‘Rules have changed utterly’: Historian David Starkey explains why Trump ‘appeasing’ Putin HAS to happen
David Starkey has argued that the rules have “changed completely,” explaining that Donald Trump’s approach to Vladimir Putin marks a return to 19th-century “great power politics.”
The renowned historian suggested we are witnessing the end of the post-World War Two rules-based international order.
This follows Prime Minister Keir Starmer urging the White House to establish a “US backstop” to counter Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Prime Minister emphasised that US commitments are crucial to “deter Putin from advancing further.”
He added: “Yes, I’ve got a good relationship with him.
“I’ve met him, I’ve spoken to him on the phone and this relationship between our two countries is a special relationship with a long history, forged as we fought wars together, as we traded together. I want it to go from strength to strength.”
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Speaking on GB News, reporter Steven Edgington asked Starkey: “Is Donald Trump appeasing Vladimir Putin?”
David Starkey said: “Yes, in the conventional sense of the term, of course he is.
“But there’s a term that belongs to the old world. It belongs to the notion that we are replaying the 1930s, invoking Churchill, what we’ve got to understand is that the rules of the game have changed. They’ve changed utterly.
“The world in which we thought we lived in, the world in which for most of my lifetime we’ve lived in, is one of the so-called rules-based international system.
“That system has been shattered. Interestingly enough, and now I’ll don the mantle of prophet: exactly three years ago, on the day Putin invaded, I predicted the end of the rules-based international system.
“I predicted that we were going to move into a world that looks very much like the terrible world outlined by George Orwell in 1984, where there are great, permanent blocks of the world.
“He outlined it as Oceania, which is ourselves and America, against Eurasia, which is essentially an enlarged Soviet Union, with an uneasy southern hemisphere. And something like that is what we have now.
“We now have the combined power of Russia and China. We have the so-called BRICS with India, South Africa, and Brazil. And we have the Anglosphere, all now in extraordinary competition with each other.
“You know what we’ve done? We’ve stepped back. We’ve moved away from the world of the United Nations into something resembling 19th-century great power politics.
“What we need to understand is that, if you look back at the 19th century, we didn’t talk about a United Nations. What we talked about was simply the concept of Europe, because that dominated at the time.
“The Great Powers negotiated directly with each other. We’re back in that world, Stephenthe world of Palmerston. The idea that countries don’t have permanent friends or permanent allies, but permanent interests. And you know what? America has always pursued that policy of America First.
“We think there’s something unusual about Donald Trump, but everyone has expressed horror that Trump is negotiating with Ukraine based on this effectively.”