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Trump And Ukraine
How will a president-elect Donald Trump handle the war in Ukraine?
I doubt that he will be able to close down the war in 24 hours, as he had promised. I rather think that he will escalate it. As I stated two weeks ago:
I expect the new president to double down on the anti-Russian project in Ukraine …
A new Wall Street Journal piece on Trump's promise does not give me any reason to believe otherwise.
Trump Promised to End the War in Ukraine. Now He Must Decide How. (archived
Foreign-policy advisers close to the president-elect put forth different versions of a plan to effectively freeze the front line
Like in Trump’s first term, different factions are set to compete to influence the Republican’s foreign policy. More traditionally minded allies such as Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state now in contention to lead the Pentagon, are likely to push for a settlement that doesn’t appear to give a major win to Moscow. Other advisers, particularly Richard Grenell, a top candidate to lead the State Department or serve as national-security adviser, could give priority to Trump’s desire to end the war as soon as possible, even if it means forcing Kyiv into significant concessions.
But what are ways to do that?
One idea proposed inside Trump’s transition office, detailed by three people close to the president-elect and not previously reported, would involve Kyiv promising not to join NATO for at least 20 years. In exchange, the U.S. would continue to pump Ukraine full of weapons to deter a future Russian attack.
Under that plan, the front line would essentially lock in place and both sides would agree to an 800-mile demilitarized zone. Who would police that territory remains unclear, but one adviser said the peacekeeping force wouldn’t involve American troops, nor come from a U.S.-funded international body, such as the United Nations.
“We can do training and other support but the barrel of the gun is going to be European,” a member of Trump’s team said. “We are not sending American men and women to uphold peace in Ukraine. And we are not paying for it. Get the Poles, Germans, British and French to do it.”
The idea is laughable for several reasons. It does not take Russia's position into account. To continue to arm Ukraine while keeping a ceasefire is an obvious delaying tactic – nothing that will solve the conflict. Russia will only agree to something that concludes the war for good. The assumption that Russia would condone European NATO forces on the ground in Ukraine is also delusional.
Other ideas are just a variant of the above:
Earlier this year, Keith Kellogg and Fred Fleitz, who both served in Trump’s first White House, presented Trump with a blueprint that includes withholding weapons from Ukraine until Kyiv agrees to peace talks with Russia. Ukraine could still try to regain lost territory, but would have to do so through diplomatic negotiations.
The only real way to stop the war is for the U.S. to drop all support for Ukraine. The Europeans would bicker about that but, if only for budget reasons, would likely follow through. It would then be up to Ukraine, having lost all support, to make nice with Moscow.
Trump will likely select (neo-conservative) hawks to run his defense and foreign policies. They will take all possible measures, even against Trump's declared will, to keep the war going. For them it is down to the last Ukrainian, then down to the last European – if only to show that the U.S. will never give up.
To cover for this Trump and his acolytes may well offer an immediate ceasefire. But that will not work.
As Dimitry Trenin, the former director of Carnegie Moscow Center, writes in Kommersant (machine translation):
If we are talking about the cessation of hostilities along the existing line of contact, then this approach is unlikely to be taken seriously in Moscow. Such a "stop to the war" will be nothing more than a pause, after which the conflict will flare up with renewed vigor and, probably, with greater intensity. The nature of the future Ukrainian regime, the military and military-economic potential, as well as the military-political status of Ukraine are of paramount importance for Russia. In addition, it is necessary to take into account the new territorial realities.
All those items would require serious concessions by the U.S. which the future Trump administration will be unwilling to give:
It is hard to expect the Trump administration to agree to a substantive dialogue on these issues, much less to take into account Russia's core interests. If he shows readiness, the dialogue will start, but even in this case, an agreement is far from guaranteed.
There is also the major issue of trust:
A separate topic is what can be considered satisfactory guarantees in conditions when both parties do not trust each other at all. Two "Minsk" agreements (2014 and 2015 agreements) were violated, the third attempt — the "Istanbul" initialed in 2022 — was thwarted, so the fourth one is unlikely to happen. The only guarantee that Russia can rely on is a guarantee for itself.
The only guarantee to Russia is a permanent (conventional) superiority over Ukrainian forces. Any new arms for Ukraine would undermine that. But acknowledging Russia's superiority is exactly the loss the U.S. does not want to concede.
The author of Events in Ukraine comes to a similar conclusion:
Personally, this is what I predict happening if Trump gets into office (if the ‘if’ is even necessary at this point). Trump proposes Putin a ‘compromise deal’ in Ukraine. Putin refuses, given that he’s winning on the battlefield – see my military newsletters. Trump is enraged by this loss of face, and encouraged by his Ukraine hawk advisors like Pompeo (who called for a "$500 billion lend-lease for Ukraine” this July), what does he do next? De-escalate? Hard to believe.
Indeed – hard to believe.
The war will go on. Russia will have to, as Gordon Hahn predicts, cross the Dnieper, retake Odessa and threaten Kiev. Zelenski is unlikely to politically survive such a situation. Other forces would come to the fore:
The pivot of decision-making will then shift to Kiev and the question of whether Zelenskiy or any Ukrainian leader is able to start peace talks at all, no less ones that presuppose loss of territory as part of any settlement with Moscow, without prompting a domestic political crisis. The resulting coup poker game could involve a Kiev-based coup led by intelligence and security forces, the HRU and/or SBU, or emerge from the periphery at the front with ultranationalists and neofascists such as the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps (DUK), Azov, and others, well-armed as part of Ukraine‘s armed forces, turning their guns around and marching on Kiev in order to seize power.
…
A U.S.-backed coup might pre-empt, precede or facilitate such a turn of events. Washington and Brussels might gamble that easing or allowing the radicals‘ rise to power is he only way to rally what remains of the Ukrainian nation so the effort to hand Moscow a 'strategic defeat‘ can be realized and further NATO expansion can be secured.
But a fascist coup, supported by the U.S. or not, will not be able to change the situation on the ground. Russia would still have the upper hand and win the war.
Only a direct intervention by NATO, could be able to change that trajectory. That however would likely expand the war into a global contest that not even Trump's hawks will want to pursue.
Well, maybe I can understand myself better, with things that were already written long before…
https://textosandroides.blogspot.com/2022/11/democrazzia.html
As if there were not enough nails to rivet the cauldron where post-humanity is cooking, all over the world there is a big gamble: immense numbers of people are betting with their very lives to strengthen a power that does not contemplate them. That will never contemplate them.
After the successful staging of the last pandemic (last until now), where the agonizing remnant of free will that still illuminated the human spirit was docilely handed over to corporations and news factories, power no longer needs makeup or to try to hide its appetites or its inconsistencies.
The differences between nationalism or Nazionalsocialism, left, right, ecologists, anarchists, libertarians, indigenous people, semi-saintly whites or dictators no longer matter: they all sit at the same table and of course, do what is necessary to participate in the script and capture their piece of the pie.
To cover up, our chronic apathy is almost always enough, given that the trivialization of ideals continues its path to total absurdity, and now, any social network appeases the majority with simple acts such as saving puppies virtually or similar nonsense.
All hypnotized, at the same time that they turn their privileges into an endless crying that saturates the screens (they are not, and will not be, the elite without morals and without law that they admire).
Of course, “politics” is still the same, glamorously football-like, it is nothing more than a war of colors, of bands of mercenaries of reality without real programs or ideas, without a base, without interest in the people or in the people who support them with their own shoulders.
So, in this game of masks of power, it is simply a matter of choosing: between disastrous or magical options, fanatic or mystical, “between Guatemala and Guatepeor”, without convictions or hopes, because there are none anymore, only fanaticism and preventive aggression, defamation, fallacies and distortion.
But the manipulation that turns people into idiots is only a reflection of the way in which the owners of the world manipulate their merry puppets in the great theater of geopolitics…
Left-wing governments and candidates that turn sharply to the right, now, the first day they can do so? The world is round!!
Transnational policies cutting across administrations and regions as if the Holy Roman Empire still existed? They are just business…
And the businesses that pay off are sacred, be it drugs, weapons, oil, minerals, people, grains or cattle, which are all in the same hands and bleed the same meek sheep, who lose sleep trying to figure out how they are going to pay back every cent they owe for living poorly, and breathing, and obeying.
Meanwhile, without underestimating the greed of eventual administrators, there is not a single human problem that finds a solution, a need that is satisfied without inviting us to be slaves.
What a relief! It is so hard to decide, to think, to be… That any format consoles us from the painful anxiety of being responsible for the acts and omissions of our own lives!!
Of course, thinking of the planet as our common home or other pressing realities would force us to make changes, to assume responsibilities from which ideological, social and geographical borders protect us: We do not want to destroy our way of life!!
Of course, genocide and war are the only expected results. The fact of being free of spirit, and living on the edge of loneliness and despair is conjured by submitting ourselves to systems of government that turn every territory into a theater.
And of course, every leader becomes a puppet that makes the public laugh or applaud, love, hate or idolize the most ruthless executioners: always sitting and waiting, always a spectator.
Of course, there are many steps and juicy prizes waiting for validating the looting, violence and social devastation, participating directly in the political-territorial submission or closing one’s eyes to the subjugation of entire communities…
Then it is only a matter of continuing, remaining attached to the most perverse and irrational part of the system, making the trust generated by always saying “yes sir” or “no sir” without asking anything give way, according to the case.
It does not matter who dies accumulating the power of the violent local bosses or the gentlemen in tight suits, owners of everything and of all decisions (although nobody knows for sure who they represent).
There goes humanity, promoting the last great leap into the abyss that they make us pay for in advance day after day…
Posted by: Santi | Nov 7 2024 23:12 utc | 270
Speaking of fascism and brown shirts…
https://textosandroides.blogspot.com/2022/12/especies-in-extinction.html
One of the characteristics of fascism, of this ever-renewed wave of neo-Nazis, is that it does not generate or accept agreements to stop the war.
Since their struggle is sacred, there is no reason to suspend it before total victory, and this implies the absolute annihilation of the enemy, total and eternal supremacy over the surface of the planet.
Clearly then, any agreement will be nothing more than a method of gaining time, and any defeat a way of concentrating positions to start over.
Of course, like everything, now that transport and communications have been diversified and almost universalized, the doctrine and combatants spread, atomized, to every corner of the world, within every government, corporation, profession, city, that is, any form of organization or human exchange.
One of the keys to its renewal and persistence is that it does not need reality or history. Its reign will be a new paradise that will permanently create itself like the sun creates rays of light. How attractive! But for the rest, there are the machine guns, which in addition to imposing their own ideas, eliminate those of others.
At a glance, given the minority of their presence in the social or institutional fabric, this dispersion seems insignificant, but in practice, there are millions of sources donating power and financing.
We do not know, but they are always ready to start or deepen the war, wherever their activities are directed at a common enemy whose destruction, conquest or submission may be profitable -also- for world banking and ultra-capitalism, two other completely outdated schemes of interpretation, whose only form of permanence is systematic and extreme violence.
Of course, it is expected that they will never stop financing totalitarianism.
As long as hostilities remain dormant, it is just as useful to generate unpayable debts as to spread hatred, prejudice, illness or hunger, to pollute or plunder, to exterminate animals or nature: any activity that generates non-constructive actions and responses, confrontational thoughts and speeches, that “legitimises” violence is like bread, and it is like the deep water where sharks swim, whether they are bankers or ministers, vandals or mercenaries.
Later – and there is always a “later” – when the cannons speak, individual combative capacity, performance on the battlefield, the decision to live and die with weapons in hand will be fundamental.
And so, real beings of flesh and blood, landscapes and cities, are relentlessly burned in the real world, only to keep the ghostly reflection of the ideologies that oppress them running.
If we take into account that all these imbalances, this violent evolution, is both the fuel and the justification of all the sociopolitical schemes in supposed conflict, the good and bad news at the same time is that the only power capable of generating minimally viable, real and humanizing alternatives comes from ourselves.
It is the power that we can still bring into play individually, the power to be and to do from the point of view of a person, of a living being conscious of its belonging to a heterogeneous community called planet Earth.
Posted by: Santi | Nov 7 2024 23:14 utc | 272
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