Ukraine's Last Gold Lining
- 4717
- Aug 20
- 2 min read
If you are trying to sort out on of the damned geopolitical messes in a generation, quit thinking about the never-ending parade of summits as happening in a vacuum. The summit-o-rama isn’t a series of discussions but the same one being carried out by people who hate each other. This is less a series of negotiations that some middle schoolers all trying to press their case to a distracted, overbearing parent who’d rather not be involved but needs it to stop. In short, it helps to connect the dots. Which is why so little of what we’re hearing about these Ukraine Summits is worth a damn.
Trump is probably a better salesman than he is a negotiator and he’s not one to connect the dots. So with that in mind, we can probably assume that he is just telling whomever he’s in front of him what they want to hear. He’s also fairly confident that no one is going to push back too much out of fear the leader of the free world will deliver an Atomic Zelensky in the White House. So the guy is probably just winging it and is light on the details because he hasn’t sorted them out himself – because he doesn’t care. Which, broadly, gives the advantage to Moscow.
There is, however, a silver - or to be precise – gold lining to that grim cloud. Down in Trump’s lizard brain, what he does seem to care about is a Nobel Prize – because who doesn’t want a gold coaster to shove in the Obama’s face? Evidently, the man won’t stop talking about it. Trump has that special, near deranged snobbishness of some man who built a golf club down the road from the country club that black-balled him - which is saying something. The Nelson Mandela humanitarian award that South Africa gave to Muammar Gaddafi won’t do. He wants a Nobel.
And that is Ukraine, Europe and especially Norway’s best hope for US support and hedge against pressure to take a bad deal. The Nobel Committee is appointed by Norwegian Parliament (themselves appointed by terrified Norwegian voters) – and he can kiss his chances for that prize goodbye along with shouting “How’d you like me now!” at Barack Obama.
True, it’s a little unsettling that the hinge of fate for Europe pivots on a gold medallion from Norway, but stranger things have happened. In the 1953 the British SIS (MI6) bribed the Shah of Iran’s twin sister to browbeat her milquetoast brother into supporting a coup against his own prime minister. And we’re still living that one down.
It might not be a bad idea to put the bug in the ear over in Norway, if Trump wants it that bad. The man does like a captive audience. And gold. He likes gold too.
