Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Notes -
Interesting about Macron -- Zelensky, I think he just doesn't get the joke TBH. Too much getting high on... if not his own supply, that of the social media egregore which turns out not to have much actual power.
That said I didn't really seem much in the deal for him, so he hasn't really lost anything. Does Trump even have the power to unilaterally cut off aid? I thought that was mostly a Congress thing.
That depends a lot on what Congress actually authorized. If they said "X dollars must be spent on Y" then there may be claims that if the president refuses to spend on Y, he's going too far. Even then it's not entirely clear how to make him do that, given that he owns the executive branch and is effectively immune to any court decisions while in executive capacity, but there might be ways, maybe. However, in fact the Congress rarely says anything but "up to X dollars are allocated to spend on Y", and then it's up to the executive to decide how much is spent and what exactly is bought. The reverse is easier - if the Congress doesn't give money, the President can't spend it, so it's relatively easy for the Congress to defund. But if the Congress authorized the President to spend money, they usually can't really do much to actually spend it if the President doesn't want to. And, as correctly noted in other comments, most of Ukraine aid is not even money per se - it's military equipment that already exists somewhere in storage and then being sent to Ukraine, and the Congress just controls how much of this can be done. If the President wants none of that, Congress can'd do much here I think. And especially when we're talking about foreign country, I'm not sure Congress would even want to get in fight with Trump over this.
I'm thinking of stuff like this:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/5692
Granted it doesn't say "send Ukraine X tanks and Y artillery shells", but doesn't Trump get into impoundment issues if he just sits on the allocation?
Exactly, it says "Mr. President, you have $300M to help Ukraine". So, the President can't just take these $300M and use it for other things. But it never says "you must spend it all of it to the last cent" and it never says what it has to be spent on. So the President can just ignore it and pretty much nothing can make them spend it on sending weapons to Ukraine if he doesn't want to, based on that bill.
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This is your Presidential catch all. He's not sitting out the allocation by not sending things to Ukraine- he's simply replacing weapons or defense articles already provided.
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Overly long review of the deal is a bit lower in this thursday thread. Bottom line- it gives the US a major interest hook to stay invested in Ukraine's defense (major influence over the resource economy), sets up a potential payment mechanism that could be used for military aid (justified in the name of defending sites), and gives the US a reserved right to take any action it deems necessary, which is close to the language actually in NATO Article 5. It's basically a reserved right to retroactively claim a security guarantee, without a security guarantee.
As for cut-off, basically yes. General language is that Congress authorizes the President to transfer military equipment, not that everything has to.
That said, I don't think it's likely he will in earnest (read- in totality / for very long). From what I've seen / looked into, this seems more Vance-initiated, and while Trump will back Vance in the moment, I also wouldn't be surprised if Vance takes a more background role in Ukraine stuff going forward- Vance actually is the one without power on ending the war, whereas Zelensky is the one Trump needs to make a deal happen.
We'll see going forward, but I imagine it will be a loud next few weeks, as this will lead into the European summit next week, and they can be expected to circle the wagons around him, and then we'll deal with that summit's fallout.
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