fairness the latter two had exhibited sufficiently challenging American eminence. Hence the multipolarity which now is an established definition of today's geopolitics.
America reverted to its 1972 playbook when Nixon visited China in an implicit move to checkmate Soviet Union by opening to China. The only way to break this potentially evolving co-axial threat to America's lone primacy was to keep the two separated and obsessed within their own orbits of concern and attention. Russian circle of influence may have shrunk from its Soviet days but retained its potent military, the one that had kept the West on tenterhooks for decades. It hadn't lost its bite. Another competitive and confrontational Cold War brought Russian military might back into focus. Together with Chinese economic strength and galloping advances in its military potential and the possibility of the two joining forces, politically, economically and militarily against the US, if successful would mean the American century was literally over. That is when Ukraine and Zelensky greatly helped.
The reformed international economy that now rests on Artificial Intelligence, quantum computing and biotechnology is sourced in microprocessors and chips which need a different set of raw materials. These are now the basis of a renewed competitive focus between two if not the three principal powers of the world, China, USA and Russia. The war in Ukraine however has kept Russia effectively off this congested hustle. Just as Russia remains embroiled, the US and its allies continue to raise the bogey of tensions around Taiwan and the South China Sea where the specter of war is increasingly leveraged to force China to be concerned and locked in its backyard than be expeditious to the detriment of US interests. Simply put, America is fighting hard to keep its position of eminence in the world and found it opportune to keep Russia engaged in a war and China worried.
Considering how much the US is leaking to Ukraine in finances to keep a feared nexus of its two principal opponents from realising is perhaps what Donald Trump has clearly questioned. To invest any further in an undertaking where no returns are on the anvil is both counterproductive and counterintuitive. Zelensky, by now used to freebies by Europe and the US and in an extended run in power of an increasingly debilitated Ukraine – he wallows in power under the martial law that he ingratiatingly imposed after he ran out of his constitutional tenure using ongoing war as an excuse – was easily flustered when Trump faced him off in the Oval Office.
If the US and NATO do not violate their agreements with Putin on keeping the limits of expansion, Putin will not have a worry on what happens inside NATO and between its members. Putin annexed Crimea as a warning shot when Yanukovych was replaced with Poroshenko challenging Russian influence over Ukraine. The US and the entire Europe sat idly by as this happened. NATO had implied plans to squeeze Russia in the Black Sea through Ukraine and Georgia harassing Russian presence at its main Naval facility, but Putin preempted the move by occupying Crimea in 2014 denying NATO its design and warning Ukraine to avoid capitulating before NATO and threaten to irritate Russia's underbelly. Zelensky however had found his way into power on the back of obvious western support and had played his role of engaging Russia in war on the back of continuous feed from NATO/EU members.
So, what went on in the Oval Office was just the face; what stood behind it was the design of the previous twenty-five years in how the entire gamut had played out. Just that Trump was not willing to have any more of it in leaky dollars when really no return was coming to it. Attrite(ing) Russia over the long term by denying it the freedom of economic engagement and building military losses would not gain the US the time it needs in the immediate to find the freedom to instead focus on building its capacity to compete and confront China she fears as her emerging nemesis. China, undeterred, surges on in geopolitical and economic gains. From an American perspective it may be the right call to make. And Trump made it. Zelensky's bluff was called. More than likely the rest of Europe too will soon fall in line and call curtains on the time of Zelensky who has had it better than his real worth.