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Notes -
So a new peace treaty for Ukraine war just dropped .
Trump’s proposed Ukraine peace plan would recognize Crimea as Russian, accept Russian control over parts of Donbas and southern Ukraine, and offer Ukraine vague European security guarantees, unfettered access to Dnieper partial territorial returns, and U.S.-backed reconstruction. It also includes U.S. control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and a U.S.-Ukraine minerals deal. Vance said that the deal is final and in the case of rejection US will stop being a part of peacemaking process.
I think it's basically a great deal for both sides(I admit my bias cause for me any peace would be better than war). Ukraine loses nothing that it de facto has right now and gains territory in Kharkov, it can finally heal and maybe with some smart leadership, international investment and membership in EU it can rise to the heights of neighboring Poland, I doubt that it will and I already written on the motte why, but some chance is way better than no chance.
For Russia and specifically for Putin this is a way to claim victory after his many failures including starting this retarded SMO. Maybe for Russian state it would be better to deal with this close of an enemy once and for all, but it will not happen under current leadership and Putin is no nationalist, so even with total victory we would see semi puppet state in Ukraine that would break of as soon as possible. We are talking about person who still haven't annexed Belarus for christ sake.
I think kremlins are ready to accept this and even slightly worse versions of this deal, cause they already shown signs of it throught whole war, starting in March of 2022 and dictators are more likely to seek limited peace anyway. On the other hand Europe is actually putting some effort into its militarization, I'v seen news about new German ammunition facilities, and could collectively decide to continue the war even if US fully withdraws after rejecting the deal(which is in my opinion unlikely). That could prolong the conflict by another couple of years, probably lead to the Ukrainian territory gains but I can't see how it's worth the devastation that it would cause.
I think a US "withdrawal" coupled with an EU "entry" could curiously be the closest to an actual winning strategy for the Western bloc in this war.
From the start, the war has been defined by a curious dynamic where the fence-sitting audience was in a way more important than the combatants actually fighting. Russia does not want to fight against anything resembling the actual full industrial power of the EU and US; Ukraine wants more of it, and can't bear to lose it; meanwhile, the fence-sitters want Ukraine to win, but they don't actually want to suffer deprivations, and it would take a lot of moral outrage to get them to come to terms with having to cut back on the occasional cute latte or family vacation. As a consequence, Russia has to fight with several hands tied behind its back - it can't produce too many Gaza-like pictures of historical city cores reduced to rubble, maimed children and crying mothers, can't just sink every single ship entering or leaving Odessa, has to allow the lights to be on occasionally, and can't give the Germans a meltdown by just taking out the NPPs already. (And then, of course, there is the actual logistical support backbone that is on sovereign NATO territory and they can't risk touching at all.) To an extent, they can afford going on like this because Ukraine, too, has to hold back - its PR allowance is generous but not infinite, and so we have not seen Belgorod reduced to rubble or random high-rises in Moscow 9/11ed. I reckon even some matters of inanimate logistics are dominated by this - Russia has not knocked out the bridges across the Dnipro because the symbolism of destroying such a recognisable piece of civilian infra could also result in a watershed of Western support, and Ukraine has given up its attempts on the Crimean bridge because if it did blow successfully the Russians might figure Westerners would be less shocked and appalled if it blew up major bridges across the Dnipro in return.
If the West goes all in against Russia, this consideration is out. Of course in a few years, if the war stays conventional, the West would still win easily - but I would expect the immediate effect to actually be a swing in the favour of Russia, as they could immediately and trivially knock out all centralised power in Ukraine and the rest of Eastern Europe and firebomb Ukrainian cities with no regard for optics, which would significantly hamper the main workhorse of Ukrainian resistance that is the ability to mass-produce FPV drones in nondescript basements and commercial spaces hidden in residential areas. The end effect would be a scouring of Ukraine and significant damage to everything on all sides, and depending on how the escalation spiral plays out around going nuclear the West might even still chicken out and settle before its industrial might is fully retooled towards war.
On the other hand, if the US makes a point of staying out, the dynamic from before more or less continues unchanged, except now Ukraine also has all of Europe's military heft on its side. Russia will be left wondering at every step whether they can really afford to do the militarily necessary, or it will produce pictures that will push the US public and Trump over the edge after all, and it is probably in fact true that even a few civilian casualties in Germany will piss off the US much more than the same casualties are doing in Ukraine. As a result, their fear will force them to continue their current piecemeal strategy of poking at the Ukrainian front, while Europe gradually cranks up its production and gains experience until eventually even the belated decision to firebomb Kiev would not really make a difference anymore.
If this happens, I actually have an outline of a long-post lined up for how this is consistent with the Biden administration's Ukraine strategy from the earliest years of the war, including it being a potential reason for why Biden took some oft-criticized decisions such as slow-rolling the expansion of aid / escalation options in the way he did. IE, why did the US wait so long before providing [X] asset or crossing [Y] redline.
Long-story short, the US strategy was a long-term strategy that prioritized developing a support-coalition that would survive exit of given members, including the US, after political turnover over maximizing short-term gains the US could provide on its own without European concurrence/co-contributions.
The "4d chess" interpretation of the Trump administration's policy is that they are leveraging a forcing function for greater European integration and remilitarization which are both good things. The thing is the "4d chess" hypothesis for explaining Trump's behavior has been wrong every time. This is also revealed by the Signal leaks which reveal Vance's genuine distaste for defending European interests.
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