Perhaps Putin should tell the Russian people and the Russian Army that his interest in resolving the conflict in Ukraine with peace negotiations lies in the possibility that the negotiations could be used to achieve a Great Power Agreement like what he and Lavrov tried to achieve with the West during the winter of 2021-2022 prior to Russia’s forced intervention in Ukraine. A New Yalta in effect.
Russian foreign affairs commentators have been speaking for some time about the need for a new Yalta agreement. A few years ago I was asked to address the Russian Academy of Sciences on the subject. I told them something that they did not want to hear: that Washington’s claim to hegemony prevented accommodation to Russian sovereignty.
A few thinking people have been perplexed at Putin’s conduct of the conflict in Ukraine. Russia could have ended the war quickly with conquest, but instead has fought a slow, restrained war that has greatly expanded the war with Putin and Lavrov bleating constantly for “peace negotiations.”
Why has Putin done this despite the protests of the Wagner Group and the Chechnya leader of the Muslim troops fighting in the Ukraine conflict? The only answer seems to be that he wants a New Yalta Agreement. If he wins the war, he loses the opportunity. So he drags out the war in the hopes that negotiations will provide a platform for addressing the “root cause of the conflict”–which he sees as the absence of a Great Power Agreement.
One problem Putin’s wishful strategy faces is Washington’s commitment to hegemony. No American president has repudiated the Wolfowitz Doctrine. Another is that the absence of victory goes down poorly with the Russian nationalists and with the troops themselves. There are news reports that Russians are suspicious and resentful of peace negotiations in Ukraine that stop short of victory.
Russian soldiers doing the fighting have told media that as tired as they are and as much as they want to go home, they want to liberate all of the regions that are once again part of Russia so that they don’t have to renew the fight in the future. As one of the soldiers asked, “Otherwise, have all the guys died in vain?”
Russia’s rescue of the Russian territories assigned to Ukraine by Soviet leaders is important to Putin, but more important is to secure a Great Power Agreement, a New Yalta, that accepts Russia as a member county free of sanctions, overthrow attempts, and conflicts.
Putin is so desirous of this agreement that he has risked the ever-widening of the Ukraine conflict to the point that drone attacks now close all Moscow airports and destroy energy infrastructure deep inside Russia. When Putin says that peace negotiations must address the “root cause of the conflict,” he means the absence of a Great Power Agreement.
Putin is not interested in a negotiated end to the conflict in Ukraine. He is hopeful of using negotiation to achieve a New Yalta. The problem that Putin faces is that Washington, wrapped up as it is in its assumed hegemony, has no comprehension of another country’s point of view.
Washington’s approach to all negotiations is to use threats, to look for levers of pressure to force other governments to accept Washington’s “solution” to the “problem,” usually a Washington creation. In other words, Washington doesn’t really negotiate. It imposes its solutions.
Trump expects the Ukrainian negotiations to fail, and has ensured as much, in order to be able to withdraw money and focus from Ukraine and use the resources to bring into operation
Trump’s goal of an American Middle East colonial empire which began with Trump’s claim of Gaza as an American possession.
This claim is a claim to the undersea gas reserves that run from Gaza’s border with Egypt to northern Syria. Trump’s visit in Saudi Arabia, the last remaining Arab state, was to enlist the rulers as junior partners in Trump’s American Middle East colonial empire. It seems that with Trump’s domestic agenda blocked by the judiciary, Trump will make us great again with the rise of America’s Middle East Empire.
“The New Yalta” versus the Failed 1945 “Spirit of Yalta”
by Michel Chossudovsky
Some observations pertaining to the history of the 1945 Yalta conference and this so-called spirit of Yalta
The February 1945 Yalta Conference was an Outright Failure.
Following the passing of FDR in April 1945, Truman and Churchill laid the foundations of the Cold War against America’s former “Soviet Ally”
Franklin D. Roosevelt was firmly committed to an alliance with the Soviet Union.
I do not regard the Communists as any present or future threat to our country. In fact, I look upon Russia as our strongest ally in the years to come.
While I do not believe in Communism, Russia under Communism is better than under the tsars. Stalin is a great leader, and although I despise some of his methods, it is the only way he can safeguard his government. (Democratic Party Convention, 1936)
[on Joseph Stalin] I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask for nothing from him in return, ‘noblesse oblige’, he won’t try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace.
***
I just have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of man. Harry [Hopkins] says he’s not and that he doesn’t want anything except security for his own country, and I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won’t try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace. Response to advice from Ambassador William C. Bullitt to pursue a containment policy against the Soviet Union (1943)
Roosevelt had firmly endorsed the Spirit of Yalta, with a commitment to supporting US-Soviet alliance. There was a complete shift in Washington’s relationship to Moscow following his untimely death on the 12th of April 1945.
The Spirit of Yalta was dumped
Franklin D. Roosevelt was supportive of an alliance with the Soviet Union. The Yalta Conference was a failure due to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s passing.
The Potsdam conference from July 17 to August 2, 1945. was attended by Winston Churchill, Stalin, and Harry Truman, it’s official intent was “to allow the three leading Allies to plan the postwar peace”.
President Truman was largely instrumental in undermining “The Spirit of Yalta”.
Barely a few days after the Potsdam conference Harry Truman announced the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The latter were described by the War Department as a dress rehearsal for the formulation of a detailed nuclear war against the Soviet Union.
Harry Truman and his Secretary of State, James Byrnes, in coordination with the U.S. War Department had already outlined a “Cold War agenda”
The Truman administration had not only endorsed the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ordered by the War Department in coordination with the Manhattan Project, the intent to wage a nuclear war against the Soviet Union was confirmed by secret classified documents of the War Department dated September 15, 1945.
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were described by the US War Department as a dress rehearsal. The plan consisted in the bombing of 66 urban areas of the Soviet Union with approximately 200 atomic bombs.
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Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy where this article was originally published. Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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