WE ARE GETTING WAY TOO CLOSE TO ARMAGEDDON

As Ukraine Loses And Runs Out Of Manpower We’re Starting To See Some Frantic Flailings Throughout The Western Empire On A Front Where Cool Heads Are Of Existential Importance To The Survival Of Our Species.

While the antiwar movement has been quite understandably focused on the genocide in Gaza, over the past few weeks we’ve been seeing some very disturbing reports about empire managers ramping up nuclear brinkmanship escalations in Ukraine that are worth going over.

Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp has been doing a great job covering these developments, as usual. Here are a few recent stories from Antiwar which deserve some attention today.

In an article titled “Blinken Pushing To Let Ukraine Hit Russian Territory With US Weapons,” DeCamp goes over a New York Times report about a “vigorous debate” within the Biden administration over whether to let Ukraine use American supplied war machinery to attack targets in the Russian Federation itself. This would risk direct hot war between Russia and NATO, as Moscow already made explicitly clear recently with regard to similar developments in the UK.

“Moscow recently warned the UK that if Ukraine used British weapons on Russian territory, Russian forces would target UK military sites in Ukraine ‘and beyond’,” DeCamp writes. “The warning came after British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said Ukraine had the ‘right’ to use British arms in attacks on Russia.”

Obviously Ukraine has the “right” to attack Russia since Russia is attacking Ukraine; nobody disputes this. What is of course disputed is that it is wise or moral to risk the life of every terrestrial organism by tempting hot warfare between Russia and NATO over who controls Kharkiv.

In “Speaker Johnson Thinks Ukraine Should Use US Weapons on Russian Territory,” DeCamp reports on a letter sent by a bipartisan group of House representatives urging the president to lift any restrictions on the Ukrainians using American supplied weapons to strike Russian territory “in the way they see fit.” Which means pressure is mounting both within the White House and on Capitol Hill to escalate nuclear tensions in this way.

In “Estonia Says NATO Countries Shouldn’t Be Afraid of Sending Troops to Ukraine for Training,” we learn of Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas’ casual support for openly sending large numbers of NATO forces into Ukraine for training purposes. Small, unofficial special operations forces from NATO powers have long been active in Ukraine, but what the Estonian PM is advocating would be a significant escalation from there. DeCamp notes that “Estonia, Lithuania, and France have all expressed interest in deploying troops” in Ukraine.

All this insanely hawkish rhetoric is already drawing a response from Moscow. In “Russia Begins Nuclear Weapons Drills Near Ukrainian Border,” The Libertarian Institute’s Kyle Anzalone reports on new war games which were announced by the Russian government “in response to Western leaders suggesting NATO troops could enter Ukraine.”

There was a lull in nuclear brinkmanship between NATO and Russia as the uncertainties of the Ukraine war and the influence the hawks would have over it got clearer, and things reached a cruel and bloody semblance of stability. But as Ukraine loses ground and runs out of manpower we’re starting to see some frantic flailings throughout the western empire on a front where cool heads are of existential importance to the survival of our species.

It would feel so unbelievably idiotic if we woke up to learn that nuclear war has begun after a series of reckless escalations and unpredictable developments led to a rapid sequence of events from which there could be no return. But that’s not an unreasonable fear at this point in history, and we are moving much, much too close to that ledge.

WHY HAVE THERE BEEN PEACE NEGOTIATIONS BUT NO PEACE?

The American Regime Has Worked Hard To Prevent Earnest Negotiations To Bring Peace Because It Wants A Prolonged War In Ukraine.

Rarely mentioned in current commentaries on the war in Ukraine, in the early weeks that followed the February 24^th, 2022, Russian invasion, Russia and Ukraine engaged in three separate and significant attempts to negotiate a peaceful settlement. Those negotiations had several important things in common. All three could have ended the war before the devastation of Ukraine’s infrastructure, the massive Ukrainian loss of lives, and the increased risk of unchecked escalation. All three featured an offer by Ukraine not to join NATO. And all three were stopped by the United States.

THE FIRST TALKS: BELARUS

On February 25^th, the day after the invasion began, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had already signaled that he was prepared to abandon Ukraine’s pursuit of NATO membership. Zelensky announced that he wasn’t afraid to negotiate neutrality and security guarantees with Moscow. That concession was the first sign that both Ukraine’s and Russia’s goals might be met and that the war could end with a diplomatic settlement.

Zelensky’s concession likely had many motivations. The first was the force of the invasion itself. The second was his acceptance that NATO was not likely to grant Ukraine’s request to join. On February 26^th, the second day of the war, Zelensky responded to the invasion by saying, “We are not afraid to talk to Russia. We are not afraid to say everything about security guarantees for our state. We are not afraid to talk about neutral status. We are not in NATO now … We need to talk about the end of this invasion. We need to talk about a ceasefire.”

Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak also said that “Ukraine wants peace and is ready for talks with Russia, including on neutral status regarding NATO.” He told Reuters on February 25 that, “If talks are possible, they should be held. If in Moscow they say they want to hold talks, including on neutral status, we are not afraid of this. We can talk about that as well,” he said.

But Zelensky was also frustrated with NATO: “I asked them – are you with us?” Zelensky said on February 25. “They answered that they are with us, but they don’t want to take us into the alliance. I’ve asked 27 leaders of Europe, if Ukraine will be in NATO, I’ve asked them directly – all are afraid and did not respond.”

On February 27^th, just three days into the war, Russia and Ukraine announced that they would hold talks in Belarus. The Ukrainian delegation was going in with a willingness to negotiate neutrality. Zelensky said, “We agreed that the Ukrainian delegation would meet with the Russian delegation without preconditions.”

However, though Ukraine was willing to discuss neutrality and “the end of this invasion,” America was not. On February 25^th, the same day Zelensky said he was “not afraid to talk to Russia” and that he was “not afraid to talk about neutral status,” State Department spokesman Ned Price was asked at a press conference, “What’s the U.S. – what’s your thinking about the efficacy of such a – of such talks?” The reporter was asking specifically about the Belarus talks, calling them the “talks between Russia and Ukraine happening in Minsk,” the capital of Belarus. Price responded, “Now we see Moscow suggesting that diplomacy take place at the barrel of a gun or as Moscow’s rockets, mortars, artillery target the Ukrainian people. This is not real diplomacy. Those are not the conditions for real diplomacy.” America said no to the Belarus talks.

On December 17^th, 2021, just two months before the invasion of Ukraine, Russia delivered proposals on security guarantees to both America and NATO. The key demands included no NATO expansion to Ukraine and no deployment of weapons or troops to Ukraine. On January 26^th, America and NATO rejected Russia’s essential demand for a written guarantee that Ukraine would not join NATO. Derek Chollet, counselor to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, has disclosed that America told Moscow that negotiating NATO expansion into Ukraine was never even on the table. Putin simply remarked “that fundamental Russian concerns were ignored.”

The official Russian response came on February 17^th, 2022. It said that America and NATO offered “no constructive response” to Russia’s key demands. It then added that if America and NATO continued to refuse to provide Russia with “legally binding guarantees” regarding its security concerns, Russia would respond with “military-technical means.”

The invasion one week later was Russia’s promised military-technical response to the American refusal to provide a guarantee that Ukraine would not join NATO. If the invasion was intended as a quick strike with the objective of compelling from Kiev the promise not to join NATO that Russia was unable to get from Washington, then that intention could have been accomplished in Belarus in the first week of the war. But America stopped it.

THE SECOND TALKS: BENNET

The second set of negotiations revealed a pattern. There was, once again, a chance to end the war and a Ukrainian offer of neutrality. The American roadblock was not an isolated event that emerged out of the circumstances of the first set of negotiations in Belarus, but rather policy.

On March 6^th, just days after the second talks concluded in Belarus, the Israeli media reported that then-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett had made a surprise visit to Moscow to meet with Putin in an attempt at mediation. After meeting Putin, Bennet twice spoke with Zelensky. He also spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron and flew to Germany for talks with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

Details of the meetings were scarce at the time. But in an interview on February 2^nd, 2023, Bennet revealed details on what was agreed, how close talks came to success, and what happened. According to Bennett, “Zelensky initiated the request to contact Putin.” Bennett said that “Zelensky called me and asked me to contact Putin.” Bennett then told the American regime that he “had the trust of both sides” and that “I have Putin’s ear. I can be a pipeline.”

These conversations set in motion a series of back-and-forth phone calls between Bennett and Putin and Bennett and Zelensky. Bennett then flew to Moscow for meetings with Putin and then to Germany for meetings with Scholz. A “negotiation marathon of drafts” followed.

“Everything I did,” Bennett says, “was fully coordinated with Biden, Macron, Johnson, with Scholz and, obviously, Zelensky.”

According to Bennet, though America told him that “there was no chance of success,” Putin told him that “we can reach a ceasefire.” In order to reach that ceasefire, Bennet says Putin made “huge concessions.” When Bennett asked Putin if he was going to kill Zelensky, Putin answered, “I won’t kill Zelensky.” Putin also “renounced” Russia’s demanded “disarmament of Ukraine.”

Zelensky, too, made a “huge concession.” According to Bennet, Putin complained of the West’s broken promise regarding NATO expansion and told Bennet to pass the message on to Zelensky, “Tell me you’re not joining NATO, I won’t invade.” Bennett says that “Zelensky relinquished joining NATO.”

Having given the promise not to join NATO, Zelensky wanted security guarantees. Putin saw security agreements with major powers as being the same as joining NATO. Bennett suggested abandoning NATO-like guarantees in favor of Ukraine adopting “the Israeli model” and creating a strong, independent army that can defend itself. That solution was accepted by both Putin and Zelensky.

Having won those promises, Bennett flew to Germany and updated Scholz, the Americans, Macron, and Johnson. “Boris Johnson adopted the aggressive line. Macron and Scholz were more pragmatic. Biden was both.” Bennett said that “there was a good chance of reaching a ceasefire.” But the pattern of American obstruction first evident in Belarus continued. Bennett says the West made the decision “to keep striking Putin.”

“So, they blocked it?” his interviewer asked. “They blocked it,” Bennett replied. His account of what was said in private conversations contradicts accounts at the time by a senior Ukrainian official who complained that “Bennett has proposed that we surrender,” suggesting that the Ukrainian statement was more for public consumption. Sources “privy to details about the meeting” said at the time that Zelensky deemed the proposal “difficult” but not “impossible” and that “the gaps between the sides are not great.”

Journalist Barak Ravid reported in “Axios” that Russian concessions included that demilitarization could be confined to the Donbas, that there would be no regime change in Kiev, and that Ukraine could keep its sovereignty. Zelensky said that he had “cooled down” about joining NATO and that he had found Putin’s proposal “not as extreme as they anticipated.”

As in Belarus, a chance for a concession not to join NATO and for peace were “blocked” by the American imperialist regime.

THE THIRD TALKS: ISTANBUL

Next, in March and early April of 2022, efforts at negotiations moved to Istanbul. Turkey was a promising candidate for mediation.

The Turkish talks were the most fruitful talks of all, actually producing a “tentatively agreed” upon settlement.

By March 20^th, Zelensky had seemingly accepted that NATO’s open door to Ukraine was a sleight of hand. He told a CNN interviewer that he personally requested the leaders of NATO members “to say directly that we are going to accept you into NATO in a year or two or five, just say it directly and clearly, or just say no. And the response was very clear, you’re not going to be a NATO member, but publicly, the doors will remain open.”

At the Istanbul talks at the end of March, Zelensky acted on that realization and offered a promise not to join NATO. On March 29^th, Ukrainian negotiators said Kiev was ready to accept neutrality if, under an international accord, western states like the United States, France, and Britain provided binding security guarantees.

Writing in Foreign Affairs, Fiona Hill and Angela Stent reported that:

“According to multiple former senior U.S. officials we spoke with, in April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement: Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.”

Putin has recently revealed more details about the agreement. On June 13^th, 2023, taking questions from war correspondents at the Kremlin, Putin confirmed that “we reached an agreement in Istanbul.” Putin then revealed the previously unannounced detail that the tentative agreement was not merely verbal. It had gone so far as to produce a signed document: “I don’t remember his name and may be mistaken, but I think Mr Arakhamia headed Ukraine’s negotiating team in Istanbul. He even initialed this document.” Russia, too, signed the document: “during the talks in Istanbul, we initialed this document. We argued for a long time, butted heads there and so on, but the document was very thick and it was initialed by Medinsky on our side and by the head of their negotiating team.”

Two days later, on June 17^th, Putin went further still. In a meeting with a delegation of leaders of African countries who were, once again, attempting to mediate peace talks, Putin presented the initialed draft agreement. Holding the document up, Putin said:

“I would like to draw your attention to the fact that with [Turkish] President [Tayyip] Erdogan’s assistance, as you know, a string of talks between Russia and Ukraine took place in Turkey so as to work out both the confidence-building measures you mentioned, and to draw up the text of the agreement. We did not discuss with the Ukrainian side that this treaty would be classified, but we have never presented it, nor commented on it. This draft agreement was initialed by the head of the Kiev negotiation team. He put his signature there. Here it is.”

The agreement, which bore the title “the Treaty on the Permanent Neutrality and Security Guarantees for Ukraine,” said that Ukraine would make “permanent neutrality” a feature of its constitution. According to reporting from RT, admittedly a Russian state-funded media network, “Russia, the US, Britain, China, and France are listed as guarantors,” which, if accurate, seems to be a softening of Putin’s reply to Bennet that security agreements with major powers was the same as joining NATO.

As with the Bennett negotiations, Russia reportedly renounced the demand for the full demilitarization of Ukraine, though there was still a gap between Russia’s and Ukraine’s proposals on caps on the size of Ukraine’s armed forces and on the number of tanks, aircraft, and rocket launchers.

But then the American obstruction happened again. “We actually did this,” Putin told war correspondents at the Kremlin, “but they simply threw it away later and that’s it.” Talking to the African delegation, Putin said, “After we pulled our troops away from Kiev – as we had promised to do – the Kiev authorities … tossed [their commitments] into the dustbin of history. They abandoned everything.” Putin implicitly blamed America, saying that when Ukraine’s interests “are not in sync” with American interests, “ultimately it is about the United States’s interests. We know that they hold the key to solving issues.”

As Putin’s account of the tentative agreement and Ukraine’s promise not to join NATO was confirmed in the Foreign Affairs article, so too is his claim that America stopped the negotiated settlement confirmed. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that, because of the talks, “Turkey did not think that the Russia-Ukraine war would continue much longer.” But, he said, “There are countries within NATO who want the war to continue.” “Following the NATO foreign ministers’ meeting,” he explained, “it was the impression that…there are those within the NATO member states that want the war to continue, let the war continue and Russia get weaker.”

Cavusoglu’s account does not stand alone. Numan Kurtulmus, the deputy chairman of Erdogan’s ruling party, has hinted at the same obstruction and at the same pursuit of larger goals. He told CNN TURK that “We know that our President is talking to the leaders of both countries. In certain matters, progress was made, reaching the final point, then suddenly we see that the war is accelerating… Someone is trying not to end the war. The United States sees the prolongation of the war as its interest… There are those who want this war to continue… Putin-Zelensky was going to sign, but someone didn’t want to.”

America was joined by the U.K. as a “NATO member states that want[s] the war to continue.” On April 9^th, then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson rush to Kiev to rein in Zelensky, insisting that Russian President Vladimir Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with” and that, even if Ukraine was ready to sign some agreements with Russia, “the West was not.”

WHY NO PEACE?

Why did America and U.K. not want Zelensky to sign?

When State Department spokesman Ned Price was asked about Zelensky being “open to a…diplomatic solution” at a March 21^st, 2022, press briefing, he rejected a negotiated end to the war, even if the negotiated settlement met Ukraine’s goals. “This is a war,” Price answered, “that is in many ways bigger than Russia, it’s bigger than Ukraine.” America rejected Ukraine negotiating an agreement with Russia that met Kiev’s goals in favor of pressuring Ukraine to continue fighting in pursuit of larger American imperialist goals and “core principles.”

Three separate times in the early weeks of the war, negotiations produced the real possibility of peace. The third even yielded a tentative agreement that was, according to Putin, signed. Both sides made “huge concessions,” including Ukraine promising each time not to join NATO. But each time, America put a stop to the promise of a diplomatic solution and peace, allowing the war to go on and to escalate, seemingly in the pursuit of American, not Ukrainian, interests.

NORTHERN IRELAND’S LESSONS FOR ENDING THE WAR IN UKRAINE

Unionists And The IRA Rejected A Deal That They Both Eventually Came Around To Supporting 25 Years Later. Ukraine Doesn’t Need To Take That Long To Find Peace.

The failure of the recent Ukraine offensive to secure major gains reinforces the impression that the choice in Ukraine is between catastrophic escalation, a long-deadlocked war, or a negotiated accommodation. What lessons might the Northern Ireland peace process have for the negotiation of an end to the Ukraine war?

In March 2022, led by Turkey, the Russians and Ukrainians appeared to be close to a political agreement — the Istanbul Plan — that ultimately collapsed, reportedly due in part to then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s opposition.

Similarly, in 1996 Boris Johnson, then a Daily Telegraph journalist, rejected the Northern Ireland peace process and argued for a tough security approach to defeat the IRA. He underestimated the possibilities of politics and negotiations. Just two years later the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (B/GFA) was approved on April 10, 1998.

The Northern Ireland peace process is widely perceived as a successful model for ending intensely violent conflict. By the early 1990s, the conflict appeared to be insoluble, with growing violence and increasing political division. Even immediately prior to the final week of negotiations opinion polls and voting behavior suggested further polarization rather than reconciliation.

Yet within four years of the IRA’s 1994 ceasefire, and after the IRA returned to war in 1996, the landmark GFA had been endorsed in a referendum. In 2006, Ian Paisley’s DUP and Sinn Féin, the political wing of the IRA, delivered an even more improbable agreement to restore powersharing and consolidate the peace process.

Five lessons can be learned from Northern Ireland for ending the Ukraine war. These highlight the importance of politics and diplomacy in delivering accommodation. First, knowing when to negotiate. Hardliners tend to believe their own fundamentalist propaganda, that war will bring victory.

The Sunningdale Agreement (1973) was very similar to the power sharing Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (1998). In 1973, however, the IRA believed it would inevitably defeat British imperialism, while unionists thought the deal betrayed the Union. It 25 years, a further 2,500 deaths and tens of thousands injured for the parties to agree to a comparable deal. Scathingly, moderate nationalist MP Seamus Mallon called the Belfast Agreement “Sunningdale for Slow Learners.”

Arguably, the dominance of hardliners has meant that opportunities for ending the Ukraine war, such as the Istanbul Plan, were not properly explored. There is a possibility, depending on the (unpredictable) course of the war, that Ukrainians could end up with an even worse deal than was on offer in Minsk II (2015) and the Istanbul Plan (2022).

The second lesson is everyone must win. In Northern Ireland pragmatic peacemakers dispensed with the language of victory and defeat. Pro-peace process actors were given an honorable way out of violence. Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Mo Mowlam rejected the provocative language of winners and losers. The B/GFA was designed to be open to contradictory interpretations. Republicans claimed the agreement severely weakened the Union, while unionists claimed the Union had been secured.

The Istanbul Plan and other subsequent proposals should be designed to be presented as a win to Ukrainians and Russians (as well as external audiences). Both Presidents Putin and Zelensky must be able to sell any deal to key domestic and international audiences as a victory.

Early in the war, a Russian source acknowledged that, “every side needs a win.” President Putin needed to be able to stop Ukraine joining NATO, murdering ethnic Russians and hosting foreign bases and missiles.

Third, there are often unappreciated possibilities in politics. By the 1990s, the conflict appeared to be escalating. Potentially hopeful developments were upstaged by the propaganda war and the horror and tragedy of violent conflict. Behind the scenes, or secretly, there were talks which choreographed moves towards a peace process.

Politics is a negotiating situation. So, hardline rhetoric on the front stage of politics may conceal a willingness to compromise. Sinn Féin campaigned on the slogan ‘No Return to Stormont,” the local parliament, but just a few weeks later endorsed the B/GFA which led to a return to Stormont. Unionist leader David Trimble declared ‘No Guns, No Government” in June 1998 but then sat in government with Sinn Féin without IRA decommissioning in December 1999.

There have been apparently successful negotiations during the Ukraine war which give some hope that peace negotiations could work. Humanitarian corridors have been arranged, there has been some cooperation over nuclear security, as well as prisoner exchanges. The Russians had negotiated a grain and fertilizer deal with the Ukrainians which allowed 33 million tons of grain to reach world markets, although this recently ended.

The fourth lesson is that cooperation and conflict can go side by side. British governments and the IRA did not have to like or necessarily trust one another to end the war. Both could cooperate to achieve the mutual goal of a sustainable peace. While secret talks were developing behind the scenes, the IRA bombed Downing Street (1991), launched devastating attacks on the City of London (1992, 1993) and bombed Warrington (1993) killing two children. Then-Conservative Prime Minister John Major explained that the IRA had a “perverted logic,” adding that “an offer of peace needed to be accompanied by violence, to show their volunteers that they were not surrendering.”

Behind the scenes negotiations continued. Speeches were exchanged to avoid public statements that would unnecessarily antagonize rival actors, and so that scripts and moves could be choreographed. British representatives gave the IRA media advice and republican and unionist leaders made concessions to support “enemy” actors with their key audiences.

Pursuing peace is a risk. The British government was uncertain as to whether the IRA leadership was committed to non-violent politics, or whether it would exploit the political and electoral benefits of the peace process and then return to war. Republicans could not be sure whether the British government and its “securocrats” would seek victory rather than compromise through the peace process.

If the B/GFA was improbable, then the St. Andrew’s Agreement (2006) was even more implausible, an agreement between implacable enemies, the fundamentalist DUP and Sinn Féin.

Finally, the Good Friday Agreement was choreographed. Negotiations were timed to culminate on Easter weekend, with religious symbolism attached to any redemptive deal. The two governments attempted to semi-script the final week of negotiations to maximize support for agreement. A “crisis” was created leading to a drama in which key actors supporting the peace process were given wins, with toxic issues (such as Crimea in the Ukrainian context) being deferred to future negotiations.

Arguably, the manipulations and deceptions used to end “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland were “honorable” and have saved many lives. Such political skills suggest that even when wars appear to be escalating, behind the scenes there may be possibilities for negotiations and accommodation. But this entails winding down the real and propaganda war, as well as messy and agonizing compromises on all sides. But there is considerable moral virtue in ending violence, avoiding the risk of further escalation and a more unjust accommodation.

DOES THE LEFT-RIGHT FOREIGN POLICY ALLIANCE SURVIVE TRUMP?

It Depends On What Happens To The Remnants Of ‘Trumpism,’ And Which Republicans Take Up The Mantle Of Power On The Hill Next

President Trump was able to leave office before Senate Democrats got a chance to throw him out, but he nevertheless departs under the cloud of the shocking attack by his hardcore supporters in the American Capital.

Trump is also leaving the Republican Party in a precarious position, much better than after the conclusion of George W. Bush’s second term, but weaker than he found it, with Democrats narrowly controlling both houses of Congress as well as the White House. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Trump bears substantial responsibility for the loss of both critical Georgia Senate seats, and thus the majority, mere hours before the Jan. 6 Capitol siege.

All this is likely to have long-term implications for the whole project of “Trumpism” in ways both beneficial and detrimental to Left-Right cooperation on ending the forever wars in which the United States remains enmeshed for soon-to-be the fourth straight administration.

The most obvious benefit is that the absence of Trump removes a large obstacle to such collaboration. However flawed Trump’s foreign policy was in practice, he was unquestionably an asset to conservatives and Republicans who wanted to make antiwar or realist arguments. A single White House statement, made by the president in lieu of Twitter, illustrates the dilemma well.

“United States military troops in Afghanistan are at a 19-year low. Likewise, Iraq and Syria are also at the lowest point in many years,” Trump boasted. “I will always be committed to stopping the endless wars. It has been a great honor to rebuild our military and support our brave men and women in uniform. $2.5 trillion invested, including in beautiful new equipment — all made in the U.S.A.”

Trump made some modest progress on these fronts, to be balanced against other policies even in these areas that progressives would find undesirable. But he made significant inroads in how partisan Republicans talked about these wars and military interventions abroad more generally. To hear Kayleigh McEnany calling John Bolton a warmonger on Fox News is a small but striking example of a political sea change from the Bush years.

Yet Trump was so toxic to liberals and centrists that he made Left-Right cooperation on foreign policy nearly impossible. And on some real-world examples of such bipartisan work during his administration — such as the efforts to stop the war in Yemen that paired principled progressives like Ro Khanna with Trump allies Jim Jordan and (eventual White House chief of staff) Mark Meadows — the president was on the other side.

It is also undeniable that every positive thing Trump said or did on Iraq and Afghanistan has to be weighed against unrelenting hawkishness on Iran. Disaster in the form of a new Middle East preventive war was averted. But it was not for lack of trying, at least on the part of some key Trump subordinates.

The emergence of Liz Cheney as a heroine of the impeachment fight in the wake of the Capitol breach should make clear that the results of Trump’s exit will not all be positive on the foreign policy front. The discrediting of Trumpism will potentially marginalize populist politicians who have had the most success communicating anti-interventionist arguments to the Republican base while rehabilitating and re-empowering Bush 43 retreads, in much the same way as has been done for the former president himself.

Some new libertarian-leaning Republicans have become Trump critics. This includes Nancy Mace, a freshman congresswoman representing the South Carolina district once held by Mark Sanford (himself quietly skeptical of interventionism), and who previously tried to primary Sen. Lindsey Graham. Peter Meijer, the newly elected congressman who succeeded Justin Amash and appears to be following in his predecessor’s footsteps on foreign policy, voted for impeachment. This is welcome, but with the arguable exception of Sen. Rand Paul, libertarian-inflected Republicans have not had the same impact with the base as populists in the mold of Trump, Pat Buchanan, or Tucker Carlson.

The place of prominent neoconservatives like Bill Kristol, who supported Joe Biden for president, in the post-Trump Republican firmament is not clear. But some similarly inclined Republicans navigated the Trump years skillfully. Nikki Haley, for example, is well positioned for a presidential run. Mike Pompeo lacks her star power, but Trump has now given him a resume that would make a White House bid credible. He has gone from being a Kansas congressman to CIA director and secretary of state.

Yes, the passing of a divisive president from the political scene has the potential to make many things better. Sadly, it is not impossible for some things to get much worse.