Does Trump Really Have a Plan for Ukraine?
The weird thing about President Trump’s plans for Ukraine is that no knows what they actually are.
Over the last days I have tried to understand what he is trying to achieve. I fail to come up with a theory that makes sense. His behavior is inconsistent. There are also no helpful hints from the White House or leaks to the press. There is frenetic action here and there and pompous pronouncements. But what are the overall plans?
Prof. Mearsheimer likewise says (vid) that Trump’s behavior makes no sense. Blackmailing Ukraine into a resource extraction deal is not a realist position. It is not even mercantilistic. There is nothing to sell there and any deal will be scuppered by courts under oligarch pressure. It makes no sense.
So what is the evidence that Trump has a plan? What is the evidence that he is really negotiating with Russia? What is he factually doing to shut down the war as he has claimed he would do?
Yves Smith, quoting contrarian opinions of Brian Berletic and John Helmer, is likewise wondering what Trump is about:
Because the Trump Administration has no clear idea of what it wants in terms of a Ukraine end game, save being able to claim that Trump ended the war and is therefore a great deal-maker, it is at serious risk of falling into the behavior Sun Tsu warned about: “All tactics and no strategy is the noise before the defeat.”
Specifically, we’ll discuss how oddly under-amplified assessments by Brian Berletic and John Helmer, show that the idea, popular in the independent media, that Trump represents a great foreign policy break from the past is exaggerated. His difference in methods are being unduly confused with differences in aims.
But we’ll first address the way a new Administration pet fixation, that of wresting a minerals/other economic right
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