Donald Trump’s turn towards Ukraine is better late than never
In the end, he got there. After boasting he would end the war within a day, after sweet-talking the Russian dictator, after insulting the elected leader of democratic Ukraine and after blaming the victim for the aggression, Donald Trump finally faced reality.
The reality is that Vladimir Putin does not want to end this war. He wants to win it. The reality is that Putin is not the victim of NATO expansion. He is the aggressor. The reality is that the root cause of this war is Russia’s inability to accept its relegation from superpower to middling power. The root cause is the unwillingness to contemplate a world where neighbours are independent actors rather than vassals.
The reality is that a diplomatic solution to this war is impossible because Russia does not want compromise but submission. Or to translate it into Trumpian: “We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin.” Indeed, you do.
Now, a half-year too late, the US President finally has given Putin an ultimatum: 50 days to end the war. He agreed to the delivery of US weapons to Ukraine, paid for by NATO – that is, the Europeans.
We can probably thank European leaders for this turn of events: they counselled Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky to massage Trump’s ego by playing nice and thanking the US profusely for its support at every turn. And they proposed what Trump must think is a great deal: he can be the saviour, both of Ukraine and of the US weapons industry, and American taxpayers do not have to pay for it – that will be Europe’s task.
Given what happened since Trump came to office for the second time, it is easy to ridicule this sudden turn of events. But the strategy behind it is the most promising one available at the moment.
Economic sanctions on their own have little impact on the behaviour of dictatorial regimes. They work best if they are backed up by military strength, either as deterrence or in actual confrontation. Thus, arming Ukraine to defend its skies and its territories is the first step in stabilising the situation. Russia has been advancing on the ground, even if extremely slowly.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, noted that the “Russian military command has improved its ability to seize on opportunities to advance, but the rate of Russian advances has not increased beyond foot pace”.
Ukraine is the largest country in Europe, except for Russia. Putin’s soldiers won’t be marching on Kyiv any time soon. But they are still inching forward. Ukraine needs to be given the means to stop them.
The slow advances on the ground are flanked by indiscriminate air war on cities. In June, Russia launched a record 5438 drones at Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian Air Force. By comparison, the most terrible month in 2024 was November, with 2434.
No end is in sight. In the first half of July, Ukraine counted 2519 Russian drones hurled against its citizens. Hence the new air defence systems, which reportedly may reach Ukraine within days, will be welcome. They form an important contribution to Ukraine surviving the next 50 days with as few casualties as possible.
Putin, meanwhile, will read “you have 50 days to end this war” as “you have 50 days to win this war”. We can expect a further escalation of the air war over Ukraine and an attempt to increase the speed of the advance on the ground.
The former will be easier to achieve than the latter, but both will cause yet more Ukrainian casualties. While this war will thus continue at a more frantic pace, Russian disinformation campaigns also will ramp up to increase pressure on Trump to reverse his position and not impose sanctions.
But let us assume these efforts will be fruitless. What then?
It’s far from clear that the new sanctions, if they are indeed imposed, will quickly end the war.
Yes, if China, India and Turkey would stop buying coal, crude oil and liquefied natural gas, Russia would lose essential economic support for its war effort. But it is not a given that they will simply bow to a President whose actions have been given the moniker TACO (“Trump Always Chickens Out”) by world markets. After all, the economic benefits of now extremely cheap Russian resources are also immense and Trump has made sharp turns before. China and India can possibly afford to wait for yet another mood swing.
Moreover, the largest buyers of LNG and pipeline gas (as opposed to crude and coal) are still Europeans, not China or India. Will they fall under the new sanctions, too, given that they pay for the new weapons now delivered to Ukraine? Or will there be some carve-out for them, continuing an economic lifeline for Russia?
Past experience would lead us to believe that all kinds of compromises are likely. Moreover, Russia now has 50 days to prepare counter measures, workarounds and stockpiles. The window Trump gave Putin allows him to essentially end the northern summer fighting season and prepare for the new sanctions regime while fighting it on the propaganda and disinformation front.
The strategy of Putin, ever since the failure of the initial fast and furious campaign in 2022, was to wait out what he terms “the West”. His approach will be to stay calm, carry on and wait for yet another U-turn by the fickle Americans.
While he does so, Ukraine’s friends in the democratic world should build on the positive steps announced. In particular, we might have found a formula that is acceptable to the Trump administration. One of the major complaints all along was all the money US taxpayers contributed to Ukraine’s defence while the Europeans (and the Japanese, South Koreans and Australians) did not do enough.
No matter that this misrepresented the support of other democratic nations for Ukraine’s war effort. No matter that much of the money spent went to American manufacturing and thus American jobs. What mattered was the perception that America got – yet again – “a terrible deal”.
With NATO countries footing the bill, the superior US production capacity seems to have been unlocked again.
Other democracies, including our own, may think about how to join NATO countries in a larger coalition of the willing: not to put troops on the ground but to help pay for the equipment Ukraine so desperately needs to stabilise the frontline.
Mark Edele is a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union. He is Hansen professor in history at the University of Melbourne. His latest book is Russia’s War Against Ukraine: The Whole Story (MUP, 2023).
Sorry, Lord, there’s no way I’m loving my old neighbours
Right now, we live in a strata of six. It is a world of sympathy, co-operation and bonhomie. But you can move from having good neighbours to the entire cast of homicidal maniacs inhabiting Shakespeare’s plays.
China cannot change who we are
The Prime Minister must devote more time and effort to the US relationship. Regardless of Australia’s current warmer relationship with China, the latter’s strategic ambitions in Asia are fundamentally different from Australia’s view.