WELCOME TO THE NEW WORLD ORDER

The United Nations Charter was signed on the 26 June 1945 in San Francisco. The first US Ambassador to the United Nations was none other than the late President Roosevelt’s wife and former First Lady, Eleanor. It was a role she was promised by her husband and honored after his death by President Truman. She, as did they, believed passionately in the new organisation as a way of guiding the world through the future and maintaining peace, in the new International Rules Based Order, that millions had fought for and died to create.

The funeral of that order – even though some cling to it still, was February 28th 2025, just months short of its 80th birthday. It died after a long illness, of increasing irrelevance and in the end, undermined from the very office in which it was originally set in motion, the Oval Office of the White House, seat of the President of the United States. Its death came about as the current president sided with global authoritarianism and voted with the enemy in the UN, then tried to humiliate the true leader of the free world, the President of Ukraine, Volodomyr Zelensky.

Around the world the democracies rallied – except for Victor Orban’s Hungary of course, which isn’t really democratic any more. Every leader in the EU, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and many more, rallied to support President Zelensky, while in the US the Republicans rallied around praising the president for ‘standing up for America’. The spineless group of people who are too afraid to say anything else, lavished praise on the destroyer of American Values, while at the same time leaving just a bit of wiggle room if they had to change tack suddenly to fit some new agenda.

Yet there are certain facts about the immediate situation and the prospects for peace we have to bear in mind.

1. Ukraine wants peace but not at any price.
2. It needs American support but not at any price.
3. Russia is losing the war and that hasn’t changed.
4. 47 has a bizarre relationship with Putin – it came out yesterday that he speaks with him almost every other day – he admitted as much when asked when he’d last spoken with Putin. At the same time TASS – the Russian State Media outlet was identified as being in the Oval Office recording the sit down with Zelensky. The Press Office said they weren’t invited and somehow ‘got in by accident’. To the Oval Office? In the White House? Even Associated Press and Reuters aren’t allowed in any more.
5. Europe has finally realized it needs to stand apart and away from the United States – the soon to be Bundeskanzler Merz of Germany is actually talking about ‘achieving independence from America’.
6. The French and the British Governments found themselves in a real bind.

We all know what Ukraine wants and we know that if it has to it will fight on with or without America. It won’t be easy, not by a long way. With the Americans placing themselves in some kind of neutral zone – where they are friends with Putin to the point they want Zelensky to end the war to make it better for America to deal with Putin for their own ends, that’s truly twisted. But that’s where we are.

In a post event outdoor press chat as 47 left for a weekend of golf at Maralago he basically said that what annoyed him was how much Zelensky hated and disrespected Putin. We can see quite clearly there’s some weird relationship going on here that is only explicable if certain theories that surely can’t be true, like the Krasnov proposition, really have some basis. It’s all far too bizarre.

We have to accept, America has switched sides. But I believe this is where 47 and Vance always wanted to be. They have railed against Ukraine all through the last 18 months, relentlessly. They set this up in my opinion – and that of others, to get to be where they want. They made it an almost impossible deal for Zelensky to sign and he out negotiated them to something of essentially minimal value that’s not even binding. 47 didn’t care because he just wanted the publicity of having made a deal. Vance who has a sharp anti-Ukraine agenda and has done from the very start, turned the knife and away it went. Now they have an excuse to avoid any further support for Ukraine.

If you think that’s not true, I can tell you that no sooner had 47 left for Florida and Zelensky was on his plane for Stansted in the UK, orders went out to find out if there was any way of stopping deliveries to Ukraine that were already scheduled and had not departed.

This put the British – busy patting themselves on the back for having Starmer achieve a remarkable breakthrough of keeping 47 on side – even in respect of what is a really bad deal over the Chagos Islands and Diego Garcia that I think is a mess and should be canceled immediately, wondering what to do. They know in the end they have to support Ukraine – but nobody wants to push 47 further away yet, because we’re just not ready for that right now.

Likewise in Paris President Macron was aghast at what happened. Part of the Starmer-Macron show was to lubricate the smooth passage of the meeting with Zelensky and keep America on board. Now we are faced this side of the Atlantic with reformulating NATO or its successor and finding some kind of rapid arms build up for all of Europe. Germany alone is talking €200 billion in defence spending as soon as is viable with the new government. Partly they see it as a means of revitalizing German industry.

The rest of the EU is talking up an urgent €6 billion package for Ukraine and a wider €30 billion from everyone as soon as possible, part of an even larger longer term €700 billion package. There is a formula for working out who pays what. The equivalent of a GDP figure is used for all of Europe and your country pays proportionally a percentage of the whole of Europe’s GDP. France for example will pay about €4.12 billion. So we have Macron on the one hand urging everyone on and trying to seize the leadership of the EU in the way he supports Ukraine, while his government is undermining the whole €30 billion package in conjunction with the other three in opposition (Italy, Spain & Portugal). They have a whole different attitude. Spain says one thing, but years of neutrality under fascist dictator Francisco Franco from 1939-75, a distance from Russia that doesn’t threaten it as much as it does say Finland and Poland, and they have a more laid back attitude towards it. Portugal has a similar history. Italy and France in all honesty, just don’t really have the money. France is in dire economic straits debt wise, barely able to pass a budget.

So we have the usual European dilemma. We all know what to do but that means getting off our butts and paying for it and explaining it to our people, getting them on side and supportive. Don’t get me wrong, everyone in Europe is awake to the threat we face, but not all of them understand – because its never happened – how much work they have to do to change things and actually make it happen. They have to “put their money where their mouth is”.

THERE REMAINS ONE MAJOR FACT WE SHOULD NOT FORGET: RUSSIA IS AT BREAKING POINT AND THAT HASN’T CHANGED.

None of what has happened has changed the situation on the frontlines of the economic facts around Russia. Putin may well have been popping champagne corks in the Kremlin with many others that his manipulation of America has now reached the pinnacle of its achievements to date. It has been a remarkable operation to co-opt the president of the United States and most of his supporters into believing Russia is good. It’s a stunning, magnificent achievement on a scale hard to quantify from his perspective. You have to admire the sheer gall of it, the temerity, the scope of the operation, years in the making, it will go down as the ultimate KGB/FSB feat of all time.

And yet they are on the cusp of losing the war. Zelensky when told by 47 he had no cards, said “I’m not playing cards”. But if he was, he has this simple card to play: the Ace of Attrition. He has worn down the Russians to the point they can barely do anything, and the average age of a contracted soldier is now 50. If you can get anyone to volunteer. The pay is barely an incentive any more. They can’t get the Ukrainians out of Kursk, the N.K troops are an embarrassment, Kursk has passed every deadline Putin set for it. Pokrovsk is on the cusp of reversing the manpower issue is so dire. Ukrainians have taken back parts of Toretsk and Chasiv Yar, they continuously outwit Russian attacks often with appalling consequences for the attackers.

Then there is the war on refineries and the airfields, the arms factories and the ammo depots, the oil shipping port facilities – it’s never ending. Russia has been left flailing, unable to do anything about much of it. Instead they attack civilians and schools, hospitals and so on, seemingly failing to understand, that while it hurts Ukraine deeply, it simply makes it more determined to fight on and reinforces why they do so.

Russia’s economy is on the brink almost every day. One bad shock, one mistake, one disaster and the spinning plates will tumble down. Putin knows it, and yet his American puppets have now given him that glimmer of hope that if he doubles down now, he might be able to turn it all around.

What sits in the minds of the Europeans is the sanctions. If 47 lifts sanctions then that’s the end of it. Not only will Putin have no reason to negotiate in good faith, he’ll know he can ultimately win on the ground. Quite what’s stopping the administration lifting them is it may be a step too far publicly – yet, but it’s also the only leverage they have to get Putin talking if 47 wants his Nobel peace prize.

Europe however has something Putin really wants and needs. The best part of $300 billion locked up in mostly Belgian banks. there is much argument that its time to take the gloves off and use it.

We also have to face the fact that all of us in Europe, west and east, north and south, are in a world where we have got to stand up for ourselves and our position, and we cannot do that from a position that has no backbone to it and our enemies know that it doesn’t. We have to be able to deploy weapons of attack and defence that are both real and believable. We have to be able to say, if you do that, we will respond and then do it if needed. It’s all they recognize. Getting Europe to a point where it accepts that fact will take a lot of work, especially with the eastern nations working to persuade the southern nations its vital and its urgent.

On Sunday 2nd March a vital conference will be held in London. The King is being wheeled out to add his soft power influence and gravitas to the moment. it is not a surprise that it’s happening in London. The EU (except Orban of course) will attend, along with other non-EU pro-Ukraine states. In a non-EU state, a pointed fact designed to show it’s not just about the EU – it’s about ALL of Europe. President Zelensky will be there of course.

Over in America the spineless vegetable in the State Department, something called a Rubio, is demanding Zelensky apologies for his behavior. He isn’t going to. I hope he never does, because he did nothing wrong. There are those who say tomorrow’s meeting is the most important in European History in 80 years. It might well be, if it can be the booster that starts to get everyone off the ground and doing something to push Europe towards self sufficiency and turning itself into a real power in the world, Britain and others included. It must be more than words, there have to be actions.

The Analyst

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