March 5, 2025
MANILA – For the first time in modern history, United States leaders publicly berated a wartime ally for supposed ingratitude. Also, for the first time, a foreign leader publicly stood up not only to President Donald Trump but also to his ”yes men” too eager to remind smaller states to ”thank the boss!” The shouting match between the Ukrainian leader and America’s top two officials was arguably the most geopolitical revealing moment of the early 21st century.
In theory, all want peace. With hundreds of thousands injured or killed and hundreds of billions of foregone revenues and economic destruction, the last people who want to continue this cursed war are Ukrainians. But peace on whose terms?
For the current occupants of the White House, the war has been dragging on for far too long without any conclusive results. And too much American taxpayer money has gone to funding Ukraine’s resistance against Russia. On the surface, any unsuspecting observer may easily get swayed by this seemingly ”commonsense” position. Except, dear reader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy was quick to eloquently point out the logical flaws in America’s emerging ”peace plan” despite his lack of proficiency in English.
To begin with, the majority of Ukrainians still support the war because they don’t trust any haphazard peace plan with the Putin regime. Over the past decade, Russia repeatedly violated the terms of the ceasefire under the so-called “Minsk Agreement” across multiple US administrations, including Trump’s first term in office. Not to mention, Russia’s invasion, beginning with the occupation of Crimea and eastern Ukrainian regions in 2014, on fantastical pretexts—first the “Nato expansion,” then later, the “Historical Unity of Russia and Ukraine” narrative—also violated the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which supposedly secured Ukraine’s sovereignty in exchange for its nuclear weapons and neutrality. History shows that empires will always find an apologia for unjust invasions of weaker polities. Ukrainians are rightly worried about any half-baked ”peace deal” that could end up making them vulnerable to even more vicious invasions in the future.
But the Trump administration has refused to provide any ”security guarantees” to enforce any peace plan. All he, and his ”yes men,” had to offer was this: Trust the ”art of the deal” genius of Donald Trump. But what happens after 2028? And if Trump is such a great dealmaker, why has his team forward-deployed all concessions to Russia—no Nato membership for Ukraine, no US peacekeeping troops, no security guarantees or mutual defense treaties—even before the negotiations started?
Even an amateur strategist would know that you negotiate peace from a position of relative strength and never reveal all your cards at once. This is why some go as far as suspecting that Trump’s approach to the whole issue has been clouded by his own animus vis-à-vis the whole ”Hunter Biden” episode with Zelenskyy in the past. It’s quite telling that the American president couldn’t stop attacking Democrats and those who investigated him for alleged “Russia ties” amid heated exchanges with the Ukrainian president.
It’s quite telling that even America’s supposed ”closest ally” quickly sided with Zelenskyy, with the British prime minister underscoring his commitment to “retain[ing] unwavering support for Ukraine, and is doing all he can to find a path forward to a lasting peace based on sovereignty and security for Ukraine.”
More tellingly, Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz, has made it clear that his “absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA.”
Although the situation in Asia is quite different, given China’s unique challenge to US hegemony, frontline states such as the Philippines should proactively exercise and enhance their own strategic agency. Moreover, what we need is nothing less than ”collective strategic bargaining,” whereby like-minded mid-sized powers can jointly check the worst instincts of any superpower while enhancing interoperability and diplomatic coordination among themselves in the face of emerging existential challenges.
Aside from rapidly developing our own defensive capabilities, and maintaining robust communication channels with both the US and China, we should rapidly deepen ties with like-minded ”middle powers” from Japan, Australia, and New Zealand to South Korea, India, France, and Germany. Otherwise, we all could end up in Zelenskyy’s seat—sans his herculean courage and determination.