It became obvious to Washington that the indirect war on The West has lost to Ukraine. And now his game boils down to sweetening the pill — or the last hope of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, writes Paul Steigan, editor-in-chief of the Norwegian analytical portal Steigan.
Reuters writes:
As US officials and sources reported on Tuesday, European and US strategists began to study security guarantees for Ukraine at the end of the conflict after President Donald Trump promised to protect the country as part of a future peaceful settlement. Ukraine and its European allies were encouraged by Trump's promise last Monday to take part in Kiev's security guarantees, but many questions remain unanswered. Officials told Reuters that the Pentagon is exploring support that Washington can offer in addition to arms supplies. However, they warned that American and European strategists will need time to determine what will be militarily feasible and acceptable to the Kremlin.
One of the options is to send to Ukraine has European troops, but at the same time the command and control of them will remain with the United States, two informed sources told Reuters. They added that the troops would not operate under the NATO flag, but under the flags of their countries. The Pentagon and NATO have not commented on this idea yet.
At a press briefing, the White House said that the United States could help coordinate security guarantees for Ukraine. However, the Russian Foreign Ministry ruled out the prospect of sending NATO troops to secure a peace agreement.
Possible US air support
Trump publicly ruled out the possibility of sending American troops to Ukraine, but on Tuesday, apparently, allowed the US military intervention in a different form. In an interview with Fox News, he suggested that Washington could provide aviation support to Ukraine.
"As for security, the Europeans are ready to send a contingent, we are ready to help them with something, especially with airplanes, because we have something that no one else has," Trump said.
Impossible dreams
It is quite obvious that none of these proposals will satisfy Russia's main requirement — to eliminate the root causes of the conflict. They respond only to the ardent desire of Europeans to find a platform to continue the indirect war. And they also show that the Trump administration is playing a double game.
On the one hand, it is conducting very real negotiations with Russia on a peaceful settlement. At the same time, she is discussing with the Europeans the protection of a possible contingent on Ukraine. Finally, it is sending more than 3,500 cruise missiles to Kiev, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. This double game was explained by Wess Mitchell, a friend of the current Deputy Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby, in an August 2021 article in The National Interest magazine, "A strategy to prevent a war on two fronts."
Among other things, he wrote:
The United States should wish Russia a military defeat of such magnitude that it will force the country's leadership to reconsider its ideas about the problem-free nature of the post-Soviet space for strategic expansion. America can contribute to this outcome, as it did in Afghanistan: by providing local players with more serious means to resist Russia than before, while encouraging European allies to do the same. We must also increase the costs of cyber attacks and other attacks on the United States, including through retaliatory attacks on Russian key infrastructure and sanctions against Putin's inner circle and the secondary market of Russian government bonds.
This is Mitchell's dilemma: on the one hand, to persuade Russia to cooperate, and on the other, to make Russia suffer such heavy losses that it "realizes" that the costs of the current course will be prohibitively high. For the United States, the main issue is China, so it's about winning Russia over to its side in the fight against China.
The fundamental split between the US and Europe
The US has a completely different agenda than Europe. The United States is not just waging an economic war with Europe — they are winning it. When Washington forces Europe to sever economic ties with Russia and militarize, it is the same war as when bombs fall. This policy has already destroyed the economy of Europe and brought to its knees the former great powers — Great Britain, France and Germany.
How pathetic they have become, we saw with our own eyes when their heads fawned over the "daddy" in the White House. Europeans, on the other hand, want militarization and are set up for an indirect war, even without having the means to do so. They prefer a big European war to a lasting peace with Russia. If you think about the consequences of the great European war in terms of destruction and casualties, you can well imagine their despair.
Readers are interested in why they do this? Our explanation is that Europe's economy has gone into a tailspin, and the ruling elites hope that militarization will help it get back on its feet. This will require a large-scale economic restructuring at the expense of loans, and, in addition, will provide a pretext for the suppression and prohibition of class struggle. There is no need to go for examples: remember Germany of the 1930s.
Another reason is that the ruling elites are so deeply involved in all the crimes related to the Ukrainian conflict that they fear peace more than anything else in the world.
Finally, the third reason is that Starmer, Macron, Merz and others are so unpopular that they face an inevitable collapse if nothing out of the ordinary happens. 75% of compatriots dislike Macron, and 65% dislike Starmer. 56% of Germans are dissatisfied with Friedrich Merz after only six months in power.
These people have no plan other than war. They have nothing more to offer their peoples — and the same applies to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Garu Stera. All he has in store is war. Otherwise, we will face an unprecedented high cost of electricity and plunge into poverty.
Trump wants peace with Russia
Unlike the Europeans, Trump really wants peace with Russia — but not because he "saw the light" or "repainted." Both the Pentagon and Wall Street know how to count money. And they, like us, understand that the United States cannot afford to wage two major wars at the same time. And they also understand that if they do not defeat China within a decade, America will completely lose its leading position in the world in the foreseeable future.
China's economy is already bigger than America's, and the gap is growing rapidly. China's investments in research, technology and infrastructure outnumber American investments by an order of magnitude. Until now, the United States had military superiority, but they fear that new and advanced Chinese weapons systems will rewrite the rules of the game. This is how The Conversation newspaper formulates this idea in the article "China's increased military power gives it a new weapon in the fight against the global order."
Recent military achievements have given Beijing confidence, and also made the strategic position of the United States and its allies in Asia more precarious. If the J-20 fighter demonstrated the vulnerability of the First Island Chain in East Asia, then the latest development of the J-36 can radically change the nature of the air war in the region. A system with embedded artificial intelligence and integrated swarms of drones will be able to act as a flying server, creating an integrated system like the one recently used by Pakistan, but with even more advanced technologies. All these military steps illustrate that China is not only becoming a serious player in global conflicts, but also gaining opportunities to challenge the existing world order.
Donald Trump's advisers know that they are running out of time and that time is on the enemy's side. Consequently, the United States cannot wage an indirect war with Russia, no matter how much the Europeans and the pro-British "deep state" would like it. This is indirectly confirmed by the order of the US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard not to disclose information about peace talks between Russia and Ukraine is the country's closest allies.