By David Phillips

The United States, despite its enthusiastic celebration of independence from Britain on 4th July, has not always supported independence fighters elsewhere. This may be because their fight for freedom has been interpreted in terms of US longer term strategy, realpolitik, or dismissed as a cover for something else (like a communist take-over). For example, the fight of the Vietnamese against French colonialism was interpreted by the US not as an independence struggle (even though Ho Chi Minh had explicitly sought U.S. support for it) but as within the domino theory of communist expansion in Asia.

While the US obviously played a critical role in the World Wars, and has assisted the Philippines, defended South Korea, helped the Mujihadeen, supported the Arab Spring and the creation of an independent State, Israel, it has also given only partial support, if any, to independence struggles in  South Africa, Algeria, Kurdistan, Palestine, Iran, Congo and Chile, as well as Vietnam, amongst other places.  

What about Ukraine? For three years we have provided assistance to the people of that country struggling with huge loss of life against a brutal and far stronger, imperialistic invader that is, ironically, also a ‘brotherly’ Slavic State. But now Ukraine faces the prospect of fighting for its existence, as a State, as a culture, and as a people, without our critical support, essentially alone. By comparison, in the Revolutionary War the stakes were nowhere near as high as this – that war was against an imperial power but it’s trigger was tax oppression to pay for the wars of King George, not an existential battle for the survival of the American colonies.

If a people have been fighting for their lives for a long time against a brutal invader then mediators who are trying to end the fighting have to have an understanding of history and to recognize the very high probability that the independence fighters do not see the ending of the fighting as just a ‘business deal’ (like say a building contract, or a treaty between equal opponents) that requires ‘give’ and ‘take’ on both sides. This is because some ‘gives’ in this case are incredibly risky and dangerous for the giver, and it needs ironclad commitments - in a world where commitments are shaky. I.e. these are very heavily weighted ‘gives,’ – one ‘give’ is worth many, many ‘takes’. So the defending side will most likely have non-negotiable minimum conditions to ensure its viable existence.

The US negotiators will fail if they don’t understand this – unless of course they intend to use their power to extract a result regardless of the interests of the defenders.

In this context we might ask ourselves whether it would have been acceptable for an outside power to pressure George Washington to sue for peace - i.e. surrender to a seemingly overwhelming invading force - just before he crossed the Delaware River. Probably not. And consider also that it took about 9 months of complex multi-channel interactions to develop enough trust on either side of the Oslo Accords, and even the famous Arafat/Rabin handshake of Sept 1993 under the eye of  Bill Clinton was not enough to prevent the agreements falling apart a few years later because of unbridgeable differences.

For Ukraine simple arrogance and arm-twisting (or extortionary pressure) on the part of US negotiators will definitely never remove unbridgeable differences. A construction contract is not the same thing as a contract with an aggressive invader.

First appeared in EVIDENCE, REASON AND GASLIGHT - davidphillips502.substack.com