Vladimir Putin’s plan to outlast Joe Biden and an exhausted West has run into an unpleasant surprise – Donald Trump is surrounding himself with pro-Ukrainian hardliners.
Trump appears more willing than Biden ever was to throttle the Russian economy, if that is what it takes to force the Kremlin to accept peace on “America First” terms.
A new mood of relief – not yet optimism – is taking hold among Volodymyr Zelensky’s advisers in Kyiv. Europe’s diplomats are starting to wonder whether a Trump 2.0 presidency might not be such a bad outcome after all, at least when it comes to dealing with Russia.
“It is now absolutely clear that Trump is not going to throw Ukraine under a bus,” said Prof Alan Riley, a regional expert at the Atlantic Council.
Trump’s advisers have persuaded him, by the odd “socratic method” that shapes policy at Mar-a-Lago, that a shabby American retreat from Ukraine would be orders of magnitude worse than Biden’s humiliation in Afghanistan, and also that the first line of defence against China lies in the Donbas.
“I don’t think President Trump wants to get blamed for giving Ukraine to Putin. That’s not going to happen,” said Leon Panetta, the former US defence secretary and CIA director.
Prof Riley said a controlled confrontation with the Kremlin works elegantly for Trump. “He hates being thought of as Putin’s poodle. He can make a big thing of blaming Biden for incompetence and at last supply Ukraine with the weapons it needs. He would be adored and they would name squares after him in Kyiv,” he said.
The emerging Trump 2.0 doctrine is “peace through strength” along the lines of the Reagan Doctrine in the 1980s. That boiled down to a strategy of bleeding the Soviet regime until it ran out of money.
“The first order of business is to force Putin to the table,” said Robert O’Brien,Trump’s former National Security Adviser and still a close confidant. “Right now he has no incentive to do so. He thinks he’s going to win.
“The easiest way to do that without some sort of escalation that puts us in danger of a nuclear exchange is massive sanctions,” he said.
He advises Trump to go for the jugular on oil, gas, and commodities, backed with secondary sanctions on Chinese or Indian entities that breach the blockade.
This is more or less the thinking of Marco Rubio, the incoming secretary of state, who says the core issue at this late juncture is who will have the negotiating leverage.
“Is it going to be Putin or is it going to be Ukraine? I want Ukraine to have the most amount of leverage possible,” he said.
It is also the thinking of Mike Waltz, the ex-Green Beret taking over the National Security Council. He argues that a long war of attrition against a much larger power is a doomed strategy for Ukraine. You have to raise the ante.
“I think it’s absolutely in America’s interest to stop Putin cold. First and foremost, you enforce the actual energy sanctions on Russia. You flood global markets, and you drive down the price of oil. His economy and his war machine will dry up very quickly,” he said.
This would require help from Saudi Arabia, already tired of losing share to global rivals by withholding 2m barrels a day to prevent a crash in crude prices. The guessing game in strategic circles is what it will take for Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, the Saudi crown prince, to sacrifice Putin and renew the House of Saud’s historical alliance with America.
It is impossible to know when Russia’s hyper-Keynesian war economy will snap.
It is already clear that export earnings from fossil fuels are not enough to sustain a military complex that has depleted the shrinking pool of skilled workers and that is absorbing a tenth of GDP. Earnings have halved since mid 2022 to $600m (£485m) a day.
Vladimir Putin’s plan to outlast Joe Biden and an exhausted West has run into an unpleasant surprise – Donald Trump is surrounding himself with pro-Ukrainian hardliners.
Trump appears more willing than Biden ever was to throttle the Russian economy, if that is what it takes to force the Kremlin to accept peace on “America First” terms.
A new mood of relief – not yet optimism – is taking hold among Volodymyr Zelensky’s advisers in Kyiv. Europe’s diplomats are starting to wonder whether a Trump 2.0 presidency might not be such a bad outcome after all, at least when it comes to dealing with Russia.
“It is now absolutely clear that Trump is not going to throw Ukraine under a bus,” said Prof Alan Riley, a regional expert at the Atlantic Council.
Trump’s advisers have persuaded him, by the odd “socratic method” that shapes policy at Mar-a-Lago, that a shabby American retreat from Ukraine would be orders of magnitude worse than Biden’s humiliation in Afghanistan, and also that the first line of defence against China lies in the Donbas.
“I don’t think President Trump wants to get blamed for giving Ukraine to Putin. That’s not going to happen,” said Leon Panetta, the former US defence secretary and CIA director.
Prof Riley said a controlled confrontation with the Kremlin works elegantly for Trump. “He hates being thought of as Putin’s poodle. He can make a big thing of blaming Biden for incompetence and at last supply Ukraine with the weapons it needs. He would be adored and they would name squares after him in Kyiv,” he said.
The emerging Trump 2.0 doctrine is “peace through strength” along the lines of the Reagan Doctrine in the 1980s. That boiled down to a strategy of bleeding the Soviet regime until it ran out of money.
“The first order of business is to force Putin to the table,” said Robert O’Brien,Trump’s former National Security Adviser and still a close confidant. “Right now he has no incentive to do so. He thinks he’s going to win.
“The easiest way to do that without some sort of escalation that puts us in danger of a nuclear exchange is massive sanctions,” he said.
He advises Trump to go for the jugular on oil, gas, and commodities, backed with secondary sanctions on Chinese or Indian entities that breach the blockade.
This is more or less the thinking of Marco Rubio, the incoming secretary of state, who says the core issue at this late juncture is who will have the negotiating leverage.
“Is it going to be Putin or is it going to be Ukraine? I want Ukraine to have the most amount of leverage possible,” he said.
It is also the thinking of Mike Waltz, the ex-Green Beret taking over the National Security Council. He argues that a long war of attrition against a much larger power is a doomed strategy for Ukraine. You have to raise the ante.
“I think it’s absolutely in America’s interest to stop Putin cold. First and foremost, you enforce the actual energy sanctions on Russia. You flood global markets, and you drive down the price of oil. His economy and his war machine will dry up very quickly,” he said.
This would require help from Saudi Arabia, already tired of losing share to global rivals by withholding 2m barrels a day to prevent a crash in crude prices. The guessing game in strategic circles is what it will take for Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, the Saudi crown prince, to sacrifice Putin and renew the House of Saud’s historical alliance with America.
It is impossible to know when Russia’s hyper-Keynesian war economy will snap.
It is already clear that export earnings from fossil fuels are not enough to sustain a military complex that has depleted the shrinking pool of skilled workers and that is absorbing a tenth of GDP. Earnings have halved since mid 2022 to $600m (£485m) a day.