I was reading this Foreign Affairs on the US abandoning Europe and this paragraph struck me.
The most important priority of European governments is to secure their continent. The European security order hinges on holding Russian President Vladimir Putin’s imperialist ambitions at bay. On the day that Trump won reelection, Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council, announced that “the objectives of the special military operation [in Ukraine] remain unchanged and will be achieved”—a rejoinder to Trump’s campaign pledge to end the war immediately. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has signaled that he might be willing to agree to a cease-fire that includes some loss of territory in exchange for credible security guarantees such as Ukraine’s admission to NATO and support for its defense. But Keith Kellogg, the incoming U.S. special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, has said that the United States should bring Ukraine to the negotiating table by withholding weapons and suggested that a cease-fire built on Ukraine’s acceptance of a de facto long-term Russian occupation of eastern Ukraine could be on the table. And although Zelensky wants NATO membership and ongoing U.S. military aid to ensure that the rest of the country remains independent and sovereign, neither the United States nor Russia currently seems ready to agree to such terms.
It’s a 180 which I’ve been fearing with Trump, but still seems hard to believe.
The threat of withholding weapons is insufficient at this point. A ton of stuff was sent last minute by the Biden administration, and Ukraine has enough to last at least a year let alone ‘one day’. Couple this with all the signs Russia is seriously hurting militarily and economically to the point it is reasonable to expect some sort of internal catastrophe sometime this year and it becomes clear that for the US to force peace they would have to do something more overtly anti-Ukraine like cancel (or more likely stop-enforcing) Russian sanctions or denying NATO membership.
Then again, I didn’t think Trump had a chance of getting back the presidency so WTF do I know.
Trump will go to talk with Putin, and come back saying something like “I went up to him and laid down the law, told him you can’t do that, and the USA will destroy you if you do that, and he surrendered, and from now on Russia is going to be a force for peace and stability”, and then announce that the US is lifting all sanctions and providing military aid to Russian “peacekeepers”, while imposing sanctions on the “rebel Zelenskyy regime”. And the press will timidly go along with it, turning on a dime to describing Ukrainian forces as they were ISIS or someone, and running a scoreboard of allied success against the enemy. After a convicted rapist and insurrectionist was elected and universally anointed as legitimate, I’m not convinced that there is enough object persistence in the US corporate media for this not to happen, or that anyone who notices that there’s something hinky won’t just shut up and file it away with all their other low-level doomscrolling anxiety.
The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.
The main effect of sanctions is to stop Russia from selling oil to the EU. That isn’t going to change simply because Trump says so.
Also, while in practice SWIFT is controlled by joint western interests, Belgium has control of it, not the US.
If the US is not of one mind about lifting that part, if it can get bogged down in Congress, it’s going nowhere, as the Belgians will def not go along with Trump.
Though if they can just place an order with Texas Instruments for a few containerloads of milspec semiconductors, and be treated with the respect due to big customers, rather than play games with shell companies in Kazakhstan and black-market imports, it will make their war production a lot more efficient.
The EU could respond by fining or banning imports from companies that support the Russian war effort.
If TI were forced to choose between the EU market and Russia, they would choose the EU.
That’s assuming that the EU acts as a bloc. They already have Orban and Fico as spoilers, and if AfD and/or Le Pen come to power, the Putinists may have a quorum to hole any solidarity on Ukraine below the waterline. At the end of the day, it may be just Poland, Finland and the Baltic states whistling past the graveyard while Rheinmetall makes howitzer barrels for Russia and delivers them to its Western front via Hungary.
Sure, my point is that it won’t all come down to Trump.
If Western countries abandon Ukraine en masse, that’s a very different situation. But I don’t think they will.
The likelihood of countries abandoning Ukraine increases with each country that does so, and the US throwing its considerable weight behind Russia would make the unthinkable thinkable, at least in countries far enough from the front that they could tell themselves that the idea of trading everything east of the Oder for cheap gas is not in any way likely to backfire on them, or that handing Putin the lives of tens of millions is not cowardice but high-minded, principled pacifism.
Nations east of Germany will never abandon Ukraine, save Hungary and Slovakia which are already doing so. But western and southern Europe are already doing that because we’re privileged cunts who will probably not even be bombed in the event of a war with Muscovy. Even as Muscovy is sabotaging our shit, something we would have never allowed 10 years ago. We honestly shoukd probably get bombed ffs we kinda deserve it.
If this ends with russia sending the US cheap oil and american partisans blowing up refineries, I am going to need a new bingo card.
One of the first things the didn’t did when taking office last time was cancelling Russian sanctions. He would have cancelled more except Congress actually stepped up for once and forced some through by legislation.