Endgame Arrives For Team Trump's Vain Ukraine Peace Push
Imagining peace without victory in Ukraine is like trying to picture lions being voluntarily eaten by lambs. Putin's latest ceasefire ploy is a reminder of his astonishing weakness
A three-day ceasefire for Moscow’s annual victory day parade? What a joke, Vladimir!
Every winter since 2021, when the ruscist assault on Ukraine became inevitable thanks to Team Biden’s cowardice, the same basic script has played out on the diplomatic front. Once the weather turns and holidays beckon, talk of ceasefires and peace negotiations is all the rage. Several months of pure theater commences as diplomats again discover that nothing has fundamentally changed in either side’s stance.
The present regime in Moscow doesn’t accept the existence of a free and independent Ukraine and never will. Worse, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania are all in exactly the same boat, so far as Putin is concerned. In point of fact, so is much of the North American Pacific coast, including all of Alaska and chunks of British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and northern California. We are all Ukraine to Moscow, just lower on the priority list for domination or outright conquest thanks to the hard limits on Moscow’s power at present - thanks to Ukrainian blood.
The logic animating the imperial virus is always the same in every incarnation: expand until a countervailing force is encountered. It rests on a vicious dare: give in whenever I make demands, or suffer the price. Sooner or later, a stand has to be made to establish firm boundaries, prove where the lines in fact are. Giving up even a nanometer only tells the imperialist that there’s more to be had where that came from. This is why the fundamental principle of territorial integrity must stand, and why Team Trump’s pathetic play to have Ukraine give up Crimea in exchange for nothing materially tangible is so laughable and self-defeating.
This era of world history is bound to go down as one where people in the future wonder how leaders today could be so ruthlessly inept, even with 1938 as an eternal warning against appeasement. While overpaid types in expensive suits sit around fancy tables and work out how to keep their political masters and their donor overlords pleased while pretending that talk will solve the problem, soldiers on both sides continue to die. I may be a whole lot angrier about the losses on the Ukrainian side, and I may accept the horrible necessity of killing as many of Putin’s orcs as possible as the least bad option now, but Moscow’s war on Ukraine is still a pointless waste of human potential any way you slice it.
All things being equal, an immediate and total ceasefire in Ukraine is the best possible thing that could happen. If only this were a normal conflict, where there’s plenty of right and wrong on both sides. Moscow’s attempt to destroy Ukraine is a different beast, with negotiations themselves serving as one more tool in Putin’s arsenal. Even though it is now impossible for him to win, Putin will keep throwing away lives and treasure to sustain the illusion of invincibility that is the only thing keeping him alive at this point.
Putin’s refusal to accept an immediate ceasefire without preconditions is highly suggestive. It is grimly amusing to see him tacitly accept my case that it would take a week for fighting to dwindle to isolated incidents even if he declared a ceasefire tomorrow - hence the announcement about a ceasefire in early May. His actual control over his forces in the field is less than he pretends. Hence the timing of the ceasefire he says he’s calling to fall when he’s presiding over a parade he probably dreams that Trump might attend.
Still, all Putin has to do for months is order his troops to cease advancing, pull back to defensible lines, and hold fire unless the Ukrainians move forward in strength. This posture could persist for an indefinite period to allow real talks to proceed, and the character of the conflict would immediately change. But Putin is only willing to let the fighting die down on his schedule, an obvious bid to gain control over the whole process. Same old tricks.
Putin is actively stringing Team Trump along, exactly as anyone who understands the creature of the ruscist state has warned would happen. Aware that Trump wants a big foreign policy win by day 100 of his final term in office, but not wanting to give Ukraine any chance to rest, Putin has responded to Team Trump’s attempt to force a deal before the first of May by trying to appear as if he wants to negotiate while simultaneously dragging everything out to fit his desired schedule.
Adding new preconditions no matter what offer is made, demanding that everything Moscow has stolen from Ukraine to this point be accepted when Ukrainian forces are building up for a major counteroffensive to take much of it back- all classic Putin. In claiming that he’ll order a ceasefire around the ruscist state’s annual effort to colonize the memory of the sacrifices of the soldiers who defeated Hitler, he’s trying to seize the initiative on the diplomatic front to compensate for glaring military weakness.
Yet even Trump appears - appears, mind - to have woken up and scented the shifting winds. Pope Francis gave one final and rather beautiful parting gift to humanity, his funeral offering an opportunity for Zelensky to be placed on a level equal to Trump on the global stage at highly symbolic moment and place for Christians. As what you might call a pagan scientist, I don’t have any attachment to popes or the Vatican so long as they leave me be, but I do appreciate many aspects of the way pope Francis led his church.
And the wonderful thing about getting Trump away from his entourage, surrounding him with pomp and ceremony, is that savvy personalities like Macron can manage the situation such that Trump’s own vanity makes him behave. Trump always reflects the energy around him, like any good New Yorker keenly aware of his social standing and determined to put on a particular face to fit in. He also visibly loves being able to defy artificially set media expectations about how he’ll behave, being relatively sedate when they’re frothing for a spectacle.
Right when he might be expected to initiate another public spat, instead Trump and Zelensky did just fine, with Trump coming away focusing his criticisms on Putin again. By yelling and raging on social media Trump can make his base feel powerful and force negotiations on whatever topic happened to attract his interest. Once the MAGA types are frothing at the mouth about whatever upset their delicate egos this week, they won’t even notice when Trump sells them down the river for the thousandth time - or they’ll make excuses about there being some grand strategic plan only the true believers are privy too. Pretty sure Scientology works the same.
Simple as the system is, the anti-MAGA set mostly plays right into their enemy’s game time and again. To the point that a fella has to start wondering if they're self-aware parts of the con playing their designated role, or just that bad at strategy. Looking at you, literally everyone who has ever been published in The Atlantic.
Trump’s latest turn comes after another week Team Trump relentlessly attacking Zelensky and Ukraine on various spurious grounds. Now he’s using attacks on civilians as an excuse to take a harder rhetorical line with Putin - one that a stable majority of Americans constantly favors in polls. Even a solid chunk of Republicans remain on board with the traditional conservative view that American power requires keeping Moscow in check.
But under the hood, here’s what’s happening: after pushing Ukraine and Europe as hard as he possibly could to make dumb concessions for months, Trump has nothing to show for trying to seek “balance” between the Muscovites and Ukraine except a near-total alienation of the US from the very partners it will depend on to make any ceasefire stick or participate in tariff negotiations. Thus the latest round of sham negotiations it set to draw to a close with no tangible result, the war continuing through most of this year at least. All that remains up in the air now, unless my mode of analysis has just been getting stuff right thanks to sheer luck, is whether US arms will still be sold to Ukraine and if intelligence shared with NATO can still filter down to Ukrainian forces.
Trump wants to focus on Iran in May and June, which as far as I know is the ideal window for major military actions in that part of the world. He certainly knows that his base is less anti-Ukraine than opposed to anything Biden ever touched, save for a core group of Reagan Republicans who he’ll need to pass anything through Congress that is meant to survive his final legal term in office (there are no loopholes on this matter, and anyone who says differently is a liar). It’s not like diehard MAGA types are going to be weeping in the streets if Ukraine wins - they’ll just attribute victory to Trump. The situation is win-win for him, provided that he takes the easy way out and blames Putin before ignoring European affairs entirely.
For American power in the future, of course, the situation is lose-lose: either D.C. surrenders to Putin and winds up swiftly kicked out of all its alliances and defense deals, or Trump ignores Europe going forward, which results in American interests being wedged out more gradually. Fortunately for Ukraine, the better-case scenario aligns with its goals well enough to keep hope of Victory alive.
Trajectories continue to align as they need to if Ukraine is to win the war through a focused military effort this year or next. Europe is aggressively ramping up its military spending and support for Ukraine. The USA even under Trump appears likely to back the alliance on Ukraine behind the scenes, if only to keep China worried about the consequences of Putin’s defeat and prevent Europe from thinking too hard about doing a deal with Beijing, which has most of the rare earths needed by European high-tech industry.
Reliant on North Korean aid, Putin’s war machine has manifestly lost the ability execute effective military campaigns. Ukrainian troops are increasingly able to rely on the Drone Line to minimize the effort required to keep the line stable, allowing troops to get some badly-needed rest. There won’t be another shell famine like the one that helped Moscow advance such as it was able to in 2024. If you think about Ukrainian and Muscovite combat power as each following its own curve, since 2022 the balance has shifted from a 10:1 ratio in Moscow’s favor to Ukraine pulling ahead.
As a result, I continue to forecast a major Ukrainian counteroffensive effort this summer, beginning perhaps as early as June or even May. Moscow will continue to attempt to boost the intensity of its ongoing grind across multiple fronts as the weather improves but a steady rise in casualties and equipment losses continues to correlate with even less ground taken. And Trump will stop talking about Ukraine entirely at some point, writing it off as Biden’s war while he hares off to bomb Iran.
Just two sections this week (a bit rushed, apologies) - a look at the fronts and a dive into world politics. It’s chaos out there as the shockwaves of the Postwar Order’s demise spread far and wide. Odd, then, that on the front lines the situation is remarkably stable despite the best efforts of the orcs. An increasing proportion of them send to battle on dirt bikes and electric scooters - even a bus.
Overview of the Fronts: Week 17
More and more observers - the savvy ones still paying close attention, that is - are drawing the same conclusion: Putin’s threatened “summer offensive” doesn’t qualify as a coherent military campaign in the traditional sense. Moscow can’t mass enough combat power at any scale to breach Ukraine’s front deep enough to crack it. Much like the ruscist Surovikin Line in 2023, it bends, but never breaks.
Considering all the media talk about Ukrainian exhaustion over the past six months, it’s frankly weird that front has scarcely moved in real military terms since December. Ukraine’s Drone Line is working remarkably well, a group of five or six experienced regiments rapidly expanding in size and coverage much like the new ground corps.
Continuing the pattern that has held all this year so far, Moscow’s casualties last week were once again around 8,000 - about the same as total intake - and 1,500 pieces of land equipment, including about a hundred armored vehicles and a thousand civilian rides. In military terms, the ruscist invasion force is now less an army and more a post-apocalyptic horde - but nothing like the brutally effective cavalry of the Mongols and other steppe peoples, not by a long shot.
This is more like a horde of semi-intelligent zombies. Dangerous, to be sure, but unable to coordinate at scale. Casualties are approaching two hundred per square kilometer gained, about double what they were a year ago. Over the past week, most of the few dozen square kilometers all these losses have paid for were won in Kursk, where Ukraine’s forward defense of Sumy relinquished the last two villages still occupied by Ukrainian troops and some strips of forest along the international border.
Elsewhere, where glide bombs, rocket barrages, and relentless drone strikes once made it possible for the orcs to creep forward one field at a time, now most attacks along the fronts are smashed before they make contact with Ukrainian forces. Not everything goes perfectly or even acceptably everywhere all the time, but on the balance Ukrainian troops are holding the line firmer than ever before. Enemy artillery is hunted with special care.
In recent remarks to some NATO types, former commander-in-chief and current ambassador to the UK for Ukraine Zaluzhnyi, asserted that traditional weapons are obsolete. I’m not sure if the translation was off, he’s trying to explain away his inability to crack the Surovikin Line in 2023, or this is the only way to get the attention of some people, but it’s the combination of drones with traditional tools of war that is letting Ukraine punch beyond its apparent weight.
That Ukraine is in a position where it can produce between twenty and forty modern, high quality artillery pieces every month says a whole lot about the real trajectory of this conflict. They’re set to be joined on a monthly basis by a couple dozen modern infantry fighting vehicles along with several times as many refurbished ones, plus there are the seemingly endless stocks of T-64s that Ukraine continues to field as assault guns. Repairs of modern NATO vehicles can now be handled almost entirely in Ukraine, with simpler types like the M-113 possible to put together from disparate spares available across the world.
If improvements in electronic warfare and drone interception can give Ukrainian troops the ability to move more freely in the field, all of a sudden the protection offered by armored vehicles against the isolated orc positions caught out by a rapid Ukrainian advance will prove essential to storming them before ruscist officers can respond. Warfare demands an ecosystem of capabilities, a set of niches perpetually filled that together comprise a survivable, coherent organism. As with most designs, getting the scale right is the tricky part. You can’t pit an elephant against bees, after all. But over time, the components evolve. Ukraine’s fight is evolving faster than Moscow’s, on the whole.
Northern Theater
Of all the fronts, Kursk has seen the most orc movement over the past week, though even this has been glacial. You’d almost think there already was a ceasefire on - except a whole lot of orcs continue to be injured and killed in 150-200 attacks across the contact line each day.
Moscow is taking the reclamation of a couple hamlets as an opportunity to proclaim Kursk liberated, but Ukraine is disputing this characterization. The military truth is that little has changed except a bit of an adjustment in where Ukraine’s defenses are positioned. But it isn’t as if Kyiv can really claim to be holding more than a strip of the border.
At most, ruscist forces advanced a kilometer towards the international border along a roughly twelve kilometer front. Ukrainian troops still hold a small slice of Belgorod, mainly as a distraction, with the orcs slowly reclaiming the villages Ukraine seized a few weeks back. Overall, Ukraine’s posture in Sumy all but invites Moscow to march into a trap. One the orcs appear to be wary of, reportedly moving reserves from Kursk to other fronts rather than build up for a major push.
Ukraine is also likely pulling troops away, with only a few brigades out of the dozen on the Sumy front actively engaged. This should provide an opportunity to rest a lot of people. 80th, 82nd, and 95th Air Assault Brigades are all joining 46th Airmobile and 71st Jager in the 8th Air Assault Corps. That’s intriguing, as the 46th and 71st have been fighting on the eastern front, Pokrovsk and Kurakhove fronts, for about a year, while the other three have been assigned to Kursk. Who will move where, I wonder?
Kharkiv is the same as ever, which makes it a tad ironic that the deal Team Trump wanted to strike with Moscow envisions the orcs pulling back across the international border here as a concession. The Kinburn spit, a strip of land on the south bank of the Dnipro in Kherson, would also somewhat randomly go to Ukraine. Team Trump may well be pulling ideas out of a hat at this point. Incidentally, it’s mighty telling that all Trump’s pro-Putin envoy was able to come back with from Moscow was an agreement to terms that Biden probably tried to push Ukraine to accept in 2022, if the truth were to emerge.
I would not put it past Ukraine to mount a major offensive towards Belgorod from the south just to take the idea of a little territorial swap off the table. However, that would suggest that Kyiv actually took Trump’s peace push at face value, which I very much doubt. Zelensky’s tone all along has been too calculated for that - he’s had the measure of Trump from the beginning.
If Ukraine chooses to push into Belgorod from Kharkiv, it will be to take advantage of the apparent orc preoccupation with Kursk and Sumy to isolate and destroy the divisions threatening Kharkiv, not to power a territory swap. But first, Trump’s peace push has to play out. With Ukraine no longer occupying populated parts of Kursk, and Putin’s ceasefire ploy a naked attempt to protect the Victory Day celebrations in Moscow from Ukrainian drone strikes, the official end may come as soon as May Day.
Eastern Theater
The Kupiansk front has seen no notable orc gains over the past week, and the intensity of the fighting may have even decreased - probably to give time for new orc meat to be trucked in. Moscow’s bridgehead over the Oskil will require bridges to allow heavy equipment over, since few things are more vulnerable to a drone than a BMP swimming across at a couple kilometers per hour.
Unfortunately for Moscow, fewer things are more vulnerable to a guided bomb dropped by a jet than pontoon bridges. And since ruscist air defenses are now no longer able to reliably knock down Ukrainian jets 25km behind the front line, that kind of air support is available. Knocking out the Oskil bridgeheads would seem wise, but the cost Moscow must be paying to hold onto them should be very high.
Interestingly, the Borova and Lyman fronts have seen little effective orc action, either - and at least one Ukrainian counterattack along the Oskil. Or at the very least, previously unknown Ukrainian control over a particular area was revealed when a ruscist soldier wisely surrendered to a Ukrainian drone.
Moscow has apparently decided to try and remove the threat posed by Third Assault Brigade and the corps being organized around it from the east bank of the Oskil. Standard orc tactics demand that two jaws be formed around the target area, and it looks as if two concerted pushes towards Borova is the plan.
I would think the elimination of the threatening bridgehead over the Zherebets northwest of Ivanivka to be a priority for Third Assault Corps. Removing a roughly 50 square kilometer bridgehead would neuter orc plans for the adjacent Lyman front and allow Ukrainian troops on the Borova front to focus on the threat of orcs moving in to the north.
The Lyman front has been fairly quiet, aside from bombardments behind the lines. In Siversk, the orc seizure of the Bilohorivka quarry area has not led to any rapid gains so far. On the Kostyantynivka front, Chasiv Yar has also been static, which is a bit odd considering the ongoing orc effort to secure Toretsk.
In Toretsk ruscist troops have been trying to advance from their strongholds in the center of town, but each attempt is pretty quickly squashed. Motorcycles don’t seem to help the orcs very much - too many together will draw a cluster strike from artillery, while small groups are relentlessly hunted down. Mines are a serious problem, because while an armored vehicle can often take a detonation and at least push to cover to let anyone inside escape with a chance of survival, there’s no margin on a dirt bike.
Part of the reason why the orc generals seem to have deprioritized Chasiv Yar lately - if the relative lack of attention there isn’t just a ruse or pause to reinforce - is probably orc hopes of breaking through between Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka. This would force Ukrainian troops to abandon a chunk of territory that reportedly hosts some solid fortifications. Ukraine has fallen back in a couple sectors here, and pulling back to a shorter defensive line a bit farther north makes sense.
Last year I viewed the worst-case scenario for Ukraine being a concentrated orc drive west of this area, not a costly bid to break through Chasiv Yar and Toretsk by sheer brute force. Considering the difficulty that ruscist troops are having advancing now compared to last summer, I have to assess the option I feared being the better choice for Moscow. Toretsk might have been turned into a trap like Avdiivka, and if nothing else it would have been tougher for Ukraine to sustain a defense north of Pokrovsk had ruscist troops been across the Bychok in force while Ukraine was holding on in Chasiv Yar and bracing for a frontal assault on Toretsk to be unleashed at any time.
As it stands, despite taking most of Toretsk, along the unoccupied outskirts Moscow now faces another of Ukraine’s new corps, 1st Azov, containing five highly experienced brigades from the National Guard: 1st Bureviy, 12th Azov, 14th Chervona Kalyna, 15th Kara-Dag, and 20th Lyubart, a newer formation recently expanded from a regiment. In addition, the well-equipped 100th Mechanized Brigade is in the area, along with the tough 93rd Mechanized, and several Territorial Guard brigades - so basically another full corps. Moscow’s own forces are badly degraded, forced to commit reserves meant for a push to Kostyantynivka just to stop Ukraine from reclaiming Toretsk this winter. An even larger Ukrainian counteroffensive on this front is not out of the question come summer, once the current orc wave is exhausted.
Pokrovsk continues to bear the brunt of the ruscist offensive efforts, but despite reinforcing and intensively bombarding anything that looks worth expending ordnance on, the lines aren’t moving. Ukraine’s brigades are chipping away at the forward orc positions where they can do so without suffering serious losses themselves.
Moscow seems to recognize that taking Pokrovsk will require breaking through the defenses to the east, on the road to Kostyantynivka. The potential for putting Ukrainian troops in a tougher position on two fronts won’t be lost on orc generals who are able to assess a map as well as I can, I’m sure. Actually doing it is another question. Moscow’s bridgeheads on other fronts are not expanding quickly, that much is certain.
Novopavlivka has likewise seen only minor ruscist progress in a few sectors. Muscovite troops are still trying to creep west towards the administrative border of Dnipro district, a sure sign that politics drives Putin’s strategy more than military logic. And the orcs are working hard to approach Bahatyr from the south, bombing it heavily and trying to creep northwest from Rozlyv.
But on this front, like all the others, what progress Putin’s troops are able to make at this point is so minimal that it’s laughable for his propagandists to insist that Moscow is advancing on all fronts. Over a cliff, maybe.
What continues to surprise me more than anything is the predictability of ruscist moves. They always get around to trying what might have been an effective strategy the prior year. I almost wonder these days whether Putin is actively trying to destroy his military, the Wagner revolt of 2023 leaving him terrified of the next rogue officer with a following who might march on Moscow. If Moscow’s empire is a union of priests, generals, and spies, the second category poses the greatest potential threat to Putin personally.
A note that has been appearing with greater frequency in orc propaganda of late is the idea that officers are lying to the Kremlin about the state of affairs at the front. Is Putin already preparing to focus public discontent after defeat on the professional military? Might be clever to actively discredit members of the armed forces when you plan to rely on paramilitaries for your future survival.
Just saying, if I’m an orc officer, I’m making really nice with my senior enlisted and a few trustworthy comrade officers right about now. Gear is being hoarded, and a defensible base of operations scoped out. Bit of free advice to any sane folks wearing a Muscovite uniform: Wagner’s mistake was marching on Moscow - that was an ice pick to the nervous system of the ruscist state. If Progizhin had instead consolidated control over Rostov-on-Don, he would probably be president of the Rostov Republic right now, with Putin a year in his grave after a coup and subsequent dissolution of his empire into its constituent military districts.
Southern Theater
In Zaporizhzhia the sluggish orc offensive that began a few weeks ago hasn’t let up, but it also hasn’t made any significant progress towards Orikhiv, either. At present, on this and half a dozen other secondary fronts, Moscow is in a bit of a trap: it can continue to make all its troops in Ukraine constantly launch pointless assaults against prepared defenses, or risk Ukraine using quiet sectors to rest tired troops. Either way, Ukraine is liable to recover combat power faster than Moscow.
The ongoing orc efforts to keep Ukrainians from occupying positions in the Dnipro delta are of a similar nature. Moscow simply isn’t crossing the Dnipro in sufficient force to threaten the reoccupation of Kherson. Ukraine likewise probably can’t risk a major cross-river operation at this stage of the war. Battles over the Dnipro delta are therefore inherently tactical in nature - they have real meaning and great importance, but simply can’t presently develop into anything with immediate operational impacts.
The orcs keep trying to hit Ukrainian positions nevertheless, and of course they’re still trying to terrorize civilians just to show they can. Ukraine’s ability to hit them with drones from the sea could become a serious problem, however. Team Trump might have suggested Moscow relinquish the Kinburn Spit because a combination of naval drones and marine landings could conceivably bring it back under Ukrainian control with little warning.
Aviation Duel
Ukraine’s aviators have been busy this past week helping to repel the cruise missile and drone component of Moscow’s latest attacks. With between 18-24 Vipers and 3-6 Mirage 2000s at this point, Ukrainian ability to cope with cruise missiles and drones has never been greater.
There are rumors that preliminary work needed to deploy airborne radar systems donated by Sweden has been completed. If and when Ukraine gets regular AWACS support, the ability to repel orc missile attacks should substantially increase. Integrating airborne and ground-based sensors makes it very difficult for hostile aerial threats to evade detection through terrain masking or other gaps in coverage.
Ukrainian close air support is also on the rise, the glide bombs that Ukraine uses smaller than orc equivalents but far more accurate, especially now that orc glide bombs are jammed so often. Even if the ruscists figure out how to apply the same techniques to Ukrainian glide bombs, these can also be guided to their targets by laser designators on drones or in the hands of special forces operators.
What surprises me is the regularity of Ukrainian jets appearing just a few kilometers behind the front line. Moscow must be keeping its S-400s well back for fear of HIMARS or ATACMS strikes. Even if Ukraine is officially out of the latter, the first warning Moscow may get of the situation changing will be something getting wiped out.
The final pieces of a rudimentary modern air force are finally coming into place in Ukraine at long last. No word yet on whether Sweden will manage to surprise everyone by having already trained a cohort of Ukrainian pilots on Gripens and prepared half a dozen jets for transfer, as I keep on hoping. Though I have to admit being greatly influenced by Swedish soft power.
As far as ground-based defenses go, Ukraine is moving to acquire more Patriot systems and missiles, though no announcements have been made. At the very least, despite their limitations when it comes to coping with ballistic threats, Aster missiles and the SAMP/T systems France and Italy jointly produce - two batteries sent to Ukraine - can cover areas closer to the front, if additional batteries arrive. Let Patriot cover the cities, while Aster guards the front.
In the aerial domain Ukraine is slowly chipping away at Moscow’s longstanding advantages, approaching effective parity in many respects. With Ukraine well ahead at sea and rapidly pulling away on land, Putin’s war looks more foolish by the week.
Strike Campaigns
Ukraine has matched Moscow’s recent resort to intensive terror strikes against civilians with some nice drone hits on military infrastructure deep inside the empire. A massive explosion at an arms depot near Moscow served as an excellent reminder to Muscovites that the war is absolutely coming home. Small wonder that Putin wants a truce during his victory day parade.
The Ukrainians also blew up a Shahed drone factory about a thousand kilometers east of Moscow. So the orc air defense network definitely has some rather gaping holes. So does Moscow’s counterintelligence network, given that another general was assassinated well behind the lines, as well as an engineer responsible for developing ruscist electronic warfare systems.
Naval Matters
Little new to report from the Black Sea. Here a limited truce is holding because Moscow has already been defeated. I do see a complex major air strike on the orc base at Novorossisysk, where the Black Sea Fleet’s survivors are gathered, as a distinct possibility after hope of imminent peace talks falls through. Apparently a US surveillance plane flew very close to the area recently. This would make for a lovely prelude to a Taurus attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge.
Leadership & Personnel
I couldn’t help but smile when I saw that the new 8th Air Assault Corps includes four of the five brigades that I’d suggested could be grouped together handle the central thrust of my proposed Volnovakha Campaign. I’d thought 79th Air Assault a good choice for the fifth given that it fought alongside the 46th on the Kurakhove front, but 71st Jager is another excellent formation very familiar with the area.
Other corps assignments are firming up (militaryland.net does a great job of tracking news about this), as well as the composition of the supporting brigades and battalions that will be allocated by corps command as needed. Another Air Assault corps is expected to include 25th Airborne, 77th and 81st Airmobile, 78th Air Assault Regiment as well as 79th Air Assault Brigade. The prospective 9th Air Assault (Airborne?) Corps will also need an artillery brigade if it is to match up with the 8th. This corps seems apt to be deployed between Siversk and Kupiansk, possibly paired with 3rd Assault corps.
I expect that each corps will have dedicated artillery, engineering, drone, supply, and what I’d term heavy brigades consisting of a tank battalion and an elite assault regiment equipped with Bradley, Marder, or CV-90 tracked infantry fighting vehicles and Stryker-type wheeled ones.
Ukraine looks to be well-served by pulling the mechanized battalions from the org chart of existing brigades, instead making them corps-level assets allocated to support operations as a spearhead or fire brigade, as the situation demands. In the same new heavy brigade will be a regiment with two battalions of assault infantry, one with modern tracked IFVs and the other wheeled.
Concentrating modern gear in the hands of experienced soldiers who are roughly evenly distributed across the ground forces will offer the best possible balance of coverage and efficient logistics. The heavy brigade in each corps, like the artillery, engineering, and drone brigades, won’t be used as an intact, coherent formation, but a donor for companies who can add weight to any action taken by the conventional brigades.
Drones create new challenges in the employment of tanks that makes it ideal to plan their use in the same way engineering and artillery support usually is. Combining the tank battalion in each corps with a pair of infantry battalions using Ukraine’s limited stock of modern IFVs is sensible, as tanks and assault troops were always meant to work closely together, and Ukraine still has too few modern IFVs, which are proving as useful as tanks on the modern battlefield and less vulnerable to drones.
The bulk of Ukraine’s roughly hundred combat brigades will be structured around three or four infantry battalions with just the supporting elements they can internally manage. Only one or two battalions will get to ride in armored personnel carriers, with the others relying on the ubiquitous infantry mobility vehicles - armored cars, in short. While lighter than APCs, IMVs like the Humvee are far more vulnerable. They were never meant for frontline use, but needs must.
In any case, each corps will have five brigades assigned with a total of fifteen to twenty battalions to physically hold the front. All the supporting elements they need to do that with minimum risk of casualties are organized by the corps leadership, which ought to ensure that it arrives where and when it’s needed - including heavy direct support from mechanized assets and elite troops. Combat power works a lot like a market - soldiers under fire need help making the incoming cease, but there is always limited supply. The more niches for delivering support you have on hand, the more likely that at least something will be available to serve in a pinch.
The ability to combine capabilities as needed is one of the factors that defines effective leaders. This is even more important now, when successful control of the battlefield is a function of infantry, transport, drones, artillery, electronic warfare, signals, logistics, command, and other vital elements I’m forgetting or ignorant of all have to work in union.
Another of the many ironies of life is that the people who are able to put everything together and consistently bring results only rarely appear higher than about the battalion level. Civilian companies are much the same. Scaling up is often harder than starting up, something anyone who has been an entrepreneur or worked for a new company learns fast.
It’s a damn shame that the right people won’t be in positions where they could put their skills to maximum effect until it’s too late. A generation of leaders and their advisers find themselves adrift in confusion right now, with the biggest impacts at the highest levels.
World System Brief
When a human system decays, there is always an increase in what many refer to as tribalism, though the term is unfairly applied in a pejorative sense. People fall back on trusted bonds in tough times. These are ultimately proven through mutual sacrifice, but similarities in language and outlook make it easier to believe that one is likely - as is typically the case. Everyone looks after their own family first in an emergency, then others around them.
International affairs is a system ruled by the perception of a partner’s reliability. Shared interests matter, but countries will work to carve out a niche even in a predatory colonial order like the old Warsaw Pact or, for many subject to it, the American-led Postwar Order.
That’s why the howls of shock and outrage stemming from Trump’s actions the past few months continue and tend to escalate, not only among political partisans, but the investing classes. The national security community is likewise apoplectic at witnessing the foundations of their world shattered so casually.
America is no longer seen as reliable, and once a certain threshold is crossed in such matters, there’s no going back. The question now is only what new equilibrium will emerge from the churn.
One entirely plausible model for the future is a world split into spheres of interest defined by endless conflict at the margins - Orwell’s 1984 is a good example of how this ultimately plays out until it self-destructs. Another equally plausible and far more pleasant scenario sees an international alliance of democratic countries fill the void left by the collapse of American leadership.
If something of this nature cannot consolidate around Ukraine in the coming months, powering Ukraine to a battlefield triumph over the aggressor by 2026 at the latest, then powerful forces will conspire to drag the planet towards the other option. The collapse of the Postwar Order can be all but ended and the world in recovery by the 2030s, or conflicts will rage until mutual exhaustion sets in around the 2040s. There will be no world hegemon or even a small group of great powers by then, just a gaggle of squabbling petty nations fighting over the remaining sources of high quality energy. No colonizing Mars or digital Singularity to look forward to in that future.
Real, meaningful democratic institutions are the cornerstone of any lasting international alliance for a simple scientific reason: the reliable self-interest of leaders in a healthy democracy. Only ones that have already badly decayed seek reasons to expand their territory or engage in aggressive wars. True democracies can rely on mutual self-interest to chain the tendency to violence that makes human groups so unstable over time. War costs, and a working democracy hates spending money on anything not strictly required, because no matter how good your connections are, at some point you will foot your share of the tax bill.
An alliance requires trust above all else: nobody wants to be the sucker who sticks their neck out and gets to be a tragic sacrifice. Democracies, if properly coordinated, can evade one of the biggest killers of effective collaborative action: pervasive mistrust. Putin’s war on Ukraine will forever serve as a case study in how authoritarian regimes undermine their own strength from the bottom up, always relying on having a population of suckers to sacrifice. Lack of true solidarity leads to inefficiency, and ultimately collapse, with a fair dose of effective cannibalism that reveals what the system was always about to begin with.
The science of mitigating the collapse of the Postwar Order isn’t terribly complicated. But too many powerful interests will cling to old patterns unless shocked out of their complacency. Hello, Canada, Pacific America’s elder cousin!
North America
Trump has certainly awakened Europe and East Asia, with predictable results: as Team Trump tried to sideline Europe and Ukraine, they were left with no option but to present a united front, with other American allies looking to join in. Team Trump’s best-possible deal for Ukraine, leaked to the press as soon as it was written down, is tantamount to surrender: Biden covertly tried to force Ukraine into accepting peace on more or less the same lines, giving territory to Putin in exchange for hollow guarantees from D.C.
Trump is, to an astonishing degree, mirroring all the worst aspects of Joe Biden, the stark similarity invisible only to partisans who view any criticism of the team as somewhere between heresy and high treason. Despite having only a razor-thin majority in the House and Senate in 2020 and facing a hostile Supreme Court, Team Biden made the insane choice to present him as FDR 2.0, despite his entire campaign premise being nothing more than a return to boring centrist politics. Now, with basically the same margins in Congress, Trump pretends that he’s about to totally reboot the federal government by executive fiat?
There is no more certain sign of the sham that is the profession of journalism in the USA that everyone is playing along with this charade, pretending that Trump could just declare himself dictator for life tomorrow and the only recourse would be to, I dunno, wave signs or something.. Nobody cares about the express limits the Constitution places on the Executive Branch because it’s more fun to write endless thinkpieces about what scary thing Trump might get away with next. This somehow substitutes for any meaningful action commensurate with the threat.
You screw with the economy to the degree tariffs are in, say, France, and people flat-out riot. And American politicians pretend that they have it bad if they raise gas taxes (which are an unambiguous policy error, by the way, dear “progressives,” but let’s not get into the self-reinforcing logic loops of neoliberal economics)
What all the political hacks in the USA won’t admit is that at some point, what Team Trump is doing with running around chewing on the wires that keep the federal government operational has to trigger a Constitutional crisis - and probably already has. At a moment when the Supreme Court is viewed as nakedly partisan in favor of Team Trump, barring a momentous defection by two of six Supreme Court judges (Roberts and ???).
Also, have I mentioned lately that a majority of Americans mistrust every institution except the military? Because nothing about that is dangerous, right?
This is heading towards a scenario where one partisan team or the other decides that it’s time to dig in and escalate to more serious levels of political competition. I don’t mean violence, at least not in an organized fashion, because the few Americans who would support that (up to a fifth, no more) have no broader support. Instead, some state is going to feel that it has to outright defy a federal claim to authority. It might even be a Blue State.
That the US federal government is grabbing graduate students off the street for alleged visa violations and deporting them before a judge can intervene is one of those developments which could easily spiral out of control if the wrong person gets nabbed by masked feds. If I’m an ambitious state governor thinking of running for president, right about now I actively provoke a fight over jurisdiction and due process with the feds. I order my law enforcement agencies to actively interfere with federal activities in my state, drowning them in paperwork and lawsuits while not letting them grab anyone.
My justification? Proven disregard for due process by this administration renders all actions by federal agencies suspect, presumed to be illegitimate until proven otherwise in court. If the feds want to play hardball with state’s rights, let them - and if the Supreme Court issues nakedly partisan decisions, well, then it’s time to start having hard questions about what to do when institutions are hijacked by a movement that doesn’t care about the rule of law, and therefore threatens the Constitution. One could build a pretty neat Drone Line protecting Pacific America from federal tyranny, just saying.
For the record, I’m not arguing against a more effective or even restrictive immigration policy, including enforcement. Personally, I don’t see any reason why the government should get in the way of the labor market doing its thing beyond guaranteeing safe conditions and fair treatment, with borders being just a convenient checkpoint for figuring out who and what is going where.
But the source of legitimate policy is the will of the people, and most Americans want tighter immigration rules these days. Fine, your loss, folks. But last I checked, students in Massachusetts are not those “bad hombres” sneaking across the Rio Grande that people are worried about. And given the potential for anyone, anywhere, to get screwed over by some dumb data glitch or other random accident, means that any single person on US soil getting deported without seeing an attorney or judge first is simply unacceptable, the definition of starting down that slippery slope. Sooner or later some idiot in D.C. will decide to label some category of person a terrorist for no obvious reason, and at that point the Constitution is defunct.
The USA as a country was predicated upon separation of powers for a reason. Tomorrow’s extremist could target you, because by definition extremism follows its own logic.
At some point, if questions about legitimacy and power are pressed too far, certain people will be forced to decide what orders they are morally obligated to follow. This isn’t ideal, but it is the endgame that American partisan politics is rushing headlong towards. The first to get ahead of the curve wins - but their efforts will accelerate events. Such is the paradox of social systems.
Behind my years-long case that Ukraine can survive without American support, must prepare to, and will be better off for making the effort in the long run, is the simple prediction derived from systems that America’s decline will culminate in a rather epic fall. Internal dynamics are pulling the country into a downward spiral, and it would take a miracle to arrest the process now.
The best outcome of Trump’s engagement with the peace process in Ukraine was always likely to be him throwing up his hands and declaring it to be Europe’s problem. A flood of aid to force Putin into negotiating was a possibility, and could still materialize if Trump realizes that it’s time to pivot away from his hardcore supporters - who will worship him whatever he does, and so can be disregarded.
But Trump is not a genius or even a remotely competent strategist. He plays a role, and thanks to a lucky confluence of events powered by natural degradation he won the lottery of American power. Lacking real leverage over Ukraine, he tried to badger and bully Zelensky, but failed. The subordinates who promised him that they could sway Putin have been made to look like fools, nothing Trump says or does having any real impact on Putin’s behavior.
Smart move from here is to exit stage left while leaving the crowd relieved that he didn’t proclaim Putin god-emperor for life before heading to the golf course. Though with Trump, he could yet flip back and blame Ukraine like he was before the meeting in the Vatican. Still, in the end he, like any politician, does pay close attention to the polls.
American politics is slowly settling into a very familiar pattern, if you’re older than about 40. The Democrats are convinced that the answer to all problems is either to shout resist! a lot to the same people they’ve been telling that to for the past twenty years, or hide and wait to win in 2026 and 2028 by default. Not being as hated as the other party is not a strong driver of turnout, though - it’s been the party’s main case for itself in every election since 2016, and only Trump’s inept handling of the pandemic got Biden over the finish line in 2020. A new party is sorely needed.
With the USA on the road to cracking up, Canadian politics are suddenly becoming very interesting. While Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean are all technically part of North America, politically they belong more to the Global South, which I generally treat as mostly neutral in world affairs. Or really, it’s too complicated to neatly summarize, and also tangential to operational matters, even if Moscow naturally plays around, meddling where it can, sourcing bodies to feed to the fight.
Canada, on the other hand, just had one of the biggest shocks in the past century delivered courtesy of Trump’s silly annexation talk, which is right up there with him running for a third term when it comes to trite blather. It and his tariffs roiled the election Canadians have just wrapped up, spoiling what should have been a big conservative comeback which Trump would have benefited from.
Unlucky for them, the poor Canadian conservative party - much like its US cousin doing a wonderful trade in provoking animosity between rural and urban areas - has adopted rhetoric that sounds just a bit too much like Team Trump’s own. A natural consequence: shattered electoral ambitions in the recent election.
What will be fascinating to observe now is whether the narrowly re-elected Canadian government will make good on its pledge to become more independent of the USA. Canada’s geographic position and reputation as a reliable country, if by no means a major world power, gives it a unique appeal in global affairs. Canada, like Ukraine, is one of those countries that others can rally behind, having more similarities than differences and not much bad blood.
A wise Canadian leader, recognizing the unique opportunity presented by Trump’s loose talk, ought to be able to take full advantage, especially when compelled to show strength after only a narrow electoral win on grounds that will invariably dissipate in a few years. Ask the Democrats how making everything about Trump works out.
In global affairs, not only does Canada have a long frontier with the Muscovite empire to consider, it also directly connects Europe to the Pacific - especially as the Arctic melts. And if Team Trump really does push its position way too far, who knows - Canada might get a few new provinces in a few years. As much as I identify as a Pacific American, as an Oregonian I’d be happy enough if Oregon joined Canada’s federation if the Constitution was no more. It’s all about trust and reliability.
Europe
Over the past week European diplomats as a group laid out a view of how to achieve peace in Ukraine that is starkly at odds with Team Trump’s. It’s probably a sign of Trump recognizing that his best move is to shrug and walk away that he didn’t blow up after the Europeans very politely made it clear that the proposal to recognize Crimea as part of russia is a dead letter.
Being European diplomats, they did this in a roundabout way, saying only that Ukraine’s accession to the European Union would be impacted, as Europe would not accept Moscow’s annexation of the peninsula and such territorial disputes had to be resolved before Ukraine’s accession. Because Moscow had already conceded to D.C. that Ukraine would join the EU, even if barred from NATO, this gave the Europeans a convenient indirect veto over the entire deal. Which Ukraine was perfectly happy to see them leverage. Between that, the Vatican violating its own protocol to elevate Zelensky at the funeral of pope Francis, and Macron visibly running interference, and Trump must have perceived the vise he was trapped in.
Europe is already moving on without the USA as a partner, whatever Trump does tomorrow or the next day. But Europe’s push to rearm quickly depends on access to American markets, which Trump’s tariffs have badly roiled. The perception that American arms might come with hidden kill switches or other impediments to free use is already impacting important arms deals. So with Europe quietly telling Trump where to shove his threats and boosting aid to Ukraine, he’s got little leverage to employ that won’t blow back on him rather badly.
At the moment, European leaders are willing to move quietly to become more independent of the USA, at a pace D.C. can pretend doesn’t matter. Or they could go a lot faster. Threatening a breach therefore works against Trump’s position, not theirs. For the record, most European leaders would lack the spine to stand up to Trump or Putin if Ukraine had not already destroyed the bulk of Moscow’s military power. They also know that they’ll be the first to benefit from Ukraine’s knowhow with drones, a factor that will enable a properly supported European security effort to scale Ukraine’s innovations up and out at a faster pace than Moscow can ever hope to match. That will radically improve Europe’s security against ground invasion, which mainly leaves neutering Moscow’s missile arsenal and submarines in the event of a war.
Actually getting anything to happen in the EU is always the tricky part, but by and large it appears Europeans remain committed to the new future Trump thrust them into. They are also probably aware that Trump is set to back a military assault on Iran’s nuclear program that’s bound to turn into another grinding, no-win conflict like the bombardment of the Houthis now in its sixth week. This is another reason to steer clear of close involvement with the Americans.
In other news Britain is apparently sending the carrier HMS Prince of Wales out to the Pacific for drills, something I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, aircraft carrier battle groups are objectively cool, even if they’re stuck with that awful F-35 flying liability. And training is always a good thing - so are the Brits poking Moscow’s Pacific Fleet. On the other, I’d rather Europe keep a carrier perpetually within striking distance of ruscist naval assets in Europe, since between the USA and Japan we’ve got Vladivostok and Petropavlovsk covered. It also seems untimely to have a UK carrier transiting areas where US carrier groups are likely prepping to hit Iran. There’s also what happened to another HMS Prince of Wales in the South China Sea back in 1941…
At least Japan and Australia will have a chance to evaluate whether the British or French style of aircraft carrier would suit them best. Eventually a dream of mine is to see Pacific America’s states work with both, maybe South Korea too, to build a Pacific class of carriers, suited for the drone age. Something smaller than the Nimitz or Ford type.
Crewed aircraft aren’t obsolete yet. Bigger airframes are needed to handle heavier payloads, and once a threshold is passed there’s little harm in adding a crew capsule. And if it’s big, it’s expensive, drone or not, so you won’t want to risk it when more disposable drones are on hand. May as well have some crewmembers and lots of electronic gear - and a few long-range weapons to augment the drones.
Anyway, Europe is a global power, same as the USA, and increasingly feels compelled to send that message. A preview of the future.
Indo-Med
Chaos reigns in the Middle East, Israel respecting ceasefires about as assiduously as Putin. Gaza remains a warzone, and the Israelis aren’t shy about bombing Hezbollah, either. Or seizing parts of Syria - never mind international law or whatever.
Lately pro-Israel pundits have been selling the line that they defeated Hezbollah, when the conflict really ended in a stalemate - albeit a costly one for many Hezbollah leaders personally. But Hezbollah’s tough stand on the ground is easy to forget, thanks to aggressive Israeli censorship, now that it is preserving its remaining rockets and enduring Israeli provocations.
The bigger factor in Hezbollah’s transformation back into a Lebanese guerilla group is Iran’s retreat from hiding behind proxies, now that Israel has demonstrated a willingness to tolerate the level of damage these can do as well as the costs of keeping them suppressed. This turn was produced not by American or Israeli military action, but the spectacular collapse of Assad’s regime in Syria, which severed Iran’s main supply route to Lebanon and sent Putin’s forces running to Haftar’s half of Libya.
Israel had no part in this, and for years had semi-openly colluded with Putin and his pet, Assad. But Israel is proving to be a key beneficiary of Assad’s fall nevertheless, at least in terms of limiting the nuisance posed by Hezbollah rocket strikes.
Iran’s only resort to Israeli threats now, however, is its nuclear program. Bartering that away in exchange for American guarantees to not attack or just let Israel do the dirty deed isn’t an option with Team Trump in charge. How do you do a deal with someone that unreliable?
I have a hard time seeing the old mullahs not deciding that this is the moment to secure their power for all time. It is also difficult to see Netanyahu not convincing Trump to try their luck.
It’s moments like this when you especially hate to see accidents (hopefully an accident, anyway) like the explosion that killed dozens of Iranians near Bandar Abbas. The Middle East is looking more and more like a place where someone is going to roll the dice and see where they wind up.
And now, yet another extremely dangerous incident threatens to plunge another part of the world into chaos. The unsettled situation in Kashmir blew up, as it always does, sending India and Pakistan into another of their periodic spats. Both countries claim Kashmir, and never mind what the locals there or in Punjab or Balochistan want, Islamabad and New Delhi cannot and will not tolerate separatism of any kind, lest these fragile post-colonial constructs shatter.
The typical way these crises play out goes something like this. A terrorist group kills some civilians or soldiers, prompting India to insist that Pakistan is responsible because its intelligence services fund militant groups in India. The latter is certainly true, so if a politician is in need of a crisis to exploit on either side the situation can easily spiral into tit-for-tat diplomatic actions like abrogating treaties to share water - water is always a weapon in these spats.
If there’s another major attack, India likes to launch a demonstrative military action of some kind. If some shelling by both sides isn’t deemed threatening enough, especially if soldiers get killed, India may try sending some bombs over the border at a terrorist target. Pakistan, if feeling the need to prove its mettle, may send up fighters to intercept, even fire a missile over the border.
With luck, each side gets a few dead heroes to mourn and some kill claims to feed to the general public, then diplomats move in to make sure things go no farther. Because if they do, sometimes someone will decide that it’s time to adjust the border by a few hills, then troops are flowing into fighting positions as both sides start to wonder if this is actually all a prelude to something big.
There’s a very deliberate dance to be choreographed, with a chance of total failure at each step. So far these nuclear-armed powers have recognized the need to keep things from getting out of hand. But it’s 2025, and pretty much as pessimistic futurists predicted a generation ago it’s a mess out there in the world. Not a moment to take anything for granted - and you D.C. can’t play a useful role.
As an aside, I’ve decided to re-label this section Indo-Med, since I’m a believer in the importance of ocean basins as an essential foundation of human activity. Indo-Pacific makes zero sense if you look at how the Indian Ocean historically functioned: only a few peoples went across the middle. Most commerce stayed relatively close to the coast, with Egypt and the narrow overland strip separating the Red Sea from the Mediterranean where Africa and Asia meet a major hub connecting coastal trade networks passing through the Med and up to the Baltic. Even a couple thousand years ago it was possible for goods from Britain and China to make their way along trade routes. Crossing the broader Atlantic and Pacific oceans, as well as the southern half of the Indian ocean, took specialized technology.
Pacific
Nothing terribly new happening in the Pacific, aside from a tragic incident in British Columbia where some lunatic drove a car into a festival. In something else straight out of futurist sci-fi from a couple decades ago, the Chinese carrier Shandong has been hanging out in the South China Sea not far from where the venerable Pacific Fleet carrier Nimitz is on what will probably be her last operational deployment.
Nothing makes you feel old quite like a ship that was cutting-edge when you were a kid hitting retirement age. Definitely a vessel that lived up to her namesake. Hope they let her sail around the whole world on a non-combat voyage once before retirement. I’m sure the Pentagon has blown money on worse. And no, I won’t suggest giving Nimitz to Ukraine. Not that I have zero doubt that Ukrainians would find an innovative use - world’s largest one-time-only landing ship?
As far as Pacific affairs go, it’s been fun seeing talk of Japan, South Korea, and Australia all getting involved with European military projects in the near future. That whole reliability thing again.
Speaking of, it turns out that those 49 M1A1 Abrams tanks that Australia wanted to give to Ukraine have never arrived. Why? Lack of US approval. Yet again America demonstrates the hidden price associated with buying American kit. Manipulating numbers may give Lockheed’s F-35 white elephant the appearance of having hourly operating costs on part with older F-16s, but if all of a sudden you can’t get spares for the jet because Israel or the U.S. Air Force got priority, too bad. Though I’m sure, being an American company, there will be a premium tier with better service for those willing to pay the real price.
Just think if American intellectual property and Pacific creativity were truly and equitably shared in joint projects with Australia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, and Canada. There’s another incentive to help make Pacific America a reality. The Founders never meant the USA to touch the Pacific anyway: across the deserts and mountains they imagined a separate daughter of America evolving in parallel. And so may it be. The Constitutional rights of Pacific Americans can no longer be protected any other way.
Concluding Comments
It’s pretty rich that Trump apparently believes that he’s in charge of the world, given the mess he’s making of his own strategic position. If that were somehow the case, his smartest move is to resign now and run to an island somewhere so the killer drones come after Vance.
The next few years will be very hard for Donald Trump. Considering that the latest polling shows that a majority of Americans describe him as a dangerous dictator, it’s kind of amazing that there have been so few assassination attempts registered so far. This is supposed to be a country that prides itself on having been founded through a War of Independence against an out-of-control monarch. Land of the free, home of the brave, and all that.
You can count on an American somewhere going on a killing spree in a mall or school every given week, but nobody has tried to take out a major American politician with a wire-controlled drone? Something is very off here.
I’m not saying that offing Trump and Vance is the right solution, for the record. Just noting the deviation between how Americans talk about their country and what they’re apparently willing to actually do about it if it’s under threat.
Believe me, I’m not about to risk my life for America either, not any more. I’ve got my family moved onto some rural acreage outside of any town, so to heck with American society at large. But it’s still fair to point out how damaging it is to cry resistance and talk about fighting then have students yanked off the street in a state that voted 2:1 against Trump. After all, I’m still a taxpayer and citizen.
In reality, America is and has always been a legal construct, a kind of contract, not a nation in the classical sense. And once entire culturally distinct regions have adopted starkly opposing visions of what the contract means, it will dissolve.
Nobody needs to fight over anything - just declare where they stand and tell D.C. to make them shift. As its power fades, it will be less and less successful. Over time, it will become mercifully irrelevant. This is how history works.
Ukraine stands at the center of a global revolution in multiple dimensions, not only security. It is already a new kind of country, sovereign physically but deeply integrated economically and socially with the rest of the democratic world. Ukraine is becoming what America was eighty years ago, only better: lacking the will to empire that American elites inherited from the British forebears they always strove to imitate, Ukraine stands to be a trustworthy leader on the world stage. As a people that seek only not to be dominated, there is no evidence that Ukrainians possess the will to dominate.
Just as Kyiv works in partnership with Ukraine’s diverse regions even though it is the nation’s capitol, so can Ukraine act as a nexus for the democratic world, an organizing example rather than a lord and savior. In this alone, Ukrainian leadership will be superior to American. Because all along it has been pure, rank hubris that has led to America’s fall.
The inability of D.C. to either prevent Moscow’s assault on Ukraine or deploy sufficient power to end it marks the termination of America’s claim to leadership around the globe. American leaders, like the corporate CEOs they all are in spirit, will be the last to know - but first to evacuate the sinking ship when the game is finally, manifestly up.