• Valson Thampu

‘My peace,’ said Jesus, ‘I give to you; not as the world gives.’ The strange thing about how the world gives peace, observed St Augustine long ago, is that men preach peace and prepare for war at the same time. World War II was showcased as ‘the war to make the world safe for peace’. Peace treaties, said Hobbes, without the sword are ‘mere words’. Jesus dared to think otherwise. He who said, ‘My peace I give to you’, also said, ‘Put down the sword.’

Jesus’s insight into the dynamic of peace-making -as against peace-negotiating- is that making peace, not less than making war, exacts a price. The Cross denotes that price. Donald Trump is, by his own claim, the deal-maker par excellence. To him, peace-making is a subset of deal-making. That explains why he cannot separate conjuring up peace in the Russo-Ukraine hell-hole from negotiating a lucrative minerals deal with Ukraine on extortionary terms. America will save the Ukrainian chicken from Putin’s talons, if that country would sign off 50% of its rare earth mineral resources to Trump’s own America, apparently in perpetuity. A fair deal, this! It is like lending your bucket to your neighbour, whose house is on fire, that he may douse the fire with it, provided he entitles you to half of what his cows and hens would yield for as long as he keeps them. You are forced to freely yield your future, beaming gratitude for the expropriation world-wide.

The funny thing about peace-making Trump-style is that establishing peace in this region is turned into Trump’s obsessive personal need. So, if Zelensky does not toe the line, he incurs Trump’s ire! The demonic script of the Russo-Ukraine blood-letting is, consequently, rehashed. Putin is neither the aggressor, nor a hindrance to peace. He is rather eager to figure-skate pace with Trump. Zelensky is the habitual mood-spoiler. So, he deserves to have his nose rubbed in the mud. That ritualistic prelude to peace was accomplished, to the shock and disbelief of the global community, in the White House, spearheaded by a political greenhorn known as J.D. Vance. Interestingly, no one in the entire world bothered as much as to wonder how a person who treats a guest and the head of another country in the manner that Zelensky was embarrassed and humiliated that day, could ever play peace-maker!

It is a strange way to midwife peace between Putin and Zelensky that Ukraine’s lifeline -American arms and intelligence sharing- was cutoff to plunge the besieged Ukrainians into panic so that peace largely on Putin’s terms -going by what has happened so far- can be negotiated. Trump as peace-maker in this light reminds us of how Pakistani umpires used to officiate in India-Pak test matches in good old days. It used to be said then that the Indian Eleven played against the Pakistani Thirteen! Reportedly, the umpires used to shout, ‘How’sdaat’, when an Indian batsman was suspected to be leg-before-wicket.

Ironically, Ukraine is paying the price for being fertile as well as rich in natural resources in its south-eastern region. Admittedly, this swathe of land is also of serious strategic importance. Ukraine posing an existential threat to Russia -roughly a tenth of its economy, besides being a non-nuclear power- is a propagandist deflection from Putin’s true motive, which is driven by greed and imperialistic expansionism. Putin’s logic, with which Trump seems to be in sync, is that Ukraine must cease to exist as a sovereign independent State so that Russia may live in unruffled peace. Whether of not ‘enduring peace’ can be established in this region turning a blind eye to this sinister logic is a question that remains muted.

Peprahs Trump is not unaware of what this portends. If he had any faith in the viability of the peace he is so keen to pull off somehow, he would not have shown such an anxious reluctance to consider security guarantees for Ukraine. If Trump knows a historical precedent in which enduring peace between such utterly asymmetrical neighbours bristling with inveterate hate and mutual distrust has been achieved, he should reveal it. Lesser mortals like us are unaware of any such.

In such a scenario, the question that cannot but bother Zelensky and his people is: Is the sort of peace being rammed down their throats a mere prelude to the temporarily deferred extermination of Ukraine as a sovereign nation? If at all Putin agrees to terms of peace settled now in his favour what, if any, is the guarantee that he will not launch a second, and overwhelming ‘Special Operations’ that will turn Ukraine into a Russian backyard, much the same way Trump thinks Canada, which is geographically larger than America, should have no future except as the 51st state of the United States?

This brings us back to where we started. Peace, as the world knows it, is quite a different thing to the peace that Jesus envisaged. In his sanctified logic one thing is absolutely indispensable for making enduring peace in the world: loving your neighbour as yourself. That, alas, seems to be the last skill or art our species seems inclined to acquire. Perhaps we should give up praying for world peace! We should pray, instead: Lord, give us the grace to live peaceably with our neighbours!