THE attempt at the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska to reach an unconditional ceasefire in the Ukraine war was always going to fail. No more than a beneficial pause for failing Ukraine to be rearmed by Nato. It was no surprise that Russia rejected it.

Such a one-sided proposal was doomed to fail despite attempts by European leaders and Ukraine to revive it at the summit with Trump on August 18. European leaders want to continue the war, with the outcome decided on the battlefield.

Ukraine is losing the war, and has no realistic prospect of reversing this without a direct intervention of Nato military forces, which would threaten a world war, and which, for that reason, Nato is not prepared to undertake. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian lives would be lost.

This is an outcome only for those cynical and destructive political forces, which do exist in the US and Europe, who see the continuation of the war as an end in itself, in the hope that it will weaken Russia. These summits, therefore, make clear that there will not be a rapid outcome to the war and once again focus attention on the fundamental issues which created it — with its disastrous consequences.

Ending the Ukraine war is, in turn, a vital step for Europe to get out of the economic, social and political crisis which has been worsening for years and imposed great damage across the world.

The summit’s common framework of both the US and European leaders was a reactionary one of a division of labour in which Europe will undertake a large-scale military build-up in order to strategically create conditions for the US to devote less of its military resources to Europe and more to its attempt to confront China. Also, the US is seeking control of Ukraine’s mineral resources.

Trump sees the US’s strategic goal as separating the close relations of China and Russia, which is creating serious difficulties for the US, who recognise some concessions to Russia in an attempt to achieve this; although not the eastward expansion of Nato and the rights of the large Russian-speaking minority in Ukraine.

The reason European leaders also put forward proposals which clearly cannot end the war is because they refuse to adopt a policy which settles the two interrelated issues which led to this catastrophic war. An unconditional ceasefire was always unviable given the admission by Angela Merkel that the Minsk ceasefire agreements in 2014 and 2015 were used and seen by European leaders and Nato as an opportunity to qualitatively reinforce Ukraine’s armed forces.

The war was the entirely predictable disastrous consequence of the attempt to incorporate Ukraine into Nato. Numerous US experts on eastern Europe predicted this ruinous result in advance — led by George Kennan, the original architect of US cold war strategy, who warned Nato expansion would be “the most fateful error of US policy in the entire post-cold war era.” This warning has been entirely vindicated.

The reason is obvious. The attempt to expand a military alliance and its resources up to the borders of a major power, particularly the most sensitive parts of its border, will not be accepted and will inevitably lead to a crisis.

The US should have easily understood this. The 1962 Cuban missile crisis showed how the US would not, under any circumstances, accept the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba and would, if necessary, use nuclear war to stop this.

The reason was obvious — the distance from Havana to Washington is only 1,100 miles, the flight time for a missile over such a distance is so short that military defence is impossible. But, in comparison, the distance from Kiev to Moscow is only 470 miles, less than half the distance from Havana to Washington!

Russia, therefore, repeatedly explicitly stated that Ukraine’s membership of Nato was a red line for it. The US was therefore demanding that Russia accept military conditions, which the US made clear it would use any means to stop if applied to itself.

Second, Ukraine was a bilingual/binational state. The east and west of Ukraine were historically separated by language, religion, and history — in short, there was a national question within Ukraine between a nearly 30 per cent Russian-speaking minority, as found by the 2001 census, and a Ukrainian-speaking majority.

Bilingual/binational states, with very large minorities, can be kept together. Within Europe, Belgium is an example, and in North America, Canada is. But the precondition for unity is the acknowledgement of the national/linguistic rights of both groups and the protection of a minority.

But after 2014 in Ukraine, a systematic policy of institutional discrimination against the very large Russian-speaking minority was embarked on. As the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission, which certainly cannot be accused of being pro-Russian, stated:

“The current Law on National Minorities is far from providing adequate guarantees for the protection of minorities … many other provisions which restrict the use of minority languages have already been in force since July 16 2019.”

The inevitable result of such a policy was to destroy the basis of the unity of the bilingual/binational Ukrainian state.

These two issues are inevitably interrelated, because the Russian-speaking minority did not support membership of a pact, Nato, which is clearly aimed against Russia but had favoured neutrality.

With the combination of overt discrimination against the large Russian-speaking minority after the events of 2014, and the attempt of Ukraine to join Nato, which together were the strategic policies which led to the 2022 war, it is in practice impossible to restore the unity of the former Ukrainian state.

Europe’s leaders, by maintaining the fantasy that the unity of the Ukrainian state can be maintained under these conditions, are prolonging a doomed war. Ukraine, if it continues the war, will probably lose hundreds of thousands more lives.

They are also completely out of touch with the reality of the overwhelming majority opinion. The latest Gallup poll of Ukrainian opinion, carried out in August, found 69 per cent of the Ukrainian population believed “Ukraine should seek to negotiate an ending to the war as soon as possible” compared to only 24 per cent who believed “Ukraine should continue fighting until it wins the war” — that is a majority of almost three to one.

But instead of dealing with these realities, the statement by European leaders prior to the Alaska summit, and since, has avoided both serious issues. On August 9, they announced they were “upholding our substantive military and financial support to Ukraine, including through the work of the Coalition of the Willing.”

Nato is attempting to push through huge European increases in military spending, which will inevitably be paid for by reductions in social protection and spending. Using military spending to undermine social protection in Europe is now proclaimed by Europe’s leaders.

Most recently, Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s statement that Germany can no longer afford its welfare state, although it apparently can afford a massive military build-up that will take place at the expense of that social protection. To restore progress in Europe, it is necessary to pursue a totally opposite course to the one that led to the Ukraine disaster.

The devastating mistake of expanding Nato must be reversed, including that Ukraine will not be part of Nato. Instead, a policy of detente and peaceful relations, and peace-enforcing measures, needs to be pursued with Russia.

The increase in military spending must be reversed and priority given to the social wellbeing of Europe’s people. To revive Europe’s economy, it must re-establish economic links with Russia to regain access to its previous supply of lower-priced energy.

Bob Oram and Maggie Simpson on behalf of No Cold War Britain.