12 hours Ago
How often the moral high ground is seen as the optimal vantage point for firing shots at opponents. Sinn Féin’s announcement that it would not be travelling to the US for any shamrock ceremonies next month predictably produced an immediate volley of counter-fire. The fact that no such invitation has been extended matters not at all.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin slated the main opposition party for playing “politics” as he insisted Ireland must grab every opportunity to engage with US president Donald Trump. And so we should. All politics may be local, but at the height of a global crisis they must not become parochial.
This is not a time for taking pot-shots. The world order has been severely shaken in recent weeks. World leaders are trying to grapple with the rapidly changing contours of once dependable diplomatic relationships.
Bickering in our own back yard is a divisive distraction. For if there is anxiety and apprehension in Europe over Washington’s upending of alliances, in Moscow there is elation. All of us were prepared for a new order under Trump 2.
0, but what is emerging is as yet indefinable. Values, principles and rules that were forged over years of pursuing common interests are now being discarded. But for Russian president, Vladimir Putin, all his birthdays have come at once.
Conceding nothing, he appears to have been given everything, without even sitting down with Mr Trump. To be told by the ‘leader of the free world’ they are responsible for their own invasion has added insult to injury Not even the most doleful of diplomats would have predicted such an outcome, as Europe’s and Ukraine’s worst nightmares appear to be becoming realities. If the shock in Europe is noticeable, in Kyiv it is visceral.
To be cast aside by their once most staunch defender and told by the “leader of the free world” they are responsible for their own invasion has added insult to injury. Perhaps an easing of tensions has been secured after talks between America’s envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, and president Volodymyr Zelensky. We will soon know.
If Mr Putin wants peace, it is on his terms. Mr Trump wants to see an end to the killing, but a balanced agreement will have to be found. Russia must pay for the death and destruction it has visited on its neighbour.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio has said a deal will need to be “fair and acceptable to all parties involved”. As it stands, Russia is insisting on a veto on what kind of peacekeeping force should be permitted in Ukraine. It appears that even after inflicting grievous bodily harm, the burglar is being allowed to decree that only toothless guard dogs can now patrol the neighbourhood.
But Ukraine cannot be sacrificed, nor can Russia be given a free pass to further its imperial ambitions. If Europe is left to deal with an exultant Mr Putin, the world will pay a high price. Who will and who will not be there in Washington to present the shamrock may be far from people’s thoughts.
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