There has been much talk in recent days of the Yalta conference, 80 years ago this month, when Britain and the United States allowed Joseph Stalin to carve up the soon-to-be-defeated Germany and realign post-war borders in his favour.
We’re talking about it again as something similar appears to be happening now in Europe, as the fate of Ukraine rests in the hands of the US and Russia.
It’s at times like this that an understanding of history is vital: it is the compass that helps guide us to the present and also prepares us for the future. But it is also important to understand that history does not repeat itself. It cannot, because that was then and this is now, and the world is forever moving.
However, patterns of human behaviour are repeated; it’s a vital distinction. And one such pattern is this: that after extreme economic crises, political upheaval tends to follow.
The Nazis came into being because of the catastrophic end of the First World War and the treaty that followed but, by the late 1920s, were a political insignificance; they came to power in 1933 because of the Wall Street crash. Thereafter, American loans dried up, Germany fell into depression, and this triggered the collapse of the democratic Weimar Republic. When current politics fails, something more radical fills the void.
Fast-forward to the 21st century, and we in the West have faced the crash of 2008 followed by the economic catastrophe of the pandemic. The consequence – surprise, surprise – is political upheaval, the march of populism, and the second coming of Donald Trump.
If reports are correct, the US president is in the mood to invite Ukraine to pay for the financial and military support it has received, by affording Washington access to its vast rare earth minerals, while also granting greater access to its ports, infrastructure, oil and gas reserves.
What has been dubbed the “$500bn payback” would turn Ukraine into a de facto US colony. As peace settlements go, it would be unheard of.
One can argue over the morality of such carve-ups. At Yalta, in February 1945, prime minister Winston Churchill accepted that, after the war, there would be post-war Soviet influence in eastern Europe, and that the USSR would keep the eastern third of Poland it had taken in 1939; Poland would be compensated by extending westwards into what had been Prussia.
The Soviet Union went on to break the agreement shortly afterwards, by imposing communist regimes. But, at the time, President Roosevelt was ill and two months from death and Churchill was negotiating from a position of weakness; he was effectively powerless after six years of bankrupting war to squeeze any more concessions for Eastern Europe.
President Trump and his acolytes are in no such position. The United States remains the most powerful country in the world – with the overall strongest military. They are not at war, and Ukraine has not been entirely dissolved. Rather, after three years of war, 80 per cent of Ukraine remains free and democratic.
Nor do the Western allies of Nato, including the United States, have their hands tied at the negotiating table. Rather, they have the power and collective military might to crush Russia should they so choose.
Rather, what Trump & Co are doing now is entirely unprecedented and, I would argue, more craven and egregious than either Munich – the 1938 agreement that permitted Nazi Germany’s annexation of the Sudetenland – or Yalta. This move, though, is in keeping with his entirely transactional approach to politics.
Nations, though, are not commercial property deals, and diplomacy requires nuance, intelligence, deep knowledge, delicacy and, for those involved on the side of democracy to have feelings, empathy and compassion for the people they are honour-bound to negotiate for.
Trump has none of these attributes. He has only grift. Like Putin, and like Stalin before him, he cares not a jot for the lives already lost, for the people of Ukraine, or for his allies in Europe.
James Holland is a British historian and author of ‘Normandy ‘44: D-Day and the Battle for France’ (Bantam, £7.99)
