Peace process must benefit all parties not just one

On Friday, after wrapping up meetings with European leaders in Paris, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the Donald Trump administration was willing to move on if the negotiations it had initiated with the belligerents in the Ukraine conflict didn't yield results soon.

The US president stood behind Rubio's remark saying that if, "for some reason", one of them makes it very difficult, the US will just "take a pass".

Given the administration's characteristic inconsistency and flip-flopping on some major issues, such as the tariff war it has launched, it seems that announcing a U-turn on Ukraine may be part of its approach to force a deal.

It is unfathomable that the Trump administration should step back now having made such a big song and dance about its ability to broker a peace deal. Walking away from a task that was never going to be as easy as one, two, three, as it implied, would only further damage the global leadership credibility of the United States. After all, the memory is still fresh of the US leader's promise to have the Russia-Ukraine conflict resolved within 24 hours of taking office after he won the US presidential election in November.

No one doubts the difficulty of advancing such an arduous endeavour. Despite all the fanfare, the US-initiated negotiations to end the conflict have encountered more setbacks than they have made progress mainly because of the huge gap between stances of Russia and Ukraine. But having raised hopes that there might be an end to the fighting the administration has to push on.

After the Trump administration took office with its claim there should be a peace deal and it was the one that could bring it about, a lot of things surrounding the Ukraine crisis have changed: The US and its European allies no longer appear to be of one mind on supporting Ukraine. And the US has made it clear its support comes at the cost of Ukraine's minerals and rare earth resources.

This change of approach was very publicly made clear in the televised humiliation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in his meeting with Trump and US Vice-President JD Vance at the White House in February.

It is highly unlikely that an ambitious president such as Trump and his equally ambitious team, having vowed to broker a deal, really intend to walk away.

But that does not change the question of whether its real intention in trying to broker peace in Ukraine is about stopping fighting and saving lives or if it is to ensure the US profits from any deal?

Considering that Ukraine and the US have signed a "memorandum of intent" on a minerals deal on Thursday, with Trump telling reporters in the White House the same day that he believed a deal could be signed next week, it would be difficult to convince many in the world to believe the US did not harbor a selfish agenda now that it appears willing to walk away having already got what it wanted from the process. Otherwise, the US will only prove itself as a plunderer taking advantage of the Ukraine crisis rather than a genuine peacemaker.

The crux to resolving the Ukraine crisis is to face squarely its complicated historical causes, respect the justified concerns of relevant parties, and balance their rational interests in the pursuit of a common purpose of building a lasting, workable and balanced security mechanism for Europe.

As Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has said, "All parties should learn something from the crisis": that security should be mutual and equal, and no country should build its security on the insecurity of another.

As he rightly pointed out, the negotiation table is where the conflict ends and peace starts; and everyone gains from peace.