My take on what Trump ultimately intends to do with Ukraine is similar to what he managed to pull off in Afghanistan, which is finding a means to wash his hands of a foregone catastrophe. Once again, he’s doing his initial strongman negotiations routine by seeking maximalist objectives while blustering about how he has the upper hand.
These objectives include getting Russia to halt at the current lines of contact in exchange for a cessation of the hostilities along with a promise that Ukraine wouldn’t be able to join NATO for a decade. As a corollary, it wouldn’t have to recognize the formal loss of any territory to Russia, including Crimea.
In reality, these objectives are impossible and his hand in this particular game is quite weak in comparison to Putin’s. However, this makes sense from the standpoint that he doesn’t care about the idiotic project in Ukraine but wants to save face and focus on his campaign agendas. As long as he can find a way to blame the inevitable implosion on Ukrainian leadership for not accepting the terms, this can probably work for Trump.
Trump already has his envoy out on TV saying that the Ukrainians are “going to fight to the end” and “aren’t going to negotiate” under the premise that the United States could back them. The play seems pretty obvious; such a premise is absurd, but Trump knows theater.
In other words, he doesn’t need to scare the Russians into accepting anything. He just needs to scapegoat intransigent Ukrainian leadership for not being reasonable in the immediate aftermath of the implosion. Afterwards, the mind of the average American voter will move along. That’s what happened with the Global War on Terror.
What’s really interesting is that Trump’s terms don’t constitute a dream for Ukraine. Instead, they represent the best-case scenario for the West now that it’s clear Ukraine can’t be the anvil on which it works Russia into submission. Thus, the optimal outcome of a negotiation is to rescue the narrative while keeping western Ukraine in reserve so the same thing can be tried again later.
The Biden Administration is turning up the heat on Russia with those missile strikes that recently provoked the Oreshnik demonstration on Yuzhmash while funneling maximum aid ahead of Trump’s second inauguration. Germany’s Scholz just went to Kiev with a similar stunt.
This makes me wonder: Who’s playing who right now? Do they actually wager that Trump is willing to help them implement their impossible agenda? Or, do they think they’re tying his hands by upping the ante? Statements from Sullivan on the matter indicate that the transition with the incoming Trump Administration on Ukraine is seamless. Trump’s new shill is saying the same thing as Biden’s:
It seems likely that they’ve been compelled to place their hopes in Trump because that’s their only option. As a real estate hustler, Trump getting Putin to agree to his peace terms would be the proverbial sale of ocean front property in Arizona. Maybe this was only just a George Strait song, but you get my point.
The realities of whatever transpires next are that Russia has been winning decisively since the SMO began in 2022. Ukraine has suffered somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.5 million casualties, its birthrate has plunged to extinction levels, and much of the young people have fled. NATO’s inventories that fueled the combat in earlier stages have been depleted and production can’t meet consumption.
Much of the western portion is being de-electrified and without the unsustainable western financial subsidies for necessities such as government workers and the elderly, life would turn post-apocalyptic rather quickly. Meanwhile, Russia has thrived in spite of the sanctions and utilizes resource autarky and military-industrial cities equipped with de-mothballed production lines to achieve massive production increases for the indefinite sustainment of operations.
The tide will be held back by maneuvering the Russians into a deal they’d be insane to accept? This is why it seems so likely that Trump would just use Ukraine’s refusal of the deal as an excuse. My reasoning for why the establishment would place their hopes in him making a genuine push would be to point to what’s happening right now in the Middle East.
They’re trying the same trick they want to try again later in Ukraine right now in Syria. Despite the support of Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia for the Syrian government to prevail in the Syrian Civil War, NATO was able to occupy a portion of the country and create a red line to deter it from moving to restore complete sovereignty and pacify the entirety of Syria.
Since peace was restored elsewhere, this has been used as a staging ground for Turkish intelligence to prepare a new Sunni insurgency which is now underway. Erdogan claims to care about the Palestinians but his motive is turning Syria into a buffer zone against the Kurds. It was launched as soon as a farcical deal was concluded to cease hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah.
The screw job beautifully illustrates Putin’s point that any deal made with the West (Jews) merely purchases them time to sharpen a knife for your back. A peace agreement is made with Hezbollah so that the Jews can immediately throw their weight behind a move to geographically cut Hezbollah off from Iran and strangle it. A deal with the devil, and therefore utterly Jewish.
The situation in the Middle East is broadening in both scale and intensity ahead of Trump’s inauguration. We’ll probably be fighting at considerable scale in the Middle East, which Trump’s Jews have prioritized over Ukraine. I’ve said before that I think this is the main reason why he was allowed to win, and I continue to suspect I’ll be proven correct in the worst sort of way as the details emerge of how this unfolds.
Ukraine is done, and the prospects aren’t looking much better for ourselves. Gas prices might quickly become the most relevant part of this debacle to our lives. I’m just not that optimistic about Trump.
I’m proud to officially announce my candidacy for the office of Dogcatcher.
And another interesting perspective on events from Mr. Shackleford.
Trump’s appointment of neocon lunatics like Kellogg and Gorka indicate that under Trump the Ukrainian war will intensify and expand. Gorka is an MI6 asset, and MI6 wants a bigger war in Ukraine.