ArcaMax

PARIS — When US President Donald Trump met with his Russian counterpart, President Vladimir Putin, at a U.S. military base in Alaska last week, the world united in hope.

Just kidding. They mostly just bickered over who “won” the peace smackdown.

You would think that the prospect of finally ending the Ukraine conflict, described earlier this year by Secretary of State Marco Rubio as “a proxy war between nuclear powers: the United States — helping Ukraine — and Russia,” would have unanimous global buy-in. Instead, everyone is obsessed with optics – like debating why Trump greeted Putin warmly on the tarmac. Gee, maybe for the same reason that when you invite someone over, basic etiquette doesn’t start with an uppercut at the door.

Talks between these two powers quickly devolved into a geopolitical Super Bowl, with onlookers focused on who looks cooler on the global playing field. Unfortunately, some egos are about to take a hard tackle before any deal crosses the goal line.

First in line: Ukraine. How many times has Kiev insisted that victory must come on the battlefield rather than at the negotiating table? The downside of that losing gamble is lost territory. Insisting that Russia now be forced to simply forget that all this ever happened is pure video-game-level fantasy.

Kiev has also spent the past week insisting on a seat at the Trump-Putin negotiations, saying that only Ukraine can be allowed to decide its own future. Agreed! Kiev should totally have the right to keep fighting Russia if it wants to. And because every nation should have the exact same rights to autonomy, it’s also totally cool if Trump decides to pack up America’s ball — and wallet — and go home then, right? Or does Kiev want all the advantages of being independent while assuming none of the consequences?

Ukraine’s sidelining feels oddly familiar. Like the way kids get shunted off to the plastic table with the balloon animals and paper plates while the adults talk politics over wine. But they didn't just ask for it – they demanded it. Kiev has long insisted on playing the Western establishment’s dependent, allowing NATO to treat its border with Russia like a weaponized flophouse designed and destined to provoke.

Ever since the conflict escalated in 2022, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been running around in hoodies asking mom and dad for lunch money. And now he expects Trump to pull up a high chair so he can call the shots?

Europe certainly isn’t helping Zelenskyy grow up, either. Former British defense secretary, Ben Wallace, recently insisted that Zelenskyy needs a “European power in the room” when dealing with Putin and Trump — so he doesn’t get bullied, according to the Telegraph.

Bullied into what? Peace?

Zelenskyy isn’t exactly resisting his own infantilization when he insists that the US and Russia run everything past the Europeans. Or by hauling them to Washington for his meeting with Trump like overprotective parents chaperoning a school dance.

The reality is that Trump and Putin will negotiate bilaterally, with Europe kept politely informed enough to avoid trashing the wedding. Zelenskyy will probably just be handed a box of crayons to sketch his "dream borders" in the same way that some restaurants have supplies on hand so kids can doodle on the back of placemats instead of having tantrums while the food is being prepped.

Meanwhile, everything that Europe proposes is ideologically driven and divorced from reality, just like its previous moves: anti-Russian sanctions that backfired economically on itself, and conflict-related censorship that violates its own stated values of freedom and democracy.

Their latest bright idea is a ceasefire as a pretext for any peace deal. A request that conveniently ignores that Russia agreed to one before, under the Minsk Accords, and that former French President François Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted that it was used to buy NATO time — all while they loaded it up with weapons. Like checking into rehab, only to use the downtime for hoarding vodka under the bed.

Until the underlying issues are resolved, temporary fixes like ceasefires are pointless. The Russians won’t fall for that twice. And you’d have to be delusional to think otherwise.

Europe and Zelenskyy are also demanding “security guarantees,” including potential NATO membership — essentially enshrining the existential threat that Moscow has long cited as a primary invasion motive. Good luck with that. That’s like demanding drunkenness as a precondition for sobriety. It would also mean committing Americans to fighting Russia in Ukraine as a NATO member. It’s not hard to imagine the neocon war hawks who ginned all this up salivating at the prospect.

Establishment institutions like NATO, the EU and the broader Western establishment have a tendency of hunkering down with a bunker mentality amid the conflicts they stoke, using morality and ideology as smokescreens for blocking real, pragmatic solutions. They can’t be counted on to make serious contributions while insisting on offering more of what stoked the blaze in the first place.

Trump and Putin are going to do what’s best for their own nations, first and foremost, leaving other nations wondering, sooner or later, why they didn’t avail themselves of the opportunity to have done the same a long time ago.

If Ukraine and Europe want a leading role in something as basic as their own fate, they need to address their complicity in their own infantilization. They can’t constantly kowtow to Washington while pretending to be equals when it suits them. Had they acted differently earlier, and strictly in their own self-interest and that of their citizens, they wouldn’t be relegated to begging for an invite to decide their own future.

Until Europe and Ukraine stop outsourcing their agency, they’ll keep getting invited to peace talks like kids to weddings: asked to mostly stay quiet and not spill anything on the carpet.