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Can anyone steel man Biden's actions here?
The war is coming to a close. Trump's win gives him the political capital to go to the negotiating table and bring this ugly chapter of European history to a close. It will probably result in Russia gaining some of the Russian speaking territories of Ukraine. There's not much we can do about that unless we want to spend a few hundred thousand more lives.
Ideally, Biden would make peace now. It's his last chance to do something good for the world. A Nobel Peace Prize would put a positive sheen on an otherwise terrible Presidency. Failing that, the focus should be on strengthening the Ukrainian front lines. Lines of control tend to ossify into political boundaries.
This pointless escalation does nothing to help Ukraine achieve victory. You're right that Russia is not about to start nuking cities. But there are lots of things that they can do to be annoying, such as restricting exports of key materials, cutting underseas cables, or even blowing up GPS satellites.
Is Biden hoping to bait Putin into an escalation that Trump can't ignore, thereby preventing him from ending the war. If so, this seems evil, there's no other way to put it. The Biden admin and the Cheneys deserve each other.
General deterrence-escalation management theory, pattern recognition, coalition management, and/or a kind gift to Trump to boost Trump's chances.
Deterrence of conventional escalation relies on the point that you may not be able to literally prevent another party from taking an action, but you can make the costs via retaliation high enough that it's not worth it. However, since the other side can retaliate against the retaliation, actual war-costs are generally not present (hence the pattern of Russian red lines). The main factors of retaliation in a democratic-state level is to take retaliation that will threaten, if not the actual existence of the government, it's survival to the next election.
Lame duck governments, by their nature, cannot be deterred in this way.
This changes the cost-benefit calculus of a Putin retaliation. No matter what he does, the Biden administration will be gone in about two months. If he retaliates to a 'sufficient' level to match his previously claimed red lines, doing so risks sabotaging whatever chances of a ceasefire deal he wants with Trump by invoking Trump against him. As Putin's macro-economic strategy for the war for the last years has clearly been to front-load the war economy on the expectation of achieving a close in the next two years or so, that's not a risk Putin will credibly take over a marginal increase to Russian rear area losses.
Pattern recognition comes from the point that the risk of Biden doing so is low based on the normal pattern of Russian reactions to claimed red lines of this manner. No one actually believes Russia's nuclear saber ratling about recently lowering the nuclear threshold to make this a nuclear escalation risk, because the Russian nuclear decision has never been deterrent on the doctrine, but Putin, and if he wanted to do a nuclear response the claimed thresholds were met years ago. As the Russians have and will continue to escalate in various ways regardless (including the new import of North Korean troops), this is just a general pattern of how the coalition has been increasing support for Ukraine over time over Russian objections.
The coalition management angle here is that Biden has probably been willing to support loosening the restrictions for awhile, but was withholding for election purposes. Returning to deterrence, the nature of a deterrence threat to electoral stability is that Russia might have ways to make the election decisively worse if Biden acted before, but this threat loses it's relevance after the election occurs. As such, holding the range limit was a matter of the pro-Ukraine coalition stability (for US electoral purposes this time, but other country considerations before such as German tanks), but releasing range now is also a matter of coalition stability. By releasing the conditions now, Biden is creating precedent that Trump cannot block or revoke, while enabling the Europeans to likewise authorize and release their own long-range munitions at their rate of production (and expanding production, as European arms expansion programs are expected to start taking effect next year).
Finally, the gift to Trump is that this assists Trump's leverage in whatever approach Trump makes with Putin next year.
The crux of the 'Trump plan', which it bears repeating isn't actually a plan Trump made or said he would use, is that Trump would make a conditional threat to Putin: accept Western-offered terms, or see an increase in support to Ukraine.
What releasing the range limitation does is provide a relative preview over the next months of what that support can imply. This means theater-level strikes into Russian airfields where the Russian airforce (especially glide-bomb force) has sat out the war out of range of Ukrainian capabilities, rear-area supply depots, and otherwise increasing the burden on Russia's own stretched air network, and so on. As western- including European and American- arms production investments are expected to started coming online next year, and with it even more long-range weapons, this release bolsters the credibility of what that future armament potential means as a reason for Putin to move closer to an acceptable peace terms.
As such, Biden's release of the range limitations is something the pro-peace audience may want to think him for.
There's not much 'you' can do if you aren't willing to spend a few hundred thousand more live either, besides assume that the Ukrainians will continue fighting without American support.
Setting aside that Trump has not claimed he would compel the Ukrainians to accept a Russian-acceptable deal, nor was that a fair characterization of the Trump-advisor plan that was claimed to offer that during the election season, Trump doesn't actually have the political capital to do so either. Trump's election gives him as much political capital as his narrow Republican majority cares to back him with, and no further. The Ukraine war is not a priority to Republican majority, let alone compelling an end to it, and Trump attempting to do so is an easy way to break his 2-year trifecta with a party member revolt for... a position he hasn't taken.
And even if Trump wants to, his American political capital doesn't translate into political capital to compel the Europeans to contribute to the concessions Russia has demanded for ending this round of the Ukraine War, nor can he compel them to stop aiding Ukraine, nor does he have the poltiical capital to make the Ukrainian government accept Russian terms, nor does he have the political capital to make the Ukrainians stop fighting.
What Trump can do is make a not-very-credible threat that he will withhold all aid and watch the Ukrainians die even if they die by the hundreds of thousands... but the only way to make that sort of threat credible if the Ukrainians fight on is to stand by while hundreds thousands more lives end.
You may think that shouldn't happen, that there's no reason for that to happen, that it would be a bad idea for the Ukrainians to take a path for that to happen... but that can very well happen regardless of what you think, because you are not the ones who can make that decision. No American is.
At which point, you are just as well off asking what to do on the assumption that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians will die regardless. Even if 'we' do nothing, we would still be spending hundreds of thousands of lives to do nothing.
Biden doesn't have the ability to make peace now, because Biden is not, and Americans are not, the hyperagent of the Ukraine War.
The Americans are not able to compel Putin to accept a deal, or to make the Europeans offer concessions so that Putin would take a deal now rather than think he could get a better deal from Trump later.
Why not, besides your own particular definition of victory?
If one defines victory as Ukraine gaining credible Western security guarantees short of NATO membership that convince Ukraine to accept a Russian demand for no-NATO membership, then demonstrating the effectiveness of previously off-limits capabilities may assuage Ukrainian concerns of post-conflict western support.
If one defines a victory as the Americans negotiating near-term cease fire under Trump, this directly enables Trump to present maximum coercion to get Putin to agree to drop various demands and accept a ceasefire.
If one defines a European victory as further attriting the Russian economic damage of the war to delay by years the functional reconstruction / rebalancing of the Russian military and civil-economy, and thus giving Europe and Ukraine more time to prepare for the next war without American support, this directly enables further attrition of Russian strategic assets whose replacement may add to that time.
There are many theories of victory which this easily supports, regardless of whether you think it's a good idea or not.
And you believe those are more credible or meaningful threats to refrain from support because...?
You are proposing, variously, a non-threat of a fungible good, an already occurring trend, and an expansion into direct conflict when the purpose of Russian deterence strategy has been to prevent direct conflict with the US.
That's an interesting thing to be deterred by, but not a particularly compelling one.
That is how things seem if you assume the evil conclusions of your outgroup.
Don Junior posts memes about Zelensky having his allowance yanked.
I, too, find people other than Trump sharing memes to be very credible insights into Trump's intentions.
Remember that time Trump shared the CNN-wrestling GIF, which foreshadowed the campaign of amateur wrestling stunts at the expense of journalists?
Junior has been pretty involved in things lately. But if you want to be sarcastic about it, fine, I'm sure Trump will rush to sign off on another fifty billion dollar care package after campaigning on what a waste it all is. After all, he wouldn't want the Democrats or some Euro leaders to be miffed at him.
I can be serious and I can be silly, and tend to retort in kind. Arguing a shared memes on the part of Trump Jr. are meaningfully demonstrative of Trump's viewpoint is silly. Noting that the Trump selectees for Trump's cabinet are Ukraine skeptics is serious... but so is noting that many of Trump's selectees are pro-Ukraine, which undercuts the credibility of a hardline anti-Ukraine position.
If Trump is supposed to have strong opinions on the Ukraine war, he certainly isn't manning his administration to reflect that, as the adage 'personnel are policy' applies here. Trump Jr. is a person of interest in the Trump administration, but he is far from the only person, and we can just selectively choose quotes whichever way we want.
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I think it's the correct thing to do.
First, it's far from clear that we're in the 11th hour here, though the war is moving towards an endgame. Russia's stated conditions do not align with the military reality on the ground, for example from the ISW on the recent talks in Turkey: "Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov responded to the initial reports of the Turkish peace proposal, stating that "freezing" the frontline is "a priori unacceptable" for the Kremlin and that Russian President Vladimir Putin's previously stated conditions for ending the war — which amounted to full Ukrainian capitulation — remain "fully relevant." ". A frozen front with protections for Ukraine aren't enough it seems for the Kremlin, they want far more, which means that this war is not ending in the next weeks or months. This is true for Biden, and this is true for Trump, unless you accept that the Ukrainian military is about the rout, which I don't. You may think so, but if that assumption is not accurate a lot of things you're confused about might slot into place.
Next, Russia has now received direct support from North Korea, which was taken as an escalation in the eyes of Biden's administration, which stated as much. Not only Russia gets to set red lines and act, and the US wants to show that Russia's dreams of forcing a full capitulation of a sovereign nation via escalating force isn't going to work. It seems likely that longer range strikes into Russia will have a marginal but material effect on the frontline - Ukraine has hit ammo dumps and airfields deep in Russia before, it's just able to raise the tempo now.
Ukraine is always the underdog, and now that Russia has got more meat into the fight vs mid 2022 there's unlikely to be sweeping advances into Russian held territory, but they're not out of the fight or broken. From the US point of view, the fastest way of setting the stage for peace might be:
A) Russia needs to understand that it has failed and will fail to achieve its full objectives, which were insane anyway. No escalation of force (further strikes on civilian infrastructure or drafting of their populations/the population of North Korea) by the Russian military will achieve this, and the US has solid escalation dominance in the conventional space if it chooses to use it.
B) Ukraine will be unlikely to see its 2022 borders at the end of the conflict, and needs to accept that unless the Russian military comes apart in its push (unlikely, but not impossible, their losses are staggering). However, a concession needs to come with serious support from the west attached, and the partnership needs to be maintained in order that Ukraine doesn't decide to take matters into their own hands and test their nuclear latency. Ukraine isn't a US puppet, they get agency too, and if NATO abandons them this is a more unstable scenario for NATO and Russia.
Honestly, Trump might well take similar steps when he is in if Russia doesn't accept point A), this isn't as clear cut a scenario as you think.
Finally, as a funny point given the length of all our posts, do we know that the US actually has authorized long range missiles? Nothing official seems to have come out, and the missile strike may not have been ATACMS. The fog of war is real.
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There is still no deal that Putin would offer that Zelensky and the Ukrainian people would accept, and Trump's claim that he could end the war in 24 hours is laughable and delusional. Until at least one of Putin or Zelensky are utterly desperate, no peace will be possible. Ukraine is definitely hurting right now, but it's still sitting on more territory than it was in August 2022, and none of Russia's attacks have come close to the scale of territorial gains of the Kharkiv counteroffensive.
Now, would Zelensky's calculus change if the US threatened to cut off aid? Yes, but this would massively alienate Biden from Democratic leadership and American allies in Europe. It's a different story for Trump, of course; not only is there support for these tactics among many in his leadership team, but even European leaders recognise that this is a policy he campaigned on, so he has a democratic mandate to push for it. By contrast, it would seem to many in Europe and in the Democratic party to be a gross betrayal if Biden were to threaten to withhold aid.
That said, I think even Trump will have a harder time of it than he expects. Any pressure applied to Ukraine will also change Putin's calculus, insofar as it will incentivise him to exploit Ukraine's new weakness to push the lines of battle further in Russia's favour. Creating enough desperation on the Ukrainian side without creating corresponding greed on the Russian side will be a very hard needle to thread.
There's also the European factor. If Trump pushes Zelensky too hard (as perceived by Europe), there's a real possibility of a hard transatlantic split emerging. While Europe would struggle to fill the void left by the US if all aid was blocked, it would be interesting to see how far they could "step up", especially if they supplemented their military production with purchases made on Ukraine's behalf from suppliers like South Korea, Turkey, and Pakistan. And while the US has been supplying the lion's share of lethal aid, Europe is sitting on a gold mine in the form of Russia's $180 billion in foreign exchange reserves held at Euroclear in Belgium. Additionally, the US in some cases has been using its diplomatic efforts to restrain transfer of weapons from European countries, most notably Sweden's Gripen with its long-ranged Meteor missiles, which would be far more useful to Ukraine than F-16s and AIM-120s.
That said, I think this scenario is quite unlikely, because it would be the biggest breakdown in Transatlantic relations since at least the Suez Crisis. It would be a huge fillip to European defense contractors like Rheinmetall and Thales - and a corresponding disaster for Lockheed, Northrop, General Dynamics, etc. - insofar as it would make it politically and strategically very difficult for Europe to buy American arms and equipment for decades to come. It would strongly increase the probability of European neutrality in any conflict in the Pacific, and could tempt Europe to closer economic relationships with China, as well as leading to a wider cooling-off of co-operation in the Middle East and beyond. The French in particular would be ecstatic at all of this. Consequently, I think it's unlikely that even a Trump White House would push Ukraine so hard as to prompt a split in American-European policy. But hell, Bolton seems to think Trump will pull out of NATO, so anything is possible. It would sure as hell be interesting times if they did.
Desperate or dead. Yes, they might get replaced by someone even more hawkish, but that's not a given. For example, Ruslan Stefanchuk doesn't strike me as a hawk. And since the line of succession stops at him, if he ends up dead as well, then Ukraine will have to deal with its kryptonite: multiple concurrent hetmans.
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A week or so ago, I posted a comment that appears to have been mostly ignored. In it, I referred to the work of William Spaniel, a political scientist of game theory and international conflict, who was in turn referring to a Trumpist think tank plan to end the war. Short short story is that it's basically a two-sided threat to make both Putin/Zelensky, well, not necessarily "utterly desperate", because from his academic view, you don't need utter desperation to make peace. Instead, simply shift their estimates of the costs/benefits enough to overcome whatever bargaining friction is still getting in the way. (One needs some Lines On Maps lore from his channel to understand that the major view of his discipline is that wars don't just happen because of substantive disagreements; you need both a substantive disagreement and a bargaining friction.)
Maybe to go into slightly more detail, the proposed plan is not to try to simply manage Russian greed in some way. Instead, it's to just straight threaten them, too. If they don't agree to basically whatever Trump has decreed, he will flood Ukraine with unthinkable quantities of top-tier weapons (and remove many of those silly restrictions on them). That would shift Putin's calculus to being almost entirely about whether he actually can really escalate against a full-fledged and unleashed American proxy without being even more directly escalated on. Because if not, that's a pretty significant threat that opens up a wide range of plausible bargains.
I didn't go into full detail in my other comment, but he thinks that the spectre of Trump (and possibly this Trumpist plan) could have been part of the impetus for both Ukraine's Kursk offensive and also Russia's recent ramping up in the east. If they think that Trump could get elected, roll in, threaten the crap out of both of them, and just up and declare that he thinks the solution should be X (plausibly with it corresponding to the current state of the war, with some horsetrading), and if at that point they'd have nothing better to do than accept, then they're both incentivized to rapidly ramp up as much as they can and make as many gains as they can now, before Trump draws his line, probably even if it's unsustainable.
That threat to Putin is oversold though.
First, it's not immediately clear extra military aid will be a decisive war-ending move, an extra thousand armored vehicles or guided missiles will help, sure, Ukraine will certainly welcome it, but currently the greatest challenge for the Ukrainian military is a manpower shortage, that the extra metal does not solve. Even with "lend-lease on steroids," I don't believe it to be likely that Ukraine will be able to push the Russians back to the 2022 borders, maybe it'll just be enough to stabilize the front lines.
Second, Trump has an electoral mandate to reduce aid to Ukraine, not increase it. That's what he ran on. Putin knows this. This makes Trump's threat of increasing Ukraine aid a lot less credible. He knows that if Trump follows through with this threat, the American electorate will become displeased that the aid dollars doubled and yet the war still has no end in sight.
On the first point, I don't think the requirement (from his academic view) is that it needs to be a decisive move or push the Russians back to the 2022 borders; it just needs to be enough of an increased threat of costs (on both sides) to overcome the bargaining friction that is keeping the war going. I've been kind of slow to take on this sort of mental shift after watching his videos for a while, but I'm finding the logic relatively more compelling over time.
On the second point, I don't really know. I don't pay attention to all the details of political campaigns. My non-hyper-focused read was that he just campaigned on, "The war is really bad and destructive; I'm going to end it; I'll do it immediately; don't ask me how." I don't know that he ever really committed to any sort of plan. It's worth pointing out here that this includes him not committing to this think tank plan... or even really ever acknowledging it at all, as far as I know. It's just an idea that's out there that seems interesting and has bounced around in my mind.
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Yeah, besides a lot more Abrams and Bradleys and F-16s (which definitely aren't nothing, but aren't superweapons either) it's not really clear to me what the US has left to give at this point. We won't give them F-35s. We probably won't give them the other really wacky silver bullets we have.
He also put Rubio in SecState. Rubio voted against Biden's Ukraine aid bill in April. So I think that signals where he's gonna go, although I don't consider Rubio a Russia dove or something.
I do think I kinda agree with @Dean above, though, that in a sense it's a gift to Trump. Gives him maximal leverage and, as Dean points out, since it's a lame duck call it's less likely that Putin will escalate (at least in the short term, until he susses out Trump's negotiation posture).
More missile AA. Ukraine is generally good at counterbattery fire, but needs something to counter Russian precision-guided bombs. One Patriot per 50km of frontline will change a lot.
I suspect we're in a bad way on Patriot ammo, which matters a lot if we go up against China. We might be able to get the ones Israel recently retired.
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Spaniel is good, and you're accurately reflecting much of what he's said over the last months. Kudos for keeping attuned!
Spaniel's work does have a weakness, though, in that he approaches his work (videos and books) from a more game-theory/'lines on maps' perspective, of more direct actor cost-benefits, and doesn't really touch on coalition management. That's not to say he doesn't think of it- he may leave it out for simplicity's sake- but he doesn't necessarily show that he thinks of it either.
This mattes because Spaniel often frames things like the Kursk offensive in terms of what Ukraine is trying to do towards Russia (for peace negotiations), as opposed to something Ukraine was doing towards it's backers (trying to change the risk calculus for operations on Russian territory). Similarly, he's more inclined to frame western support dynamics in terms of Russian negotiation calclulus, as opposed to 'what keeps the western coalition together.'
Which is a underrated paradigm for analyzing the conflict, because from my perspective it seems obvious that the Biden administration made a very deliberate and explicit priority of keeping the Western coalition together, even when it could have unilaterally rushed various things to the front under Presidential authority, in part for just the sort of dynamic we're seeing emerge with Trump: a coalition that was larger and more than the US, which could (potentially) make do without the US being the dominant lead party, and setting conditions for the Germans / Europeans to take a lead if the US was unable to.
A significant step to that occurred last week, with the German government triggering a new election and an attempt to break the German debt break. This is almost certainly was decided as a consequence of Trump winning, so that the German government- depending on how it reforms next- can try to start assuming debts needed to power a major European increase in aid and orders for Ukraine.
At the risk of sounding like I'm just trying to defend some random video-maker's honor, I'd say that I don't think he totally ignores that stuff. For example, here. I would agree, however, that even his analysis of coalition dynamics is a bit America-focused (which somewhat makes sense, since America is the big dog in the coalition and has some of the most important political dynamics happening right during this time), and a little less of getting into the nitty gritty of the other individual coalition nations' politics. He hasn't made a video specifically on that German development yet, though I think it would plausibly fall within the general thrust of the description of European dynamics in the video I linked in this comment.
Of course, I would like to know more about the coalition dynamics and how they could come into play. Do you think the Europeans are getting their business up to snuff enough that even if Trump tries to utilize this "concept of a plan" dual-threat that Europe will be able to promise enough support for Ukraine in the event that America abandons them that Ukraine's estimate of the costs won't shift enough to overcome the bargaining friction? Or is there some other dynamic of the coalition management that you think is more salient to be thinking about?
No sounding risk there! I fully support a vie is that he's writing to his topic, and not other relevant topics, which makes my point only a quibble that has weight if he doesn't write on them because he doesn't think of them. If he thinks of them, but chooses to write to other points, that is in no way a failing of him (as opposed to just an unavoidable limitation of limited materiel).
Shrugs No one knows. The coalition is in the process of changing right now, and no one can actually speak for what the next form will reflect.
Part of this is the Trump ambiguity, but another is Germany, who is a key requirements to answering that question and will become clear in March, when the German election occurs. One of the key points of the German government decision to trigger early elections is to break the debt limit so that they can spend more aggressively to support things like Ukraine.
IF that happens, then there is a much greater chance for Ukraine aid to continue going forward because Germany may be able to help offer 'enough' to keep the Ukrainians willing to fight. This, in turn, changes any Trump calculus- not only would Trump have less leverage (Ukraine is not solely dependent on him), but he might even take credit for the expenditures ('see what I could do that Biden couldn't') and even conditionally support expanding aid ('Germany, I'll give you a good aid to buy more ammo from me on the cheap'). On the other hand, if the post-election coalition can't change the debt limit, then Trump has more leverage... but that leverage may be translated not into actually revoking Ukraine aid, but getting other policy concessions.
I think it would be a good video for the good professor, who will absolutely do some good lines on maps if it becomes more relevant!
That makes sense. I'd imagine that a lot of eyes would be on trying to estimate the electoral dynamics, and there's obviously a lot of probability there. All parties will care a lot about assessing the following lines-on-maps: what might it look like if they take a Trumpist think tank peace plan essentially on day one; what might it look like if Ukraine burns Trump enough that he withdraws support and they have to proceed with the war with just other European support; what might it look like if they successfully delay the Trumpist stick from being final until after the German election (and the resulting German policy becomes more clear).
I doubt that either Russia/Ukraine can afford to basically totally avoid talking to Trump until the German election; they both have a bit too much to lose. But they both probably have to work through the various probability assessments to determine whether they want to approach Trump with a, "You're so great, Donald! You can make peace happen; let's do it right now!" or a, "You're so great, Donald! You can make peace happen; let's begin a deliberative process to start working through our negotiating issues over the next few months. There are a lot of intricate details, but we know that you're an incredible negotiator who will have no trouble working through all of them once we can (eventually) get everything on the table for you." We'd probably need to draw some decision trees and estimate some probabilities/costs have any sense for which parameter regions lead to which results.
I would suspect that there are a number of possible regimes, too. If the Trumpist think tank plan really does have strong enough sticks, there might be enough of a bargaining range already and enough risk in waiting that it best serves both sides to agree quickly. (Notwithstanding any concerns about whether US Intel is capable of making such an assessment either way... or whether Trump would believe their assessment and go in with a correct estimate of the other parties' interests.) I would also suspect, with lack of any other looming possible game changers in the near future, the most likely outcomes are either 1) Negotiated peace almost immediately (in diplomatic timescales) after Trump takes office, 2) Negotiated peace soon after the German election, or 3) Something significant enough happens in the German election that lead to a parameter regime such that war continues for some time, with or without US support. Or, of course, 4) Someone screws up trying to string Trump along, he loses it, they get the stick, then scramble to get back to the negotiating table and salvage anything they can salvage. Of course of course, Trump could also lose interest, not pursue this think tank plan, do something wild and completely different, or whatever. It's kind of an annoyingly big game tree... :/
But you are putting in the thought, and as they say plans inevitably fail but planning is priceless. It's easier to recalibrate an imperfect model than to try and create a new inevitably flawed model instead.
Yup. And we've seen evidence of that on both ends, including Zelensky's late-election engagements with Trump.
Zelensky has played this much, much safer (and smarter) than many of his European peers. When a lot of the European elites were happy to publicly dump on Trump after he left in 2020 on the assumption he'd never be back, Zelensky never took the opportunities he might have had to join in to the partisan delight of the current-month losers. While there are doubtless countless Ukrainians who perceive Trump as pro-Russian as many Europeans do, Zelensky maintained a neutrality with Trump directly- even at the cost of enduring swipes- that has kept Trump relatively restrained as well, and thus in a position to work with.
If I had to make my own decision tree metaphor, I'd expect Zelensky's preference/plan to be that he views going along with Trump enough to keep Trump from doing a cut-off, but also more than happy to let negotiations fail so that Trump blames Russia. There are a lot of ways for Russia, or even the Europeans, to snarl talks in a way that Trump doesn't blame Ukraine/Zelensky. If Trump is empowered to do the talks, but the talks then fail, most of the threat of a Trump cut-off go away.
A possible sticking point / friction is the European-held Russian foreign assets and European sanctions on Russia, including gas sales, which are a medium-term need for Russia to re-fund it's economic rebalancing. Regaining those funds and restoring gas sales has been a major reoccuring demand to date, and it is something I think Americans who just want an end to the war underestimate Russia's willingness to press on. It matters in our discussion context because it's an issue the Ukrainians have no actual leverage on- the Ukrainians can't compel the Europeans to agree- and Trump in turn can't blame the Ukrainians if the Europeans refuse despite Ukrainians 'willingness.'
This may be a major asset for the Europeans to keep Trump supporting Ukraine, if only because it can also be used to backstop more or less 'bribes' to convince Trump to continue support. Things like 'the frozen funds will be used to cover the costs of American arms / buy American,' either directly (interest on the investments going to loans for buying American arms) or indirectly (the Germans agree to spend their new debt on buy american). Especially since it would be relatively politically popular in Europe to refuse a Trump demand for a concession to Russia that can be used to help the Ukrainians, which is three distinct politically popular things.
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This would be a huge Russian victory. I don't think it would be remotely hard for them to make nice with Germany if the EU broke from the States, particularly since that plausibly means the end of NATO, no more US troops in Europe, no more US nuclear umbrella, no more US replacement for cheap Russian gas...
England would stick with the US and FVEYS would become the new NATO. The rest of Western Europe, led by Germany, would count the beans and bullets and make nice with Russia. (France and some of the former SSRs might have different ideas).
In the scenario we are looking at (where NATO breaks up because Trump offers parts of eastern Europe to Russia as a sphere of influence), this is a tough call. Trump and Russia are extremely unpopular in the UK - we just had a general election where the Trumpy party got 14% of the popular vote and 5/650 seats. And that was with the other three medium/large parties proudly supporting Ukraine and Farage shutting up because he knew that even among his target vote being pro-Russia was a loser. Starmer, essentially everyone in his government, and the civilian Establishment/Deep State would all want to choose Europe over a post-NATO MAGA US, and would by default have public support to do this. (There is, unsurprisingly, an even broader consensus that being forced to choose is a disaster and that we should hedge in so far as it is possible).
Under normal circumstances, if Starmer tried to do this he would be foiled by the UK national security Deep State, who are integrated with their US counterparts through arrangements like FVEYS in a way which would be ultra-painful to unwind.* But Trump is appointing a DNI who is sympathetic to Russia with a mandate to purge the US national security Deep State of the kind of people who make FVEYS work. So the UK Deep State has the choice of "Do we stick with our friends and risk being shafted they get purged and Tulsi sends all our secrets to Moscow, or do we throw our hat in with the dastardly Frogs who are at least sane?" And that is a sufficiently close call that "the elected politicians we nominally work for favour Europe" could be a deciding factor.
* Left-wing lore in the UK is that the military has coup plots in place in case a Labour government tries to break the alliance with the US. It isn't clear how plausible this is because the anti-American wing of Labour has never been within sniffing distance of power. Corbyn came closest during the 2017-9 hung Parliament, but part of the reason why Johnson was able to run rings round his opponents was that the Remainer establishment were more committed to preventing a Corbyn government than they were to preventing Brexit - including 20+ members of the Remainer establishment who were Labour MPs.
This is mostly a nitpick in the context of the rest of your post but a third party getting 14% of the vote in the UK is a pretty big deal.
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I think part of the issue is that in a post-NATO world, there's a good chance that there's no "Europe" to choose from.
The implicit threat of US violenceNATO is what holds Germany, France, Poland and Hungary together. My bet is that if NATO evaporates tomorrow, Germany extends the hand (or bows the knee) to Russia relatively quickly. So, far from being a unified front against Russia that England could join, there's actually going to be a band of squabbling nation-states fighting over the best response to massive, combat hardened Russian army on their borders.That's not to say that there won't be an anti-Russian European coalition that England could be part of and that they would support. But England and the United States have a common interest in preventing a unified and strong Europe. They are natural allies in that regard.
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While that’s a strategic Russian victory- at least in the short to medium term- it’s also a huge lift, Germany knows what side of the bread is buttered. You can expect Europe to stick with the states despite the usual grumbling in every scenario short of unilateral U.S. nato withdrawal or civil war.
To be frank, I don't think Germany (or most of NATO) knows shit. They've been getting hard carried for over half a century now and have consistently demonstrated an inability to act either in their own interest or when prodded by the US. They basically exist (along with much of NATO) as the laziest vassal states of all time. If the US withdrew and Russia announced an invasion of Poland in 2034 I doubt Germany would respond until he was past Warsaw, more likely they'd do nothing and surrender when he got to the Neisse river.
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Germany has been sitting around on the fence despite all the butter we've put on their bread for years. I suspect that they think that Russia is permanent and must be negotiated with, and that one of these days the United States is going to nope off into another isolationist fit (they're probably correct). So while I agree it's a huge lift and don't predict it, I get the feeling people overestimate German resolve for a confrontation with Russia.
I would add at least one more scenario: Trump releases evidence that the US blew up Nordstream. (NB: I'm not claiming that's what happened. Just a black swan that popped into my head!)
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I agree this would be a huge victory for Russia - far more meaningful than the last bits of Donetsk/Luhansk/Zaporizhzhia. Cracking apart the European-American alliance has long been a primary geopolitical objective of the reactionary nationalist strain in Russian politics and an absolute precondition for other territorial ambitions. That said, it's going to be challenging for Russia to pull this off - Putin was doubtless hoping/expecting that the Anglo world would be more hawkish on Ukraine than the European world, but if anything the reverse is true, and there's no strong equivalent to America-first isolationism in most of Europe. Consequently, he can't split America from Europe by asking the latter "why are you paying for America's war-mongering?"
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Biden is hoping that he can escalate without proportionate response because Putin wants to avoid Trump’s defense / natsec advisors telling him Putin thinks he’s a fool and will tolerate Russian escalation.
Biden knows Trump’s people are sending the message that Trump will be a fresh start on the Ukraine war, unless Russia goes apeshit and does stuff that makes conciliatory moves by the US more difficult. This, in turn, makes it less likely that Putin will respond proportionately to Biden’s escalation in the lame duck period. Whether it works is anyone’s guess.
Yeah, it's likely this is what Biden's handlers think. What a great chance to bomb our enemy for free!
I can see the strategic logic, as long as we assign no value to human suffering. But in my opinion, it's the same sort of thinking that got us embroiled in Vietnam and Iraq. These people think they have it all figured out. And it goes without saying that they never seem to learn any lessons or bear any personal cost for their warmongering.
Neocons delenda sunt
The only way Trump is ending this war is if he forces Ukraine into a settlement that is essentially a capitulation to Russian demands, and I don't see that happening. There's no incentive for Ukraine to give up territory without some kind of Western security guarantee (lest Putin decides to pick up where he left off at a later date), and there's no way Russia willingly accedes to Ukraine being part of any Western alliance. Furthermore, Trump didn't show anything in his first term to suggest that he's the master dealmaker he makes himself out to be. He shook hands with Kim Jong Un on television but this did nothing other than alienate South Korea. The North kept on ramping up their nuclear program like nothing happened. The Abraham Accords were a nice story but those were a UAE proposal, and it's hard to see what they accomplished in terms of Middle Eastern peace. And the Afghanistan deal was a disaster. To be clear, the US had to pull out, deal or no, but there was no real attempt at ending the civil war or even setting a schedule for withdrawal. All he got in return were some vague promises to not fire on US troops before a certain date. He couldn't even get them to agree to stay out of Kabul until the withdrawal was complete. Then there's the matter of the Iran deal which he claimed to be able to renegotiate, though all he really did was pull out of it, and I'm not aware of any attempt he made at diplomacy.
There's an anti-incentive, even. Perun had a good section recently on the risks of a ceasefire, on how the nature of a ceasefire can actually increase risk over a short-to-medium term (months to a few years) absent other items to prevent a return to conflict.
In short, the current conflict has been as stable as it is because while Russia's force generation rate outpaces Ukraine's, so has its force expenditure. As such, even as Russia raises more stuff (men material), it expends more stuff faster (casualties / ammunition) such that the relative balance stays relatively stable (Russia having slow advances on a small part of the front) as opposed to decisive relative advantage (the opening months of 2022 where the hypermajority of Russian offensive gains were achieved).
In a ceasefire, force generation infrastructure is still there to build up advantages, but expenditures stop and transition to stockpiling. This allows periods of rest / refit / reorganization / retraining which can allow a force to constitute both greater quantity and quality for overmatch than it would if the conflict just straight continued. Because of how numeric advantages can scale non-linearly (the relative advantage of having a 3-to-1 advantage is considerably more than a 2-to-1 advantage despite having the same unit of relative advantage above 2 that 2 has over 1), a current-but-lesser disadvantage can be less dangerous than a later-but-larger disadvantage.
This is especially true if the larger force generator continues generation systems (the already established Russian 2025 war economy budget) while the smaller force ceases force generation (such as foreign supporters cutting aid flow on cost-saving grounds). It's also true if the larger force generator has reasons to believe long-term disadvantages await, and thus limited time-window incentives to act sooner than later.
This is how Russia can be (paradoxically to some) both a higher short-term threat and a lesser long-term threat in its current state circa late 2024. In the long-term, the Russian loss of much of the Soviet inheritance has degraded its strategic center of gravity, the Russian economy will go through painful rebalancing, and when the current war reserves are put back into stock there will be a long and hard period of recapitalization to get back to a post-soviet military. In the short-term, however, it retains enough that it can continue to generate forces at a rate that it's neighbors do not match. The awareness that there is an only short-term advantage in turn drives a 'use it or lose it' opportunity window.
This is why I've noted in the past there's a considerable European security interest in not having the war end in the near term. From the European security interest, the Russian force generation potential needs to be matched / beaten, and that requires the time for them to scale their industrial base even as Russia does not have the opportunity to turn attention to them before complete. And the Ukrainians, in term, have a security interest in not having a Russia able to simply out-generate them and come back for march on Kyiv but with better planning.
This is why, absent security guarantees that would credibly prevent a Russian aggression, the logic of continuing to apply an economic-attritional war still applies, even if the US reigns in support. It's not that slowly losing the Donbas is good, or wouldn't happen faster with less US aid, it's that the costs of doing so are lower than the costs of trying to stop Russia attempting march on Kiev v2 with a year of buildup and reset. (Not least of which because a slow but steady series of bad news can change the US political calculus to re-enable aid, but more rapid defeat in the later scenario would preclude the time for American aid to make as much of a difference before whatever status quo extension hits.)
The question of how likely that is will matter quite a bit to people who dismiss the risk... but this in turn returns to the question of who expected the Russians to invade in 2022. And this, in turn, turns to Putin, and his credibility of convincing other actors that he totally wouldn't break his word that he poses no threat to Ukraine yet another time.
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