THE last EU ambassador to Guyana, Mr. Rene Van Nes who left a few weeks ago, on his arrival here told a reporter that he has a record of successful conflict resolution. Mr. Van Nes’ European job before Guyana was Head of the Division for Conflict Prevention and Mediation Support in the EU.

From my investigation of Mr. Van Nes’ approach to politics in Guyana, his record is quite the opposite. Mr. Van Nes is gone so we cannot ask him how successful the EU’s conflict prevention department is. From what the world has seen, the conflict prevention department was (is) a failure for two potent reasons.

The EU rather than pursuing peace in Gaza has sided with the genocidal regime in Israel. Maybe the conflict prevention division is incompetent because it was the American president that brokered a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel and not Europe.

The second reason is rather than mediating the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, Europe has not displayed even a day of mediation the past three years, the reason being Europe wants a war with Russia.

Last week, the hundreds of years of European experience in diplomacy and international relations came to naught. The US and Russia came up with a 28-point peace plan for ending the war that Europe did not know about.

The Americans did not inform any of the big European players – UK, Germany, France, and the EU Commission that a blueprint for ending the war was being discussed in Moscow. One European foreign minister said he heard the news about the plan from the media.

Why did Trump ignore the US traditional allies in Europe? President Trump obviously knows that after three years of war, Europe has not advanced even one page of a ceasefire arrangement and has not offered one paragraph of a blueprint for ending the war.

Trump knows too that shortly after the war started, a ceasefire document was agreed upon, but then UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, influenced Ukrainian president, Zelensky, not to sign it.

The Europeans want to go to war with Russia and Trump knows it. Trump is afraid that the Europeans are working on a conspiracy to accuse Russia of attacking a NATO country thus the US will have no option but to join the war.

There have been cries from many NATO countries that Russia has violated their sovereignty. Trump is fully aware of the history of US foreign policy and how enemy attacks have been invented of which the Bay of Tonkin incident is the most infamous.

Time is of the essence for Mr. Trump because he knows one of these European inventions could trigger a world war any day now. This explains the hurried 28-point peace plan which Trump gave the Ukrainians up to last Thursday to accept.

Mr. Trump is a very worried man for one fundamental reason – he knows Europe is trying to start a third world war, and the US has to join the war if any NATO country is attacked by Russia.

On his assumption to power for the second time, Mr. Trump found out that Europe wants a war with Russia and was cajoling President Biden to go along. It is possible to argue that if Mr. Trump did not become president a second time, the world would have seen another world war.

The fact of international relations today is that Europe wants a war with Russia and if there wasn’t Ukraine, it would have been some other pretext. Mr. Trump knew this from day one in office and that explains his U-turn away from the Biden approach. There is also the possibility that Europe knew about Mr. Biden’s cognitive deficiencies and was manipulating him.

Donald Trump may fight a war with another country or set of countries but if he ever does that, he is going to do it based on US national interests and not European interests. Mr. Trump has completely rejected the idea of the US fighting a world war because Europe wants to have a war with Russia. For this reason, if the war drags on until he demits office, he is not going to play Europe’s game.

Finally, European leaders have not grasped the essence of Trump foreign policy. He does not see Europe as the centre of American geopolitics. Mr. Trump is more concerned with the phenomenal global reach of China.

Mr. Trump believes that China offers the most realistic challenge to US global dominance. He isn’t going to fight a war with Russia. If he does fight, it will be with China. The Europeans need to wake up and smell the coffee.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.