US Moves Ahead, Rest of Globe Waits

US Moves Ahead, Rest of Globe Waits

Deepak Razdan

Friday, 16 May, 2025

Things are quite normal in the New World, i.e. for its creator, the US, and its major ally, the United Kingdom. The rest of the world is still wondering how soon it will come out of the trade blockade imposed by US tariffs early last month.

The Ukraine-Russia war continues in all its fury, despite Europe’s warning of tougher sanctions against Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer of direct talks to end the war.

For the first time since the beginning of the war in 2022, Ukraine and Russia held official-level talks in Istanbul in Turkiye on Friday, and agreed on exchange of prisoners of war.

Simultaneously, European and UK leaders met at Albanian Capital Tirana for the European Political Community Summit and to discuss the Ukraine war.

The leaders extended support to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and hailed him as the man for peace.

The Ukrainian President had arrived in Ankara in Turkiye on Thursday for direct talks with Mr Putin, but he did not come. Mr Zelenskyy was left commenting the Russian President was not serious about the talks.

On his first foreign tour of his Second Presidency in which he signed a trillion dollar deals with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, US President Donald Trump virtually asked the world to be patient with his efforts to end the Ukraine-Russia war. Nothing will happen until he and Mr Putin meet, he said.

For the European Union, there has been little choice, and EU leaders believe Mr Trump could end for them uncertainties caused by the trade tariffs and the Ukraine war.

The US devised a new regime of punitive trade tariffs for the world as it maintained the US economy was being exploited by its trading partners. The tariffs were too harsh, and so the world trade virtually came to a halt.

Responding to hue and cry from different parts of the world, Mr Trump announced a 90-day pause in the tariffs. China, with 145 per cent US tariff against it, had remained unresponsive, while announcing its countermeasures.

Mr Trump was quick to realise the US-China trade stoppage could not go on indefinitely and therefore he let US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reach a preliminary trade arrangement with Chinese representatives in Geneva.

That brought normalcy for the US and China and eased world markets. But what about the rest of the world; nothing is heard about the EU and other countries. The US reached a bilateral trade deal with the UK earlier.

When will other major economies of the world reach similar deals with the US, is the issue. Only after these deals, these countries may have revised bilateral deals among themselves.

The Ukraine war has brought UK closer to its European neighbours. The UK-led Coalition of the Willing comprising major European nations met in Kyiv on 10th May and discussed the war.

In a statement, the Coalition asked Mr Putin to accept an unconditional 30-day ceasefire in the war or face tougher sanctions. Mr Trump was kept informed of the developments by the Coalition leaders by a phone call from the Ukrainian Capital.

The UK-EU alliance leaders waited for a US reaction but nothing was heard. In his address to US soldiers at a US base in Qatar, Mr Trump talked of the Second World War and said it was America which had won the war.

Neither the UK nor EU leaders could dispute such a statement; America’s special contribution in the defeat of Nazi Germany and end of the six-year war was a historic fact and always acknowledged.  

For Europe today, the end of the Ukraine war was equally important. Not only the war was taking a heavy toll of casualties, but raising several worries for the EU and the UK. How would they raise a multi-nation security force to help Ukraine, was one of them.

The Russian President has warned them against supplying arms or deploying their security forces to support Ukraine.

After Kyiv, the European leaders are meeting in Albania for the sixth Meeting of the European Political Community. The theme of the meeting is important: “New Europe in a new world: unity-cooperation-joint action.”

The meeting is being attended by 47 heads of State and government, including UK’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and 27 members of the European Union (EU). The conference will have three high-level roundtables, including one on “Russia’s war against Ukraine.”

Mr Trump announced during his Middle East tour that a deal had been agreed with Iran on ending its nuclear weapons capability. He also expressed concern over starvation in Gaza and an unending trail of deaths there. The world is waiting for his initiative on the Ukraine war