Mahir Ali
Published November 26, 2025
DAWN
THE arrival in Kyiv last week of an American emissary with a Russian-drafted ultimatum for the Ukrainian leadership sparked a panic among the latter’s EU/Nato allies. They discussed the bombshell on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Johannesburg, and set up talks in Geneva.
The initial draft, agreed between Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and Kremlin emissary Kirill Dimitriev, involved Ukraine ceding about a fifth of its territory, including parts that Russia has failed to occupy, plus vague security guarantees and possible membership of the EU — but not of Nato. Apart from rewarding Vladimir Putin’s aggression with territorial gains and the lifting of sanctions, the plan envisaged $100 billion of frozen Russian assets being invested in Ukraine, with 50 per cent of the profits flowing to the US.
Donald Trump’s hawkish secretary of state, Marco Rubio, appears to have been excluded from the initial negotiations with Moscow (just as Putin has sidelined Rubio’s Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov), but he has been front and centre of the Geneva process. Any revised plan acceptable to Kyiv and its European allies will require Moscow’s acquiescence, which will not be forthcoming. The war, which Putin has lately stepped up, will drag on.
Any sustainable modus vivendi requires agreement — and concessions — from both warring sides, and particularly the aggressor. Volodymyr Zelensky, beleaguered domestically by corruption charges against some of his closest associates, might have seemed like an easy target for the White House at this juncture. Political troubles also threaten some of his most vociferous European backers (including Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron), while the continent more generally heads in a far-right direction courtesy of centrist follies.
Do global institutions mean anything anymore?
Notably, none of those who rallied to the Ukrainian cause found any fault with UNSC Resolution 2803, which endorses a recolonisation of Gaza and offers no obvious pathway to a Palestinian state that a bunch of European powers have only recently endorsed. Equally, none of the Arab or Muslim states queried an arrangement whereby Israel continues to control over half of the territory where it has murdered more than 70,000 Palestinians. The barbarity has not been halted, as Israel defies the ceasefire almost every day to slaughter dozens more. No Palestinians had any say in the US/ Israeli truce deal, which enables a slightly more subtle genocide — with no repercussions, 80 years after the Nuremberg trials, for the perpetrators.
The so-called rule of law in the postwar settlement that followed the anti-Nazi crusade never meant very much as the Cold War unfolded, and the demise of Palestine in 1948 enjoyed the imprimatur of the UN as well as the US and the USSR. Occasionally, one encounters a degree of nostalgia for the old order, when the battle lines were clearer. The millions of lives lost in Korea, the Congo, Malaya, Indonesia and Vietnam during that era can hardly be ignored. The post-Cold War era involved genocides in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, long before Arab states joined the renewed Western plunder of Africa. The misguided ‘war on terror’ unleashed after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America, meanwhile, has left gaping wounds from Iraq to sub-Saharan Africa that have been exploited by deleterious forces.
The UN remains a worthy symbol of the postwar order’s finest achievements, but the lack of renovation over the past 80 years means it struggles to make a difference. COP30 reflects its diminished clout. The Belém conference did not crumble,
but its unsurprising failure to pinpoint a path towards the elimination of fossil fuels in the face of resistance from a Saudi-led clique serves as yet another reminder that the oil and gas aficionados who control the world’s lungs will continue to throttle them.
The US attended neither COP30 (because its leader thinks climate change is a hoax) nor the G20 (because its leader thinks South Africa is involved in an anti-white genocide, an idea ridiculed by black and white South Africans alike), and it wasn’t much missed at either venue. As lame as the outcome was at Belém, it would likely have been worse if the US had participated. And likewise in Johannesburg, even though the communique of the first G20 in Africa managed only to cobble together 122 motherhood statements with little prospect of being implemented.
Beyond the fossil fuel lobbyists, the persistent COP problem is that commitments — such as those relating to adaption or amelioration funds for poorer nations — remained unfulfilled, regardless of whether they are doubled or tripled. Likewise various other global or regional promises. It seems highly unlikely that what remains of multilateralism can rescue the world, let alone components such as Palestine, Ukraine or Sudan.
mahir.dawn@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, November 26th, 2025
THE arrival in Kyiv last week of an American emissary with a Russian-drafted ultimatum for the Ukrainian leadership sparked a panic among the latter’s EU/Nato allies. They discussed the bombshell on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Johannesburg, and set up talks in Geneva.
The initial draft, agreed between Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and Kremlin emissary Kirill Dimitriev, involved Ukraine ceding about a fifth of its territory, including parts that Russia has failed to occupy, plus vague security guarantees and possible membership of the EU — but not of Nato. Apart from rewarding Vladimir Putin’s aggression with territorial gains and the lifting of sanctions, the plan envisaged $100 billion of frozen Russian assets being invested in Ukraine, with 50 per cent of the profits flowing to the US.
Donald Trump’s hawkish secretary of state, Marco Rubio, appears to have been excluded from the initial negotiations with Moscow (just as Putin has sidelined Rubio’s Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov), but he has been front and centre of the Geneva process. Any revised plan acceptable to Kyiv and its European allies will require Moscow’s acquiescence, which will not be forthcoming. The war, which Putin has lately stepped up, will drag on.
Any sustainable modus vivendi requires agreement — and concessions — from both warring sides, and particularly the aggressor. Volodymyr Zelensky, beleaguered domestically by corruption charges against some of his closest associates, might have seemed like an easy target for the White House at this juncture. Political troubles also threaten some of his most vociferous European backers (including Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron), while the continent more generally heads in a far-right direction courtesy of centrist follies.
Do global institutions mean anything anymore?
Notably, none of those who rallied to the Ukrainian cause found any fault with UNSC Resolution 2803, which endorses a recolonisation of Gaza and offers no obvious pathway to a Palestinian state that a bunch of European powers have only recently endorsed. Equally, none of the Arab or Muslim states queried an arrangement whereby Israel continues to control over half of the territory where it has murdered more than 70,000 Palestinians. The barbarity has not been halted, as Israel defies the ceasefire almost every day to slaughter dozens more. No Palestinians had any say in the US/ Israeli truce deal, which enables a slightly more subtle genocide — with no repercussions, 80 years after the Nuremberg trials, for the perpetrators.
The so-called rule of law in the postwar settlement that followed the anti-Nazi crusade never meant very much as the Cold War unfolded, and the demise of Palestine in 1948 enjoyed the imprimatur of the UN as well as the US and the USSR. Occasionally, one encounters a degree of nostalgia for the old order, when the battle lines were clearer. The millions of lives lost in Korea, the Congo, Malaya, Indonesia and Vietnam during that era can hardly be ignored. The post-Cold War era involved genocides in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, long before Arab states joined the renewed Western plunder of Africa. The misguided ‘war on terror’ unleashed after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America, meanwhile, has left gaping wounds from Iraq to sub-Saharan Africa that have been exploited by deleterious forces.
The UN remains a worthy symbol of the postwar order’s finest achievements, but the lack of renovation over the past 80 years means it struggles to make a difference. COP30 reflects its diminished clout. The Belém conference did not crumble,
but its unsurprising failure to pinpoint a path towards the elimination of fossil fuels in the face of resistance from a Saudi-led clique serves as yet another reminder that the oil and gas aficionados who control the world’s lungs will continue to throttle them.
The US attended neither COP30 (because its leader thinks climate change is a hoax) nor the G20 (because its leader thinks South Africa is involved in an anti-white genocide, an idea ridiculed by black and white South Africans alike), and it wasn’t much missed at either venue. As lame as the outcome was at Belém, it would likely have been worse if the US had participated. And likewise in Johannesburg, even though the communique of the first G20 in Africa managed only to cobble together 122 motherhood statements with little prospect of being implemented.
Beyond the fossil fuel lobbyists, the persistent COP problem is that commitments — such as those relating to adaption or amelioration funds for poorer nations — remained unfulfilled, regardless of whether they are doubled or tripled. Likewise various other global or regional promises. It seems highly unlikely that what remains of multilateralism can rescue the world, let alone components such as Palestine, Ukraine or Sudan.
mahir.dawn@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, November 26th, 2025
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