Ukraine war: President Trump confronts a decision

Jan 13, 2025
GLENDALE, ARIZONA, USA - 23 August 2024 - Former President of the United States Donald Trump speaking with attendees at an Arizona for Trump rally . Credit Contributor: Geopix / Alamy Stock Photo

In less than two weeks, when Donald Trump takes office, he will confront sharply conflicting advice on Ukraine from pro-war and anti-war camps in his incoming administration. We cannot predict the outcome, but here is relevant analysis of the choices facing him.

I will offer first a précis of the known and increasingly agreed military and political facts on the ground. Then I will try to summarise the main arguments of the two camps. Then I will predict what Tulsi Gabbard’s advice to Trump might be.

Known facts on the ground

Truly, the Ukraine war matters globally. The world has not seen a military conflict of this magnitude and scale of destruction between military peers since WW2. Its outcome will influence the global balance of power for decades to come. Up to a million and a half men, mostly of Slav ethnicity and culture, have died or been permanently disabled in combat on Ukrainian soil these past three years. The industrial infrastructure is in ruins and much of its resource wealth has already been sold off or mortgaged to Western global corporations like Blackrock. Ukraine is already a depopulated, demoralised and impoverished country that will take generations to recover, if ever.

It is pretty much consensus wisdom now, with only a few dissenting ideological diehards, that the West provoked this war over the years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union . The American Empire’s goal to weaken and dismember its geopolitical rival Russia never went away. It nearly succeeded during the second Time of Troubles 1985-2000. Since Putin lifted Russia back up off its knees following his rise to power in 2000, Western elites have followed aggressive policies and covert actions, both on the broad NATO-Russia diplomatic front and in re-arming and indoctrinating Ukrainian nationalists to prepare to go to war against Russia. These policies and actions pushed a reluctant Putin to a point where he finally had no alternative, but to launch an armed intervention in February 2022, as a cause existential to Russia’s survival as a strong independent nation. He tried to limit and end the war . The US and NATO have pressed at every decision point to expand and escalate the war.

NATO and nationalist Ukraine leaders initially expected a military win on the frontline, and a fatally politically weakened Putin or post-Putin regime in Russia. Both hopes were decisively dashed in late 2023. Since then, the war has all been going Russia’s way and this is irreversible now. Ukraine cannot win or fight its way to an armistice in its favour. It has no cards left.

After three years of war, Russia is now stronger than ever, her troops are numerous, well-trained and equipped, her war mobilisation is proceeding calmly, morale at the front and at home is high, her economy is booming and enjoying robust growing trade ties with the world outside the Western camp.

Europe is badly weakened by war-related economic losses. Western sanctions have boomeranged back on Europe, especially on Germany. There is increasing anti-war dissent in Germany and other countries in Europe.

Russian diplomatic prestige with its partner China and in the global south is higher than ever. Russian-supported international organisations like BRICS are gaining in prestige and adherents as Western-based organisations stagnate.

The above is all pretty much an accepted consensus now. You could find much of it in opinion essays in Western mainstream media like The Economist, The New York Times or the Washington Post. Only uninformed doctrinaire anti-Russian ideologues might still try to argue otherwise.

The pro-war camp advice to incoming President Trump

Keep the war going, don’t rock the boat. Focus your international activism on American interests in the Far East and Middle East. The $500 million just given to the Ukraine war by the outgoing Biden administration to help Kiev militarily ($250 million) and to help Ukraine’s civil administrative budgets ($330 million) will keep the war and the Kiev combatant state going for some time, you don’t have to immediately spend more money. This money, some of which will be sloshing around in Ukraine, will contain and postpone any threat of regime change there, the people are stoic and the Zelensky regime will somehow hang on to power by buying off or eliminating internal critics.

Russia won’t push the war to a military conclusion by making major territorial advances for fear of provoking a wider conflict with NATO – the West has got Putin safely spooked. Russia will go on slowly advancing, destroying NATO equipment and killing more Ukrainian soldiers, but those losses can be borne by the West. Western corporations like Blackrock will go on mortgaging and taking control of Ukraine’s precious resources, helping to pay for the war. Few Americans are dying in this war and those deaths can be concealed. Meanwhile the destruction of Ukraine ultimately weakens Russia, because Ukraine used to be the richest and most productive region of Russia. Our military industries are thriving and Wall Street dividends are up. Just keep the war bubbling along and let Ukrainians and Russians go on killing each other – no skin off American noses, and American war profits will continue.

The anti-war camp advice to Trump

The peace camp advising Trump, coming from realist and ethical (if such still exist) areas of the military and intelligence communities and a few top class independent political thinkers like Jeffrey Sachs and John Mearsheimer, will offer counter-arguments like these.

The Ukraine war continues to expose to the world humiliating weaknesses in American munitions and warfighting technologies, thereby weakening our brand. No weapons systems we have given the Ukrainians ( and some is the best we have), or that we have covertly operated ourselves from Ukrainian soil, has done well in frontline combat against the Russians. Even our ATACMS long-range missiles and long-range armoured drones don’t get through Russian defences except in very small numbers and with no impact on Russian military strength. Russia’s new counter-missile, the Oreshnik, cannot be stopped by existing Western technologies and the risk of escalation to nuclear war, if Russia decides it must use the Oreshnik at scale against NATO targets, is huge.

Our agencies’ occasional resort to facilitating and supporting Ukrainian assassinations and terrorism against civilian targets within Russia is damaging our international reputation and leverage, to no military gain.

There is nothing more to gain by the US continuing to support this war, it is a running sore on our reputation and military status in the world. Europe is hurting economically from sanctions, and many European countries face the early possibility of anti-American regime change and resumed economic links to Russia as a low-cost energy supplier, in particular Germany.

You, Mr President, have a brief window of opportunity to change course on the Ukraine war before you become locked in in support of the status quo you are now about to inherit from Biden. Putin will listen to you politely, but you must not go to him with unrealistic expectations of clawing back lost territory. Putin will insist on keeping Crimea and all of the four former Ukrainian oblasts, and for this fact to be enshrined in international law and practice. He will insist on guarantees that a post-war neutral Ukraine will never join NATO or come under Western security guarantees; and on human rights for all sections of the Ukraine population. If you try to keep the war going at whatever level of intensity, there is real risk that Russia will take more of Ukraine’s most productive central oblasts and cities: Odessa, Nikolaev, Dnepropetrovsk, and Kharkov. Putin could insist on a referendum in Odessa as in Crimea to firmly record popular support there for this strategically key city returning to Russia. The longer you let the Ukraine war go on, the worse the outcomes for US and NATO.

Tulsi Gabbard’s advice

The admirable and calmly reflective Tulsi Gabbard, confronting these sharply conflicting strands of advice, will not duck offering her views as director of national intelligence. She knows this is her job. I predict Tulsi Gabbard will support the end-the-war camp. And I hope the incoming President will accept her advice.

I will finish with a quite hopeful quote from The Guardian on 8 January 2025:

Donald Trump has said he sympathises with the Russian position that Ukraine should not be part of NATO, and lamented that he will not be able to meet Russian president Vladimir Putin before his inauguration. Though NATO members and the Biden administration have expressed support for its eventual membership, Ukraine has never been extended an invitation. Kyiv says joining NATO will deter further Russian aggression. Conversely, Trump and his allies claim Ukraine’s membership will unnecessarily provoke Moscow and drag the alliance into a war. “A big part of the problem is, Russia — for many, many years, long before Putin — said, ‘You could never have Nato involved with Ukraine.’ Now, they’ve said that. That’s been, like, written in stone,” Trump said. “And somewhere along the line Biden said, ‘No. They should be able to join Nato.’ Well, then Russia has somebody right on their doorstep, and I could understand their feelings about that.”

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