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Trump gets at the issues in a much deeper way than all the policy wonks cynically consumed by statistics and specifics. What do you do about the Ukraine War? It's not hard, you get on the phone with Putin, you stop the war with a phone call, this is literally how that works. You don't need answers to "hard questions," you need the vision to lead and inspire.
A phone call, of course, why didn't they think of that. Oh wait they did think of that, Russia invaded regardless. And then Lavrov gets snippy when the recorded call was released, because it clarifies just how disinterested in negotiation Putin was at the time.
Regardless if a call is made or not, I fully expect that given a second Trump administration we will immediately see the Kremlin bleating the need for a ceasefire. Russia's offensive strategy since Ukraine's culminated seems to be been to try and claw as much territory as possible, no matter the cost, on the gamble that a second Trump administration can bring Ukraine to the negotiating table. Russia wouldn't be seeking a ceasefire for lasting peace, but to give it time to lick its wounds.
"No matter the cost" is somewhat hyperbolic so I'll render it in clearer detail. US DOD estimates 350,000 killed or wounded between Feb 22 and June 24, estimates vary but the US is on the more conservative end. This might not look so bad from a glance at the map, after all Russia would end the war with a decent chunk of additional territory, but it made most of those gains in the opening stages and paid most of the cost in marginal gains. More pressing for Russia, most of its prodigious inheritance of Soviet equipment is running dry, which is manifesting itself in the repeated appearance of motorcycles in offensive action. Although if Russia finds itself on the defensive again, it will be the lack of artillery that will be most pressing. Russia can replace some lost equipment, but nowhere near enough to meet current consumption rates. The bottom line here is that Russia's warfighting potential has been trending downward since the beginning of the invasion and is only going to get worse in the near time.
On the other side Ukraine's warfighting potential has trended upward since '22. Over time its backers have been more willing to ship more and better materiel, and lift previous restrictions on how certain systems are used. This week the first transfer of F-16 should finally be completed, which is expected to improve Ukraine's situation re: glide bombs and cruise missiles. Ukraine has also made Crimea extremely costly for Russia to hold, and an abandonment by Russia (de facto or official) would be a huge political win for Ukraine, this is why Ukraine has invested so many of its highest quality and scarcest assets in making the peninsula untenable. A ceasefire would give Russia breathing room to undo much of the damage Ukraine has inflicted.
With this in mind what can the US do to bring Ukraine to the table? The naive answer is to simply cut off aid. Ukraine already experienced some very tough months without US aid, and while they were amongst the most difficult of the war and resulted in more territory lost than in the months with, there was no indication that the materiel shortage risked causing a total collapse. Judging the effect of a further extended period without US aid is anyone's game. Some things to consider are that Russia's fighting power declining means the loss of US aid hurts less over time. The European states also get a say. I expect that if a US administration were to cut off Ukraine entirely they would take measures to rebalance back in Ukraine's favour again. I think this is the scenario in which we are most likely to see European soldiers in Ukraine, in some fighting capacity. However more likely is the Europeans and other foreign partners would accelerate their existing efforts.
tldr: a Trump administration likely won't want to offer Ukraine any real carrots, and it's one good stick has clear limitations and drawbacks.
What? The Ukrainian air force is reduced to flinging Storm Shadows and similar at extreme range. They cannot even defend their capital against constant bombing. There's not much reason to think F-16s will change that, they're not stealth aircraft that can penetrate Russian air defences and they lack secure airbases to operate from. The Ukrainian power grid is in a complete shambles, their domestic military industry has been heavily degraded. The Ukrainian navy consists of some kamikaze drones which cannot really contest Russia in the Black Sea, even if they sink a few ships. Ukraine has been drafting extensively for the army, dragging men kicking and screaming into vans. Forty year olds and the disabled do not make for great assault infantry.
Russia has a land bridge to Crimea, a highway, a rail line and the bridge. Their position there is in no way untenable. It's really easy for them to hold and resupply it. The small initial Russian invasion force has been replaced by a much larger army. Apparently they can produce more shells than the US and EU. They've had much more materiel throughout the whole war, including artillery.
At the end of the day, this is a conventional war. The side with more soldiers and more equipment is going to win.
I'm not expecting F-16s to change a whole lot, but longer range munitions like AMRAAMs should at very least prove useful for intercepting cruise missiles, which improves their air defence picture as a whole. I mention them because they are a recent, high profile, example of the overall trend thus far.
Sea drones don't need to be able to 'seriously contest' the black sea fleet to be useful strategically. They make it harder for ships to resupply Crimea, force the black sea fleet to operate further away from Ukraine's coast and have likely been critical in preventing the fleet from blockading shipments of grain.
Something that I tried to stress in my previous comment was that this advantage is a one-time bonus that is running its course.
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I think the F-16s will be better against Russian aircraft than the MiG-29s and maybe the Su-27s (if Ukraine has any left) because AMRAAMs but I don't expect that to make a difference in the overall posture of the war. I'm not even sure if Ukraine intends to use them in the counter-air role instead of just replacing the Su-24s in the "Storm Shadow launch platform" role.
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Sorry, what happens on this phone call?
A deal is made.
Trump had four years to make a deal with Putin already on Ukraine that would solve the conflict for good (after all, it started in 2014). The most notable attempt, the 2018 summit, achieved exactly jack and shit.
Russia also didn't do "jack shit" for 8 years.
The deal could be something as simple as if you want us to stop sending military aid to Ukraine, all you have to do is withdraw to the pre February 22 borders.
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Trump threatens to bomb Moscow, simple as!
Nah, probably not this time – this time the call just says "cease-fire?"
Obviously the war would actually stop after a lot of wrangling and haggling and might even start up again but if Trump threatened to cut Ukraine's aid off unless they negotiated they almost certainly would show up, and Russia showed up last time.
There would need to be a threat to Russia that if they aren’t somewhat reasonable we would increase funding to Ukraine while providing a carrot of removing sanctions.
There is no threat that the US can make - there's no amount of funding the US can provide that would make up for the current situation. If they deploy force in the amount required to change the outcome of the Ukraine war, they would be unable to defend Israel and Taiwan... and there's a very decent chance that they would actually lose the conflict militarily to boot (assuming no nukes are used, because if they do get used the world just ends). As for removing sanctions, they're already moving to systems of trade and exchange that bypass the US' hold on the financial system because they don't trust it anymore (and can you blame them?) - they'd view it as nice, but they would presumably then just take all their money out and leave anyway.
Sure, Trump would probably be able to negotiate a surrender, but what could the US actually do to change the situation beyond giving up? When you take into account other commitments like Taiwan and Israel there's no stick at all - Trump would just be negotiating the US exit and surrender. That said, my personal view is that the Ukraine war was a terrible idea, a massive waste of blood and treasure, so the sooner that happens the better.
I agree that Ukraine was always a mistake. But you could say “we will provide XYZ (better weapons compared to what they have today)” while telling Ukraine “if we want you to take deal “ABC” and you don’t, then you get nothing.
I could basically see it freezing the lines roughly where they are today. I guess that’s a surrender. But realism needs to hold sway here.
And yes, the sanctions removal isn’t a huge benefit for them (and was a massive mistake for the US) but it is some benefit.
We could give them 5th generation aircraft or nukes, but we won't. We gave them top of the line artillery, air-to-surface and surface-to-air weapons, and modern tanks. "There's nothing better to give them" isn't technically true, but it's directionally accurate.
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Who do you think has the ability to ensure Ukraine gets nothing?
It's certainly no American- the Americans haven't even been the majority supplier of aid to the Ukrainians. The single biggest supplier, yes, the single most important yes, but EU institutions have given more financial aid to Ukraine than the US has given in value of all combined military / financial / humanitarian, and this is without addressing European national contributions.
Even if the US gives nothing, Ukraine still gets quite a bit. And if the cause of a cutoff is Donald Trump- and I'll just note that people have long downplayed his willingness to conditionally support Ukraine to take his opposition as a given- the Europeans are not going to meekly follow him, when both their own domestic-political interests and strategic interests remain with supporting Ukraine even, or especially in definace to, American pressure otherwise.
Why do you think Realism is any friend of freezing the fight along the current lines and surrendering?
Realism would note that the current war is at least the third continuation war Russia has pursued against Ukraine since the initial invasion of Crimea. (The first continuation war being the astroturfed Nova Russian campaign intended to spark a civil war, and the second continuation war being the direct military intervention when the Nova Russian uprising failed and was on the cusp of complete collapse.)
Realism would note that the Russia's leadership intentions and objectives that drove the current war are still unresolved, and thus the motivation basis remains for a fourth continuation war.
Realism would note that Russia's terms of cease fire and negotiations have for years hinged around limiting Ukraine's ability to resist a future incursion, and thus been conditional on the conditional basis for a fourth continuation war.
Realism would note that the center of gravity of Russia's conventional military strength at a strategic level, the Soviet inheritance of stockpiles, are being expended at unsustainable and functionally irreplaceable rates, and that once they are expended Russia's long-term capacity to conduct a fourth continuation war would be removed.
Realism would note that Russia's military edge is ebbing, that it's current rate of expenditures are unsustainable, and thus that relative negotiating position power will decrease away from Russia's favor of the coming years, and thus potentially create the conditions for negotiations that would not lead to a fourth continuation war.
Realism would note that the Western coalition, on the basis of supporting Ukraine against Russia, is actually mobilizing the political and economic capacity to scale military production, productions that must be greatly scaled to meet other major global competitors but which historically have observably not been invested in solely on the notional basis of those other competitors.
Realism would note a great many things that would work against arguments for a ceasefire in the near term.
'Realism' is no more a legitimization of 'what I want' than trying to claim to be a 'Rationalist' means your positions are any less monkey-brained than your opponents.
It would be interesting in hearing why you think the sanctions strategy was a massive mistake for the US, given that the US/European sanction strategy has clearly delivered it's intended goals of limiting Russian economic capabilities (which is why Russia's only meaningful growth is now a result of a militarized economy rather than it's civilian economics), restrict access to global markets (which is why Russia has to pay significant mark-ups and risk-premiums on both imports and sales, and gets stuck with things like it's India Rupee savings), and done so in a way that didn't cripple the pro-Ukraine coalition's economic and political viability in the midst of major economic input rearrangements (the Europeans haven't cratered their own economies in the process of building up import-substitution infrastructure, and negated the Russian energy blackmail threats).
Is this going to hinge on arguments that the US didn't go far enough to try to enforce some sort of global embargo on Russian exports- which it wouldn't have had the political capacity to do? Or that the Europeans continued to import energy from the Russians- when building the physical infrastructure to import from other sources was going to take time? Or that Russia is expanding its economic dependence on China- a factor which has led the Europeans to be far more concerned and willing to distance themselves from China than they were before?
What percentage of Ukrainian men aged 18-35 are dead?
According to the Russians, 0%, because Ukrainians aren't a real nation, just Russians with wrong politics.
To an abstract Realist, not enough to change a position without ascribing to non-Realist values.
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I think we have differing understanding of the facts on the ground. I don’t think Russia’s military capacity has been degraded significantly. I think they seem to be able relatively to resupply.
I also think your description of the history of Russian involvement in Ukraine is a bit one sided.
You also ignore that Ukraine’s military has been heavily limited. So if the war goes on, not sure they will be in a better position in a year.
Also if the US support drops out, then that would be a material blow to Ukraine unless Europe substantially increases their assistance to Ukraine. I’m not sure Europe can militarily or financially. The US could also offer to Europe more military supplies to be in nato countries if they are worried Russia won’t stop. Of course, I’ve always found this argument interesting (Russia military is collapsing but if we don’t stop them in Ukraine they will roll into Paris — the two are incompatible). In any event, I’m sure our allies would be more comforted by putting US boots on the ground in their countries as a deterrent to Russia compared to this endless funding of Ukraine that won’t go anywhere.
And the reasons I think the sanctions were a bad idea is because it could lead to de dollarization / FDI into the US—both of which I see as bad things.
Resupply what, specifically? The same thing, or inferior substitutions that would entail a drop in capacity?
We can look at the usage of equipment that shows up in loss data, and the change of sourcings. There's a reason that the Russian tanks and APCs have reverted to a Cold War rather than post-Cold War standard, why long range precision munitions and cruise missiles have given way to glide bombs and shahed drones, and why the Russians resorted to the North Korean supply deal.
Around 2020, there was a joke about Russia in that it had a large army, and a modern army, but not a large modern army. No one characterizes the Russian army as particularly modern anymore, as beyond it's drone and glide bomb capability, it's largely resorted to pre-Desert Storm soviet-era capabilities. These are still dangerous- scale matters- but these are dangerous in significantly different ways than the more modernized force of 2022 started out as.
Truths, and especially the most relevant truths, aren't always even-sided.
Russia's involvement in Ukraine has been a series of strategic blunders by Putin for more than a decade of unforced errors, escalations built on erronious assumptions, and then doubling-down to produce more unforced errors. Putin has turned a nominal sphere of influence conflict over a voluntary association agreement into a generational strategic disaster for the Russians politically, socially, economically, and diplomatically.
The Ukrainian's limitations aren't such that prevents their ability to attrit the Russians at strategically significant rates, and their domestic limitations are less important than their backers economic capabilities and willingness, as their relative position is based on the ability on the west to support, and the stockpiles Russia has to continue to draw from.
The current question mark / hope for the Russians is that the Americans under Trump will withdraw support. That would certainly shape how much support is available, but also presumes results.
You can be sure from an American perspective, but that's not the European perspective, and whatever else their flaws the Europeans are not so American-centric.
This is without justifying the conclusion of why said Europeans would be comforted by Trump putting American boots in Europe, after Trump cut aid to Ukraine, when the concern of Europeans is that Trump wouldn't use the American boots in Europe in a crisis, but continued support to Ukraine would both keep attriting the Russians .
Why do you think the Ukraine War sanctions would lead to de-dollarization when that has been an explicit policy goal for more than a decade prior by various powers including the Russians? Particularly when the Russian experience of separating from the dollar-based system has been such a visible non-preferable state, and even Russian traditional allies have been leveraging maintaining their own access to the dollar system to exploit the Russians?
Moreover, why do you believe a breakdown of the global security order would decrease FDI into the US, when the North American continent is the least exposed to insecurity disruptions to energy, food, or maritime trade routes?
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It is worth noting that the United States applied a lot of pressure to make this happen.
It is not. As per Ukraine's commander-in-chief:
(Source)
NATO officials are now saying that a Ukrainian victory would not end the Russian threat:
(Source)
I agree broadly with you on the problems with a ceasefire tomorrow (in part because of the above): if Russia isn't very satisfied with the conclusion, is has every incentive to come back for more.
Minor addendum:
I agree that it probably hampered Russian access to certain high-end stuff (microchips) that it needs for war production. But the World Bank upgraded its economic status this year. So it seems like the Russian economy is "fine" (although perhaps they're running an internal house of cards to keep that up somehow and it can't last forever - I don't have any particular reason to believe this, though.)
It's also worth noting that, having made this happen, the same dynamics that make it difficult to occur (entrenched political consensus, established interest groups for the status quo) also make it even more difficult to reverse (not only entrenched political consensus, but the active dismantlement of the pro-Russian interest groups in key economic sectors).
The pre/early war resistance to supporting Ukraine depended on factors that are no longer prevalent in the European political decision making.
It is. Note that Ukraine's commander-in-chief does not actually make a position on relative assets, i.e. what Ukraine has gained since the war started in 2022.
Russia's military edge in 2022 hinged on relative quality, relative quantity, and the industrial/economic capacity to support it. These have changed, and not in Russia's favor, as the expenditure of advanced military capabilities has been substituted by less quality, the quantity of support Ukraine has received has jumped remarkably, and the industrial-capacity spinup has begun to move against the Russians who also were always behind on the economic capacity.
We are nearly three years into a war in which Ukraine was believed to be imminently about to run out of artillery ammunition, air defense ammunition, vehicles, and so on. We've long since passed the point of 'Ukraine is about to run out', to 'Ukraine doesn't have enough relative to the size of the force it wants,' even as the Russians have increasingly transitioned from internal-economic stockpiles and production to relying on imports of Iranian drones instead of cruise missiles, and North Korean artillery ammunition instead of their own production. There are still questions of if Ukraine has enough, but its shortages are nowhere near the level that Russian planners and advocates were expecting in the opening years of the war when a good part of the strategy hinged on expecting Ukraine to just run out of resources and ability to resist.
Russia's biggest period of industrial advantage is/was this year, due to having started a deliberate industrial mobilization before the Americans and especially the Europeans 2 years ago. This period of first-mover advantage is concluding, hence why the Russian strategy this year has been about trying to shape impressions before the American political election season, without regard to sustainability over another 4 year period vis-a-vis achieving a nearer-term ceasefire.
Sure you do- the nature of the economic interventions that have been employed over the years to prop up public metrics, the obfusication and removal of economic data to validate metrics, the Russian-acknowledged reallocations of the war economy as a share and level of government spending, and the dynamics around the ongoing labor shortage. You can even just look at migration data, both in terms of Russian external-migration which hasn't been re-captured despite efforts to, and the relative weakness of immigrant workers due to both currency weakness and recruitment-pressures.
Russia's economy is 'fine' in the sense that increasing government spending boosts GDP. Russia's economy is not fine for all the old reasons that government-war-spending driven growth is anti-reliable over longer times and comes with real opportunity costs. This does NOT mean that Russia is anywhere near about to fail, but it is making future problems progressively worse, and much of the growth we are seeing is centered around converting stockpiles rather than producing from base materials.
And this is why the 'I'll trade stockpiles for production capability' defense of Russia is a misnomer. Because the Russian military-industrial production is primarily conversion, the production numbers only stay high as long as there are material inputs to convert. Once those stockpiles go, you either produce from scratch- which the Russians have not demonstrated they are set up to- or you import new inputs for conversion- which there is relatively minimal sourcing for- or your don't produce at all.
Russia's war economy is dependent on increasingly less-large stockpiles. These will last for some time yet, but once expended, Russia isn't getting them back with its current or forseeable economic capacity. The Russian production rate will be tied to it's (considerably lower) inputs for from-scratch production, which is nowhere near the current expenditure rate of conversion-production, which itself isn't enough to inflict decisive defeats.
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People have been trying to sell this line since the beginning of the conflict and yet Russia is militarily in a better position now than it was then. Especially with respect to its military industry.
I'd trade soviet stockpiles for production capacity in a heartbeat, and building up the army that has the most experience with modern high intensity warfare in the world is just a bonus.
The only valuable thing the Russians are losing is manpower, which is plentiful but non-renewable given their demographics, and they are rightly taking a slow and methodical approach given the relative value of lives vs materiel.
Realism would note that the West has vastly overestimated its economic power and move the lines on the map accordingly because weak empires are dangerous. Otherwise reality will do it on its own.
Not really. The Russian military industry numbers- specifically the production rate of vehicles implying mechanized warfare capability- are depending on counting re-mobilized assets as new production, hence why production numbers go up but loss data reveals an increase in reactivated vehicle types. Russia isn't producing more new vehicles, its counting old vehicles refurbished as new production. Similar dynamics apply to munition production: Russia is relying on re-activating stockpiled dumb rounds (in terms of artillery) or modifying old kit (glide bombs), as opposed to producing new precision munitions.
Moreover, Russia's position is relative not to itself, but to the western supporters of Ukraine. This has gotten worse, as this last year was the peak of relative advantage due to earlier industrial mobilization. The gap has been closing since, and as such even though Russia is producing more stuff, that stuff is less significant both because of its own capabilities (general across-the-force downgrade outside of specific niches), and because the Ukrainians are in a position to receive more.
Russia's fields of considerable advantage have winnowed over time.
The Russians aren't taking a slow and methodical approach. They are slow despite a hasty and aggressive approach. The Russians are using light infantry exceptionally aggressively, with relatively minimal mechanized support, with indications of prioritizing any degree of territorial gains over material efficiency.
The other valuable thing the Russians are losing / have lost is their latent mechanization and precision munition capacity. There's a reason that they are depending so much on glide bomb kit modernization and kamikaze drones, and the later isn't even an area of relative advantage.
Notably, Russia has not been able to move the lines on the map significantly, even when at a position of maximum relative advantage in capacity and willingness to expend to try and shape specific hoped-for negotiating opportunities which it cannot compel.
There's a reason that despite months of reporting of Russian continuous advance, the lines on map only appreciably move if you zoom in sharply. The narrative of advance, not the actual advances, is the key goal for this campaign season, because this campaign season is intended to be the lead-in to the hoped-for negotiations with Trump.
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This is delusional. Obliterating the formal militaries of near peer competitors is the one thing the US military is utterly dominant at. The US loses wars when you go all fourth generational warfare and wait for the American public to get tired of hearing about the steady trickle of dead American soldiers and foreign civilians (who are innocent and mostly women ad children, of course).
When was the last time the United States did that in a ground war on the enemy's own territory?
Desert Storm, and arguably the initial invasion in 2003 as well before it turned into an occupation/counter-insurgency. Saddam had (on paper) the 4th largest army in the World in Desert Storm IIRC.
Don't forget: they were also battle hardened after a decade of war against Iran.
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I'm sort of disinclined to consider Iraq a near-peer for technological, cultural and economic reasons, but some of that might be hindsight bias. My understanding is that American casualties were far lighter at the time in Desert Storm than anticipated.
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How exactly can the US deploy in sufficient force to defeat Russia without immediately creating gigantic openings in the Middle East and Asia Pacific that would be taken advantage of by their enemies? Russia is a dangerous, nuclear-equipped opponent that is actually ahead of the US in at least one category of weapon (hypersonics) and the stories I've seen coming out of Ukraine make the case that they have the edge in electronic/signals warfare as well (though stories coming out of an active warzone should be taken with a few grains of salt). They're a serious threat that would require significant investments of materiel and personnel to deal with - Russia and Iraq are not the same. Making a serious attempt at defeating them would involve pulling resources from the rest of the empire which in turn means that he moment this conflict starts the US would lose 90% of their existing military manufacturing capacity as they lost the ability to import semiconductors from a China who would be in the middle of invading Taiwan, safe and secure in the knowledge that the US military was busy elsewhere.
Of course that entire discussion is academic, because in order for that to even happen you need to find some way of turning off the nuclear option - Russia and the US going into direct conflict just means the world ends and the survivors get to experience Threads for themselves. Sure, the Russians don't actually win, but the US doesn't either. Serious military conflict between Russia and the US just means the end of the world, and unserious military conflict (like a proxy war) means the US is unable to bring enough force to bear to actually beat the Russians. If you disagree, I'd be more than happy to bet that Russia wins the war in Ukraine.
Russia can't establish reliable air superiority against Ukraine. What makes you think it would require a significant investment of resources to gain air dominance and support the Ukrainians right back to their pre-2014 borders?
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The probability of Russia vs. USA in a non-general war (i.e. US is not attempting to invade Russia) going nuclear is importantly different from 1. It's nowhere near 0, but it's not 1 either.
Also, Threads is pessimistic regarding a near-future nuclear war. Nuclear winter is mostly a hoax, and to the extent it's not it's outdated; modern arsenals are considerably smaller than Cold War ones. Yes, if we get to the 2030s and SALT/START break due to Chinese exceptionalism, we could get back to Cold War levels, but that's not happening this decade.
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