International Politics

[Nintex]

The US sees this as a larger realignment in security and geo-politics.
They want to reduce the size of the military of US, China, Russia by 50% and they want to break-up the alliance between Iran, North Korea, China and Russia.

Spoiler: how we got here (click to show)(click to hide)

The current policy was to deliver a strategic defeat to Russia in Ukraine but that's just not happening and the cost/benefit ratio in that war for all sides has long gone out the window. In fact, the Russians are pretty desperate and China is squeezing them hard. In Ukraine Zelensky is calling the shots full stop. He has purged his government many times of critics. 

Two key points in the war were the rejections of the first deal, which was all things considered not a bad outcome. Ukraine would not join NATO, it would join the EU, both sides would withdraw forces, the Russians would get the 2 rebel provinces etc. . It happened at the time of the big Russian retreat. But seeing the Russians had failed NATO believed that they could beat the Russians if Zelensky continued the war, the US liked the idea of punishing Russia. So Boris Johnson was send to tell Zelensky to scuttle the deal and instead offer Ukraine increased military support. But what they didn't expect was that Russia would also be able to expand the scope and scale of the war and the Russians weren't out of modern missiles and shells. They quickly turned to China and North Korea as well as black markets.

That turning point was supposed to have been the Ukrainian counteroffensive in 2023. The big planned Ukrainian breakthrough using their best tanks and fresh troops. It didn't work because Ukraine didn't want to commit too many forces into one spearhead fearing huge losses, instead sending them in smaller batches. They had also underestimated Russian defenses. the Germans told them to drive around the minefields but there was no way to do that. Plus, the plans leaked. The Russian lines held. While there was some public dissent in Russia and the Wagner group, the regime held on and at that point the European leaders realized that they didn't want Russia to fall apart in chaos either. So the Ukrainians were told not to take advantage of the Wagner operation.

After that the Ukrainians have mostly done attacks to boost morale or western support, showing that they are still in this fight by moving into Kursk. Yet again however, the attack stalled, not enough troops no clear strategic objectives. And often when the US or EU finds out about their objectives, they tell them not to attack Russian ICBM sites, officials, bridges, nuclear power plants or they don't get the weapon systems they need (German Taurus) to attack Russian formations preparing for counter attacks.

Trump and his real estate guys look at all this through a different lens than 'Russia bad - Ukraine good' for them it really boils down to 'Killing bad - Loot good'. And they're just putting offers out to both sides to essentially get their investment back.

To Ukraine: you mobilize more troops, we'll give you $500 billion so you can buy weapons from us and in exchange you'll give us 50% of what you make

To Russia: we'll help you to end this where it stands, in exhange you'll cut ties with your other partners (China, Iran, North Korea etc.) and do what we say

Ukraine said: no, we're not doing that let's negotiate a better deal.

Russia said, well let's talk about it and they showed the US that US companies lost $300 billion by not doing business with Russia but for the US $30.337 trillion GPD, that's a rounding error. They also offered up some cooperative projects in the Artic. Trumps guys realized, ok these guys are really desperate there is potential here and what they're asking (Zelensky out, no Ukraine in NATO etc.) is something we can live with. Maybe we can take over some business from China too and prevent a nuclear Iran.

And now the EU panics as they realize there is new management in the US that might cut a deal with the Russians and they're shocked at the 'cost' of increased US military support. If Ukraine has to pay it all back, those would be worse terms than Germany got after WWI. And Zelensky argues he never got all that money and Ukraine already sold most of what it owned.

China panics too because they realize that if Russia and the US work together, their goal of dominating Asia and taking over Russia is at risk plus all their interests in Europe.

The US wants to get the best deal out of 'either' side. So while they play hardball with Ukraine, they also send Kellogg to see how they can hurt the Russians more.

The EU just sees a massive bill. A massive bill to pay for their own security, restoring the damage in Ukraine, peacekeeping and another massive wave of refugees. Not to mention the write down on all the costs of the war.