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Notes -
Sorry, what happens on this phone call?
Trump threatens to bomb Moscow, simple as!
Nah, probably not this time – this time the call just says "cease-fire?"
Obviously the war would actually stop after a lot of wrangling and haggling and might even start up again but if Trump threatened to cut Ukraine's aid off unless they negotiated they almost certainly would show up, and Russia showed up last time.
There would need to be a threat to Russia that if they aren’t somewhat reasonable we would increase funding to Ukraine while providing a carrot of removing sanctions.
There is no threat that the US can make - there's no amount of funding the US can provide that would make up for the current situation. If they deploy force in the amount required to change the outcome of the Ukraine war, they would be unable to defend Israel and Taiwan... and there's a very decent chance that they would actually lose the conflict militarily to boot (assuming no nukes are used, because if they do get used the world just ends). As for removing sanctions, they're already moving to systems of trade and exchange that bypass the US' hold on the financial system because they don't trust it anymore (and can you blame them?) - they'd view it as nice, but they would presumably then just take all their money out and leave anyway.
Sure, Trump would probably be able to negotiate a surrender, but what could the US actually do to change the situation beyond giving up? When you take into account other commitments like Taiwan and Israel there's no stick at all - Trump would just be negotiating the US exit and surrender. That said, my personal view is that the Ukraine war was a terrible idea, a massive waste of blood and treasure, so the sooner that happens the better.
I agree that Ukraine was always a mistake. But you could say “we will provide XYZ (better weapons compared to what they have today)” while telling Ukraine “if we want you to take deal “ABC” and you don’t, then you get nothing.
I could basically see it freezing the lines roughly where they are today. I guess that’s a surrender. But realism needs to hold sway here.
And yes, the sanctions removal isn’t a huge benefit for them (and was a massive mistake for the US) but it is some benefit.
Who do you think has the ability to ensure Ukraine gets nothing?
It's certainly no American- the Americans haven't even been the majority supplier of aid to the Ukrainians. The single biggest supplier, yes, the single most important yes, but EU institutions have given more financial aid to Ukraine than the US has given in value of all combined military / financial / humanitarian, and this is without addressing European national contributions.
Even if the US gives nothing, Ukraine still gets quite a bit. And if the cause of a cutoff is Donald Trump- and I'll just note that people have long downplayed his willingness to conditionally support Ukraine to take his opposition as a given- the Europeans are not going to meekly follow him, when both their own domestic-political interests and strategic interests remain with supporting Ukraine even, or especially in definace to, American pressure otherwise.
Why do you think Realism is any friend of freezing the fight along the current lines and surrendering?
Realism would note that the current war is at least the third continuation war Russia has pursued against Ukraine since the initial invasion of Crimea. (The first continuation war being the astroturfed Nova Russian campaign intended to spark a civil war, and the second continuation war being the direct military intervention when the Nova Russian uprising failed and was on the cusp of complete collapse.)
Realism would note that the Russia's leadership intentions and objectives that drove the current war are still unresolved, and thus the motivation basis remains for a fourth continuation war.
Realism would note that Russia's terms of cease fire and negotiations have for years hinged around limiting Ukraine's ability to resist a future incursion, and thus been conditional on the conditional basis for a fourth continuation war.
Realism would note that the center of gravity of Russia's conventional military strength at a strategic level, the Soviet inheritance of stockpiles, are being expended at unsustainable and functionally irreplaceable rates, and that once they are expended Russia's long-term capacity to conduct a fourth continuation war would be removed.
Realism would note that Russia's military edge is ebbing, that it's current rate of expenditures are unsustainable, and thus that relative negotiating position power will decrease away from Russia's favor of the coming years, and thus potentially create the conditions for negotiations that would not lead to a fourth continuation war.
Realism would note that the Western coalition, on the basis of supporting Ukraine against Russia, is actually mobilizing the political and economic capacity to scale military production, productions that must be greatly scaled to meet other major global competitors but which historically have observably not been invested in solely on the notional basis of those other competitors.
Realism would note a great many things that would work against arguments for a ceasefire in the near term.
'Realism' is no more a legitimization of 'what I want' than trying to claim to be a 'Rationalist' means your positions are any less monkey-brained than your opponents.
It would be interesting in hearing why you think the sanctions strategy was a massive mistake for the US, given that the US/European sanction strategy has clearly delivered it's intended goals of limiting Russian economic capabilities (which is why Russia's only meaningful growth is now a result of a militarized economy rather than it's civilian economics), restrict access to global markets (which is why Russia has to pay significant mark-ups and risk-premiums on both imports and sales, and gets stuck with things like it's India Rupee savings), and done so in a way that didn't cripple the pro-Ukraine coalition's economic and political viability in the midst of major economic input rearrangements (the Europeans haven't cratered their own economies in the process of building up import-substitution infrastructure, and negated the Russian energy blackmail threats).
Is this going to hinge on arguments that the US didn't go far enough to try to enforce some sort of global embargo on Russian exports- which it wouldn't have had the political capacity to do? Or that the Europeans continued to import energy from the Russians- when building the physical infrastructure to import from other sources was going to take time? Or that Russia is expanding its economic dependence on China- a factor which has led the Europeans to be far more concerned and willing to distance themselves from China than they were before?
What percentage of Ukrainian men aged 18-35 are dead?
According to the Russians, 0%, because Ukrainians aren't a real nation, just Russians with wrong politics.
To an abstract Realist, not enough to change a position without ascribing to non-Realist values.
The question was not rhetorical. What's the actual percentage? "Not enough" isn't specific enough.
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