Yalta To Riyadh: Might’s Again Right

medium118363318Washington-Moscow negotiations that started yesterday in Saudi Arabia are odd, to say the least. These offline discussions in Riyadh are high-level — foreign ministers and presidential advisers of US and Russia are involved. These talks focus on Ukraine’s fate, and the future of European security. Yet, neither Ukraine nor EU or any of its member states are present at, or in any other way are part of these so far purely bilateral face-to-face meetings.There are other oddities. A Ukrainian delegation led by First Deputy PM Yulia Svyrydenko met with Saudi officials in Riyadh on Feb 16 to prepare for a visit. Zelenskyy’s on a planned visit to UAE, Türkiye and Saudi Arabia. Ukraine’s president and govt officials are thus close-by to American and Russian negotiators in Riyadh — but not in Riyadh.The absurdity of this situation illustrates the depth of change the international order is going through. Putin’s and Trump’s approach to Ukraine aren’t manifestations of a new ‘multipolar world’. They do not display the pluralism required by a multipolar approach to international security. Instead, they signal a return to principles of the Yalta System established in WWII’s last months. The Yalta talks were held exactly 80 years ago in Feb 1945.The idea of ‘might is right’ that stood strong in 1945 seems to be back again — driving a division of continental Europe by outside powers. During WWII, in talks at Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam, Washington handed Moscow far more European territory than Russia had received before WWII from Germany.In the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between USSR and Nazi Germany, Stalin had secured from Hitler Soviet control over some east-central European nations including Poland and Baltic states. Yet, in 1945, US left all of eastern Europe to Soviet imperialism, enforced Russification, state terrorism, and colonial exploitation.Stalin made his disrespect for principles of 1945’s new international system evident when he made Soviet ‘republics’ of Ukraine and Belarus founding members of UN.After the German empire’s collapse in 1945, other European empires also lost their colonies over the decades. In 1989-1991, finally, or so it appeared, Russian empire, in its Soviet avatar, came to its end. In 1991, nations seeking to break free from Soviet control declared their independence. Following this, the republics within the Soviet Union’s “inner empire” also gained formal independence.But Moscow’s post-1945 mockery of international law and multipolarity continued on a smaller scale. Without due process of application and accession to UN — as Serbia did after Yugoslavia broke up — Russia became a permanent member of UNSC, whose statute still mentions only USSR.After 1991, both US and western Europe adopted a Russia First policy, in which interests of Russia’s former colonies stood secondary to those of Moscow. This odd policy — that even included a temporary enlargement of G7 to make a G8 group with Russia — confirmed, in Kremlin’s interpretation, Moscow’s continued status as a world and imperial power.The most scandalous expression of the West’s self-defeating approach was the (eventually abortive) Russo-German Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline project launched after, and despite, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and covert military intervention in eastern Ukraine in 2014.Germany and other west European countries finally reversed their earlier Russia First approach in 2022. Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia — although all suffer from illegal partial occupation by Russia — became candidates for EU membership.US is reversing both its earlier liberationist approach to eastern Europe and its active help for Russia’s former colonies who desire to exit Moscow’s neo-imperial orbit.At least rhetorically, the Trump administration seems to be returning to a Yalta type of approach, in which voices of smaller states are given less attention. An approach in which Ukraine’s participation in negotiations about its fate is not necessary.Global South countries, like India, need to be wary of this trend in US foreign policy. Trump may be signalling how he’ll treat countries he deems less important or those that don’t directly serve US interests. This is not multipolarity — Trump has already shown his disdain for Brics. It is about the powerful doing what they please. China, therefore, holds greater leverage in this scheme.Further, the bilateral over Ukraine is happening in contradiction to Washington’s assurances to Kyiv in 1994, in the now infamous Budapest Memorandum in which Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. Trump’s approach to Ukraine is also in conflict with the 2008 Bucharest Nato declaration in which President Bush scoped out the possibility of Nato membership for Ukraine and Georgia. Time will show how far this American reversal of course will go.The writer is an analyst at Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies of Swedish Institute of International Affairs