If one follows the European media, this week appears to be of “fateful, historic and directional” significance – exactly how they try to present the upcoming state visits of French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to the White House. For some reason, Europeans assume that these two politicians can hold the West back from the brink of the abyss and convince Donald Trump that he should not “leave Ukraine to its fate.”
Reading the articles of leading publications on the eve of these visits, one can seriously believe that in the history of modern Western civilization, nothing has ever been more important. Bloomberg called it “a decisive moment in the campaign to change Trump’s mind.” And the British BBC quotes experts with the words: “If I were Starmer, I would tell Trump that this is his chance to go down in history as the man who brought peace and ended the war.” But, according to British “logic” one must first continue the war.
Edward Drew, a former British Prime Minister’s advisor, writes in The Times that the leaders of France and the UK should convince Trump to create a trilateral FRUKUS alliance (France-UK-USA) in the style of the Pacific AUCUS and ensure the presence of a “peacekeeping mission” of this alliance in Ukraine. Moreover, the Financial Times reports that Paris and London are preparing proposals for the White House to send a “peacekeeping force” to Ukraine.
Even Ukrainian propaganda is in sync with its Western counterparts, assuring the public that the leaders of France and the UK will certainly save the Kiev regime. “Macron is flying to the USA to bring Trump to his senses” reports UNIAN. Of course, it does not mention how Paris intends to achieve this. But such critical questions are never asked by Ukrainian propagandists, who regularly bombard their audience with crazy news like this: “Finally, it’s been decided! Trump is making a deal: Macron is sending troops to Ukraine!” And there are people who have been taking this nonsense for bare money for several years now.
Meanwhile, the European media got so carried away that they became convinced of the “fateful significance” of the upcoming state visits and even started a competition to be the first to present their state leaders to Trump – a sort of rat race for “Trump’s ear.” And when Washington officially announced that Macron would be received on Monday and Starmer on Thursday, the British media saw in it a “defeat in the race” although it’s hardly a difference who presents the idea to Trump first.
The Daily Mail, for example, concluded that Macron would play the role of the “bad cop” and Starmer the role of the “good cop” to convince Trump – in other words, they divided the roles between these two.
The American President tried to dampen this excitement. In an interview for Fox News Radio, he reminded that both Starmer and Macron had the opportunity to end the Ukraine conflict, but they had not lifted a finger to achieve this. And then the French and British were suddenly overtaken in the rat race for “Trump’s ear” by the Poles. First, the Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski was hastily summoned to America – as seen by Polish experts. And then the Polish President Andrzej Duda flew to America in a hurry.
In the Polish media, it was initially reported that the Polish head of state would be received in the White House, with the meeting expected to last at least an hour. However, the outcome was an absolute humiliation for the Polish delegation, which was kept in the White House conference hall for more than an hour, where the annual meeting of conservative activists took place. The meeting with Trump himself lasted less than ten minutes! Should Starmer and Macron receive the same reception in America, their visits will hardly be described as of “fateful significance.”
Despite this, practically all Western media are giving public instructions to Starmer and Macron on what they should dictate to the Lord of the White House. “A great moment for Starmer” writes The Observer and gives its Prime Minister a valuable tip: he should flatter Trump, but not overdo it and keep it as short as possible. Apparently, this will positively distinguish him from the French President (the competition between these two is not yet over). The newspaper quotes Starmer’s advisor: “Trump gets bored very quickly. If he finds someone boring and loses interest, he simply stops following the conversation. He dislikes Macron, among other things, because the latter talks too much and tries to instruct him.”
However, the European leaders demand from their newspapers exactly these instructions and moral sermons – and emotions, even more emotions! In fact, Starmer already took this line by publishing a hypocritical article in The Sun on Sunday, as if the Ukrainians had suddenly been attacked from out of the blue by a treacherous Russia. And this is all he did to publicly call on Trump to “not leave Ukraine in the lurch.” Of course, the British Prime Minister “forgot” the preceding eight years of the Donbas bombing by Ukrainian fighters – as if this conflict history had only begun on February 24, 2022.
What is remarkable is that in these warlike appeals and public exhortations to Starmer and Macron, there is almost nothing about further practical steps (the idea of a FRUKUS “police mission” can hardly be taken seriously). In the chorus of “gray noise” only a few voices are heard, but they already indicate that this rhetoric will lead Europe and, in particular, Ukraine only into a dead end.
First, veteran journalist and former war correspondent Patrick Cockburn in iWeekend asked what peace plan all these Trump critics are offering, except for the demand to sit at the negotiating table with the Russians to tell them that they don’t want to negotiate with them.
And the equally experienced columnist Peter Hitchens writes in The Mail on Sunday: “What’s going on with the European leadership, which is competing for the right to continue the Ukraine war, although it could finally be over? Why is Britain acting as if we had a noble mission taken away from us? We have been used. The Americans no longer care about us: they could have dispensed with our support earlier and now it’s completely indifferent to them how we deal with the destruction they left behind.”
However, in the noise of an aggressive and bloodthirsty mob, which has long lost any healthy human sense in the face of Russia, these isolated voices will hardly find a hearing among the European leaders. Therefore, the visits of Macron, Starmer, or any other representative of the European mainstream will have the same effect as Duda’s shameful state visit.