Could it be that Donald Trump is actually going to produce some half way decent outcome in Ukraine after all?
This is a question we have to ask after the astonishing developments over the last few hours, in which the US has resumed intelligence and military aid to Ukraine, while Washington and Kyiv have agreed on a ceasefire proposal to put to Russia.
I’m coming to the end of a holiday in Europe, but it’s impossible to take even a few hours away from the Trump bubble of consciousness, which seems to have enveloped the entire world.
Does anyone anywhere on the globe ever have a full minute of mental activity which doesn’t involve Trump?
Talk about flooding the zone.
Like almost everyone I know and respect, I was appalled, truly and utterly appalled, at the bullying by Trump and his vice president, JD Vance, of Volodymyr Zelensky in that bizarre White House pantomime show.
Even worse was Trump’s decision to refuse to support a United Nations resolution critical of Russia, and then his decision to cut off military and intelligence aid to Ukraine. These grievously wicked moves could only add to the leverage possessed by Vladimir Putin, as murderous and dangerous a dictator as the world knows today. Now, Trump has reversed these moves.
But everyone in the strategic lane has known for a long time now that the only prospect of peace in Ukraine is a ceasefire more or less with forces in place and then setting up a sufficient deterrent structure to convince Russia not to attack Ukraine again.
This is how the Korean war ended and resulted in a durable ceasefire. There has never been a comprehensive peace agreement on the Korean peninsula, but it has never reverted to war, and South Korea has become a magnificent, prosperous democracy.
The shape of any Ukrainian ceasefire has been the case for months, more than a year. But someone had to be, to misuse an old communist metaphor, the midwife to history. Trump certainly never lacks energy and it may possibly be that he gets a decent outcome here.
Of course, this is very far from established. It could all turn disastrous. And Putin has a big vote in what happens.
The other thing is, while I think Trump is gravely wrong historically, morally and strategically to trash US alliances, his essential message to Europe is right.
The Europeans have to take vastly more defence responsibility for themselves.
How can it be that 500 million rich, democratic West Europeans cannot deal militarily with 140 million impoverished, autocratic subjects of modern Russian tsarism?
It’s because the Europeans, like the Australians, have been terrific “bludgers” about defence, always leaving the heavy lifting, and the lion’s share of effort, to the Americans.
The Australian reaction has been almost psychotic.
People are upset that a senior US official, Elbridge Colby, should point out that our defence effort is pathetic.
Richard Marles, a serious contender for the worst defence minister this nation has ever had, says with his usual unctuous equivocation, that Australia is happy to continue to have a dialogue with the US about defence spending.
How spiffingly, Bertie Woosterishly, irrelevant that fatuous remark is.
No ABC interviewer had the wit to ask Marles why, in its last budget, the Albanese government committed less than 2 per cent of GDP to defence? The final figure was 1.99 per cent whereas defence planning documents have promised much more than 2 per cent for years.
Britain, France, Germany and other European powers with vastly bigger economies than ours, and surrounded by allies, have massively increased their defence budgets in order to provide for their own security, as a result of Trump’s albeit crude telling them underlying, hard, fundamental truths.
We don’t need to increase our defence budget because Trump is rude to us. And tariffs on steel exports are nothing in the strategic scheme of things.
But as anyone with an IQ above room temperature, with eyes even half open, who is even in the first stages of waking from deep slumber can see, Trump expects allies to look after themselves militarily.
As Ukraine and Israel demonstrate, if you can do that you might well get some help from your friends.
Having spent the last month in Europe, I’m reluctantly coming to the view that the only people on the whole planet who don’t get this in any way at all are the leaders of the Albanese government.
Over the course of four years, Trump will do many good things and many bad things. If we can’t draw the most obvious lessons from the greatest strategic changes of our lifetimes, that we must immediately acquire independent military capability, we may deserve the fate that we conspire to deliver to ourselves.
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