Trump’s America on Ukraine: Throwback to Britain in 1917 Palestine?
Ukraine. Photo by Max Kukurudziak on Unsplash
The last time one nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third, it was Britain expressing stout support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.
In 1917, British foreign secretary Lord Balfour issued a 67-word document about Palestine, then inhabited by a Jewish minority and Arab majority. Historians have suggested different reasons for this, not least that Britain was being self-serving. In the pithy criticism of writer Arthur Koestler, the Balfour Declaration meant that “one nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third”.
So what’s the reason Trump’s America is so keen to reprise Britain’s long ago, fateful role in the Middle East? Why is the US seemingly so keen to barter away Ukraine?
Last month, the Trump White House embraced a 28-point “peace plan” stuffed with the Kremlin’s demands and the US president brusquely gave Ukraine until Thanksgiving to accept it.
To many Ukrainians, the so-called peace plan looked like a set of demands for their capitulation. To others, it seemed like indecent willingness by the Americans to reward the aggressor and punish the victim.
The Thanksgiving deadline went away but the Trump White House still seems unwilling to accept two basic facts about a war that’s tragically headed for its fourth tragic anniversary in February: First, that Russia started the illegal invasion. Second, that the world needs to force Russia to end it.
It has led some of Ukraine’s allies to suspect the Russians are dangling rich financial profits before the Trump administration. The Atlantic recently quoted a senior European diplomat musing that it looked like a “sausage in front of the American nose”.
Perhaps it’s not a sausage or anything at all. That said, the parallels between 1917 and 2025 are striking.
