The weird thing about President Trump’s plans for Ukraine is that no knows what they actually are.
Over the last days I have tried to understand what he is trying to achieve. I fail to come up with a theory that makes sense. His behavior is inconsistent. There are also no helpful hints from the White House or leaks to the press. There is frenetic action here and there and pompous pronouncements. But what are the overall plans?
Prof. Mearsheimer likewise says (vid) that Trump’s behavior makes no sense. Blackmailing Ukraine into a resource extraction deal is not a realist position. It is not even mercantilistic. There is nothing to sell there and any deal will be scuppered by courts under oligarch pressure. It makes no sense.
So what is the evidence that Trump has a plan? What is the evidence that he is really negotiating with Russia? What is he factually doing to shut down the war as he has claimed he would do?
Yves Smith, quoting contrarian opinions of Brian Berletic and John Helmer, is likewise wondering what Trump is about:
Because the Trump Administration has no clear idea of what it wants in terms of a Ukraine end game, save being able to claim that Trump ended the war and is therefore a great deal-maker, it is at serious risk of falling into the behavior Sun Tsu warned about: “All tactics and no strategy is the noise before the defeat.”
Specifically, we’ll discuss how oddly under-amplified assessments by Brian Berletic and John Helmer, show that the idea, popular in the independent media, that Trump represents a great foreign policy break from the past is exaggerated. His difference in methods are being unduly confused with differences in aims.
But we’ll first address the way a new Administration pet fixation, that of wresting a minerals/other economic rights deal from Ukraine, is contrary to the aim of reaching an agreement with Russia.
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Now this Ukraine minerals deal may be an example of Trump habits operating to his detriment. Consider how the Trump approach of maximizing his possible negotiating space by advancing all sorts of frame-breaking ideas is not such a hot idea when done reflexively, as seems to be the case in Trump 2.0, as opposed to deliberately.Trump himself regularly threatens radically extreme actions, like ethnic cleansing in Gaza, and browbeats heads of state to try to get his way. Not only is Trump not getting his Riviera development there, but his bullying makes him look like a petulant jerkface. Why should anyone want to get in any relationship with a partner who relishes not just crass dominance displays but even humiliating heads of state (witness King Abdullah of Jordan) and is indifferent to destabilizing the entire region? These actions are inimical to building trust and dealing with anything other than subservient parties.
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Or perhaps Trump and his operatives still believe that Russia is having trouble sustaining its war effort, and so shoring up US credibility and commitment will lead Russia to make concessions.
Neither approach one might think Trump is taking – to use a Ukraine resource deal to keep the U.S. in Ukraine and the war going, or to use the Ukraine resource deal to finally break with Ukraine – is consistent with a realistic assessment of the facts on the ground. At least not if the aim of the game is to make peace.
Trump is may be just rearranging the chairs before continuing with the same old imperial program:
Brian Berletic contends that most independent commentators have fallen for the MAGA/America First hype when Trump represents strategic continuity for the US by trying to maintain dominance, particularly vis-a-vis China. In particular, Berletic described, based on watching the full confirmation hearings for Trump defense and intelligence picks, that the US was not getting rid of the USAID regime change/messaging apparatus, merely shuttering its DEI and other MAGA-disapproved elements.
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Needless to say, this assessment, based on what the Trump Administration has said it intends to do with USAID operations, is very much at odds with the conventional, complacent view that Trump has gotten the US out of the regime change business. Why pray tell, would it have been in the US’ strategic interest to do so? It’s not as if we could win any concessions for eliminating that apparatus.
Yves Smith’s take on John Helmer’s analysis:
Helmer based on his own experience in the Carter Administration as well as input from Russian sources confirming what could be inferred from the remarks of various participants [of the talks in Riyadh] was that the session, from the Russian vantage, was a train wreck. Even if you didn’t have the benefit of the reports afterwards, the way the US went about it was nuts. The US side demanded an immediate high level session, when those typically do not happen before adequate ground work has been undertaken. On top of that, the key members of the Trump foreign policy team had only just been installed. And with DOGE running a bulldozer through State, it’s not as if Rubio and his colleagues had any expertise (such as from career staffers who’d been there before Team Biden came in) to draw on.
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He reprised some of its findings, and added new observations, in a talk with Nima of Dialogue Works.From the very top:
Helmer: The Russian perception is that the American side is a kasha, is a porridge, is a mess. But it’s necessary not to be impolite and say so…..First, what should the Russian side do next?
This problem is actually serious. The US called for a high-level meeting and had no idea what to do then, no agenda, no asks, no proposals. The point seemed to be to create a perception of momentum and pretend that Trump was making serious progress on ending the war. Helmers points to the almost desperation of the US side in saying the fact of this meeting proved that Trump was the only man who could end the war … in lieu of having anything else to say.
The conclusion for me is that there is no Trump plan at all to make peace in Ukraine.
The conflict – in consequence – will have to be decided on the battlefield.
