Still, no doubt, bathed in the warm, if also absurd, glow of being the first ever recipient of the Fifa Peace Prize, Donald Trump might be in the mood to promote a just and lasting peace in Ukraine, it would be nice to think. This would, aside from anything else, strengthen President Trump’s insistent claim on the Nobel Peace Prize, which has not quite been superseded in prestige by the cynical golden trophy that the president of Fifa, Gianni Infantino, presented to him.
The worry, however, is that Mr Trump’s innate sympathy for Russia and rush to get any kind of settlement, no matter how grotesque, signed off will result either in a collapse of the whole process, with America completely abandoning Ukraine and relaxing sanctions on Russia; or an imposed deal almost entirely on the Kremlin’s terms that will leave Ukraine, other European nations and Nato itself fatally compromised. Such suspicions are only heightened by the recent publication of the official United States National Security Strategy, which confirms that it is US policy to weaken democratically elected liberal European governments, to undermine the European Union and prevent the expansion of Nato. Instead of treating its European allies as sovereign equals with shared values, the Trump administration would prefer them to be more like Hungary.
