Five Takeaways From Trump’s Fateful Decision To Freeze All Military Aid To Ukraine
Five Takeaways From Trump’s Fateful Decision To Freeze All Military Aid To Ukraine
Transatlantic ties, Russian-US relations, and the nature of American hegemony are all transforming before everyone’s eyes as Trump makes bold moves to force Zelensky to the peace table with Putin.
An unnamed senior Defence Department told the media on Monday evening that Trump decided to freeze all military aid to Ukraine until its leaders demonstrate a good-faith commitment to peace. This comes just several days after Zelensky picked his fight with Trump and Vance at the White House. The Wall Street Journal earlier predicted that Ukraine could only continue fighting at its current level till this summer in such a scenario. Here are five takeaways from this monumental development:
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1. Trump Is Serious About Brokering Peace
Zelensky made it clear during his disastrous visit to the White House last Friday that he’s dead-set on fighting till the last Ukrainian unless his country either gets NATO membership or Western troops. Neither of those demands is acceptable to Trump since they’d risk World War III, but so too could that risk continue rising if the conflict doesn’t soon end. Trump therefore realized that the only way to force Zelensky to the peace table with Putin is to freeze all military aid until he moderates his extreme stance.
2. He & Putin Likely Have A Secret Agreement
Trump said last week that “A ceasefire could take place immediately”, which was arguably an inadvertent admission of a secret agreement with Putin. No lasting peace can be reached until after the next Ukrainian presidential elections, but they can’t be held during martial law, ergo the need for a ceasefire. Although Putin earlier conditioned this on Ukraine withdrawing from the disputed regions, he might support a ceasefire to justify the US’ curtailed aid to Ukraine and legitimize Russian-US economic deals.
3. But It’s Not Yet A Comprehensive One
If the aforesaid speculation is accurate, then it doesn’t mean that those two have a comprehensive agreement. Serious issues such as the final Russian-Ukrainian border and the question of peacekeepers have yet to be agreed to and might not be resolved till after the next Ukrainian presidential and parliamentary elections. It’s therefore premature to predict that the Line of Contact will become the final border and that Western peacekeepers will be deployed there, especially since Russia opposes both.
4. Poland Might Have A Pivotal Role To Play
About 90% of Western military aid to Ukraine transits through Poland so Trump might ask it to stop the Europeans from using its territory to arm Ukraine during a ceasefire in exchange for post-conflict perks. He doesn’t want the Brits, French, or Germans emboldening Ukraine to violate the ceasefire or provoke Russia into doing so and can incentivize Poland to prevent this by promising to keep American troops there, possibly redeploy some from Germany to Poland, and turn Poland into its top partner in Europe.
5. The “New Détente” Is Trump’s Top Priority
Every major move that’s taken place since Trump’s call with Putin in mid-February has been predicated on advancing his grand strategic goal of a Russian–US “New Détente”, the gist of which is to revolutionize International Relations through a game-changing comprehensive partnership between them. Readers can learn more about its details from the three preceding hyperlinked analyses, but it’s the pursuit of this goal that ultimately drove Trump to make the fateful decision to freeze all military aid to Ukraine.
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Transatlantic ties, Russian-US relations, and the nature of American hegemony are all transforming before everyone’s eyes as Trump makes bold moves to force Zelensky to the peace table with Putin. His latest one was literally one of the worst-case scenarios from Ukraine’s and Europe’s perspective but there’s little that they can do in response other than capitulate to his demands. The US holds all the cards like Trump reminded Zelensky last Friday and those who think otherwise risk paying the price.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Voice of East.
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WSJ predicts when Kiev’s military could stall without US aid
Without US military aid, Ukrainian forces could run out of steam by this summer, The Wall Street Journal has saidRT
Zelensky Picked His Fight With Trump And Vance After Getting Cold Feet About Making Peace
Zelensky Picked His Fight With Trump And Vance After Getting Cold Feet About Making PeaceZelensky was triggered after realizing that the Trump Administration wants to coerce him into peace with Putin and won’t be manipulated into prolonging, let alone escalating, the conflict after signing their rare earth minerals deal like he somehow expected that they would.
Friday’s spectacle in the Oval Office will forever be remembered as one of the most epic failures that any foreign leaders has made after Zelensky delusionally thought that that he could disrespect Vice President Vance on live TV in front of Trump without any consequences while being a guest in their country. Readers can watch the full recording here, which shows Zelensky aggressively reacting to Vance’s benign comment about prioritizing diplomacy with Putin over the prior administration’s failed tough talk.
Everything then spiralled out of control after Zelensky accused Vance of speaking loudly to him, which prompted Trump to contradict Zelensky and tell him to keep quiet since he’s already talked too much, all while brutally berating him in a scene that had never been witnessed before in America’s highest office. Trump and Vance also accused Zelensky of being ungrateful for American aid after he lied about Ukraine being left alone since the start of the conflict and reminded him of how disrespectfully he was behaving.
Trump wrapped everything up by warning that the US might completely end its support for Ukraine if Zelensky doesn’t agree to make peace with Putin before unprecedentedly kicking Zelensky out of the White House. To add insult to injury, White House staffers then ate the lunch that was already prepared for Zelensky and his team with the expectation that they’d sign the rare earth minerals deal that was the reason behind his visit. Trump also posted on social media about how Zelensky disrespected the US.
For as clear-cut as the sequence of events was for any objective observer who watched the roughly 10-minute footage that was hyperlinked to in the introductory paragraph, namely that Zelensky provoked his two hosts by disrespecting Vance, the Financial Times’ Ben Hall had a totally different view. According to him, “it is not hard to imagine that Vance and Trump were spoiling for a fight with the Ukrainian leader…Arguably, the stage was set for an ambush” when Zelensky arrived in the Oval Office.
While it’s true that Zelensky and Trump were just embroiled in a vicious spat prior to the Ukrainian leader’s arrival to the US, his American counterpart invited him to visit because he wanted to patch up their problems by signing the rare earth minerals deal and then discuss a path to peace with Putin. Trump treated Zelensky benevolently prior to Zelensky trying to disrespect Vance, as did Vance, who didn’t say anything personal or insulting before Zelensky suddenly decided to harangue him.
It seems like Zelensky was triggered after realizing that the Trump Administration wants to coerce him into peace with Putin and won’t be manipulated into prolonging, let alone escalating, the conflict after signing their rare earth minerals deal like he somehow expected that they would. For that reason, he then decided to sabotage the talks by creating a spectacle, possibly hoping that it would justify abruptly refusing to sign the aforesaid deal if they were going to use it right afterwards to pressure him to peace.
Zelensky isn’t being advised by anyone with even basic insight into how Trump operates otherwise he’d have known that public pressure on his counterpart always backfires. Zelensky would also never have thought that the US needs Ukraine for anything more than Ukraine needs the US. Trump is already considering a more important rare earth minerals deal with Putin so he doesn’t even need Ukraine’s resources whereas Ukraine has no alternative to American arms and is thus fully dependent on it.
This observation brings the analysis to the penultimate point about how Trump ominously left unanswered a question about whether he’ll suspend military aid to Ukraine like he threatened at the end of his and Vance’s heated exchange with Zelensky. If that’s what he ends up doing, and it’s too early to say for sure, then it would represent the worst-case scenario for the Europeans since Russia could then carry on as far westward as it wants if the front lines collapse without fear of the US intervening.
Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth already confirmed a few weeks ago that the US won’t extend Article 5 guarantees to any NATO country’s troops in Ukraine so the UK, France, and whoever else might have considered dispatching them there in that event will now be forced to think twice about it. In other words, Russia could hypothetically carry on as far as Ukraine’s border with NATO if it wants to, though Putin might stop far short of that if a breakthrough coerces Kiev into complying with his demands.
The final point to make is that what happened in Oval Office on Friday was truly a black swan in the sense that nobody could have expected that Zelensky would ruin his relations with Trump right at the moment when they were supposed to sign their rare earth minerals deal that would then pave the way to peace. Trump even exclaimed during the height of their drama how the US was giving Ukraine cards to play for helping it end the conflict on much better terms than if he didn’t diplomatically involve himself in it.
He was therefore very serious about brokering peace between Zelensky and Putin, hence why he was so exasperated at Zelensky’s blatant disrespect once everything started snowballing after Zelensky began to disrespect Vance, which explains why he unprecedentedly kicked him out of the White House. The “New Détente” that Trump wants to broker with Putin, which readers can learn more about from the five analyses hyperlinked in the middle of this one here, is largely predicated on forcing Zelensky into peace.
Zelensky’s last-minute decision to sabotage the peace process by creating a global spectacle caught Trump off guard, but he wasn’t going to let Zelensky disrespect Vance with impunity, let alone after Zelensky’s disrespect transformed into disrespect for the US. That’s not to say that the “New Détente” is now derailed since Trump and Putin still have the will to enter into a series of mutual compromises aimed at establishing strategic ties, but just that it might now proceed independently of Ukraine.
Accordingly, it was actually Zelensky who ruined everything, not Trump and Vance. They could never have expected that he’d burn Ukraine’s bridges with the US knowing that it’s impossible for Ukraine to replace US military aid. Those two thought that he came to DC to sign the rare earth minerals deal that would then place them all on the path to peace with Putin. Perhaps Zelensky didn’t realize what he was getting into until it was too late, by which time he let his emotions get the best of him, but who knows.
In any case, it’s very difficult to imagine there being any rapprochement between Zelensky and Trump or Ukraine and the US in general without Zelensky leaving office or fully capitulating to Trump’s demands. If he defiantly perpetuates the conflict and the US cuts him off, then Russia will pretty much be given free rein by Washington to do whatever it wants with Ukraine, though it’s unknown how the EU would react. Everything will become clearer by next week though once it’s known exactly what Zelensky plans to do.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Voice of East.
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#DonaldTrump #Geopolitics #Russia #Ukraine #USA
Trump leaves question on possible suspension of military aid to Ukraine unanswered
"It doesn't matter what I'm considering," he told reportersTASS
