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Do you not think it likely/plausible that Trump would force Russia to accept a freezing of the conflict along current lines with no additional conditions by way of threats? Between the circumstance that any Republican administration is likely to contain more hawks/military optimists, a general preference his team seems to have for bold moves and a certain "Nixon going to China" effect now that in the public perception the Democrats are the party owning the "help Ukraine" brand, I think he could make the threat of escalation credible - say, to start, by providing Ukraine with significantly more and better deep strike equipment, letting them base combat aviation in adjacent European countries, greenlighting an incursion into Transnistria, or even going through with garrisoning some Western troops in the rear to free up Ukrainian troops for the front. It's not clear what responses would even be available to Russia to any of those that I can see Putin risking, apart from maybe shooting down some US surveillance drones over the Black Sea.
(Ukraine, I imagine, could be strongarmed to accept freezing with no additional conditions; their current public refusal is just for morale reasons.)
I don't think at this point Trump can "force" Russia to do anything because he doesn't have many believable escalatory threats. They will have to be given a lot and I think the bare minimum Putin will accept is Russia keeps the entirety of all oblasts it has already inducted into the federation except maybe certain parts of Kherson and at the cost of the US and Europe removing all sanctions on Russia and Russians and some sort of guarantee going forward, with Ukraine disarming and having their constitution reflect both disarmament and neutrality, as well as "de-nazification," and enshrining protection for russian-speakers.
Russia is winning and will win more the longer the war continues. They have advantage everywhere, they've already sunk a ton of resources into this capability, they've already spent a lot of blood, and they've already spent a lot of legitimacy and political capital on it. To get them to stop, you are going to need to give them something very valuable.
Ukraine is in no position to negotiate. They have repeatedly violated agreements, e.g., don't attack energy infrastructure. Ukraine will accept whatever the US wants because the US is a but-for supporter of their continued ability to fight.
I don't think the Russians will be moved by these escalatory threats. Russia has escalation dominance in region and it's not close. Russians will bomb any airfield irrelevant of where it is if the planes taking off from it are used in military operations in the SMO let alone Russian territory. I doubt the AFU is capable of serious escalation against Transnistria. Any NATO troops which step foot on Ukrainian soil will be immediately bombed. Russians have already framed this discussion because these threats have already been made over the last two years. I doubt they will retreat from any of these threats.
Additionally, I sincerely doubt many in the world would belief radical escalatory threats by the US military. The US military which invaded Iraq was built up during the cold-war; that force, its men, and its equipment have been spent and reformed. The current US is not the country which built that military, filled it's ranks, or built the equipment for it. I doubt the US military could currently accomplish something like the Iraq invasion now. It's been spending multiple years embarrassing itself in missions like protecting international shipping in the Red Sea against the Yemenis. By the time they declared victory, they struggled to convince US flagged ships to make the run through the straight with guarantees of protection. I doubt the US could even fight in place of either side in the war for longer than a few months without conscription and major industrial mobilization.
Donald Trump will not risk escalation to war over a Biden administration debacle when he can just hang the idiotic failure on the Biden administration and even use it as an excuse to clean out the state department and other connected agencies. I agree he has "bold move" guys in his orbit, but I think the "bold move" here would be to blame the neocons, the Biden admin and state department, and walk away from a dumb foreign entanglement.
IMO, Donald Trump escalating something like this to war would end his political legacy and he would lose large portions of his supporter base.
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