Don Will Again Trump Joe

Columnist based in Washington, DCAmerica’s belligerent, interventionist foreign policy establishment could not prevent Donald Trump’s return to the presidency. But the nation’s foreign policy elites are trying to pre-empt his second term’s first diplomatic victory. Exhibit A is President Biden’s ill-considered, arguably reckless, decision to authorise Ukraine’s use of American long-range missiles to strike far inside Russia. That too on the eve of the 1,000th day of the full-scale war. Two days later, Ukraine reportedly carried out its first long-range strike into Russia.Elite’s cussedness | Trump promises to quickly end the Ukraine-Russia war upon his return to the White House. As America chiefly funds not only the Ukrainian war effort, but the entire Ukrainian govt, a threat to turn off Kyiv’s financial tap would produce a peace deal in double time. As I wrote 20 months ago, “Zelenskyy and his Western patrons waged an unwinnable war…In a more rational environment, such an unwinnable war would see diplomats racing to the negotiating table to strike an honourable peace deal with Moscow.”Yet, this rational outcome remains unacceptable to the policy establishment. They do not want Trump, a non-interventionist, to receive the diplomatic plaudits a peace deal would yield. More importantly, they do not want a peace deal to sully further their reputation, after American intervention failed to achieve either its micro goal of pushing Russia out of Ukraine or its macro goal of toppling Putin. The Russian leader firmly remains entrenched.Most importantly, foreign policy elites want to see the Ukraine war continue apace for myriad agenda-based reasons, despite the horrific carnage, including the loss of a generation of young Ukrainian men, and the valuable territories conceded to the Russian military. Scores of Ukrainian children have seen the war steal their childhood, giving rise to concerns about a lost generation. Cold War hangover | Yet, secretary of state Antony Blinken remarks, “Every dollar we have at our disposal will be pushed out the door (to Ukraine) between now and Jan 20 (Trump’s inauguration date).” Furthermore, Trump’s ability to halt Ukraine funding was pre-emptively constrained by legislative moves to put assistance on a non-auditable, unrecallable trajectory.Why such intransigence? America’s foreign policy establishment is dominated by George W Bush-era neoconservatives and neoliberal Biden and Obama advisers who remain stuck in the discordant groove of a Cold War-era narrative that obsesses over ousting and subsequently replacing Putin, with insufficient concern over his likely, even-less appetising successors. American elites simply may surmise attacking Russia directly will be the silver bullet that sends the Russian army into rapid retreat. Washington’s plans failed | But economic coercion and military assistance to Ukraine have failed to halt Russia’s aggressive behaviour. American-made missiles potentially raining down upon Russia therefore signal a high-risk, high-reward, final throw of the “coerce Putin into capitulation” dice before Trump takes office and formally takes matters of war and peace into his own hands. Note also that Putin has now updated Russia’s nuclear deterrence policy to include strikes by a non-nuclear state supported by a nuclear state as befitting a nuclear response. This makes the situation even more precarious for Ukraine. No support for war | Even if Russia backing down was a possibility, it is not the reason Biden is calling Putin’s bluff, thereby risking outright war with Russia and a rapid escalation into worldwide conflict. America’s foreign policy powers-that-be needed to act now, out of a position of deepening political weakness, to tie Trump’s hands. The missile decision is an implicit admission that domestic support for Ukraine no longer holds the political high ground. The Ukraine war’s high water mark politically was more than two years ago.Dark political clouds became visible in the 2022 midterms when JD Vance won election to the Senate because of his early opposition to the Ukraine war. The incoming VP’s pro-peace position reflects Trump’s foreign policy team’s articulation of Americans’ evolving sentiment about Ukraine.American support for the Ukraine war, initially popular, has been a minority position for a year. An Oct 2023 Democracy Institute poll found most voters (50% to 44%) opposed to continued American support for Kyiv. A March 2024 Democracy Institute poll found, by 51% to 39%, Americans opposed Congress giving Ukraine an additional $61bn. Trump will work for peace | What happens now that Kyiv has carried out its first long-range strike? Resulting material damage and casualties will force Putin’s hand. To remain in power, he will need to respond in kind, undoubtedly asymmetrically.Common sense will prevail should President Zelenskyy, in a moment of uncharacteristic strategic acumen, appreciate attacking Russia guarantees, at a minimum, Kyiv’s annihilation and possibly his entire nation’s demise. Pragmatic policymaking will triumph should Trump broker, with the utmost urgency, an actual peace deal between Putin and Zelenskyy; one that likely preserves Ukraine’s current territory, while ceding to Russia her territorial gains since early 2022.The Biden administration’s enormous political and legal missteps this year, each designed to castrate Trump’s candidacy, only made him electorally stronger. Now, Biden’s dangerous, last-minute ratcheting up of US-Russia tensions may serve as an accidental catalyst for the advent of ‘President Trump the peacemaker’. Quite an unexpected exclamation mark to end Trump’s Lazarus-like year.The writer is the Director of Democracy Institute