The Biden administration's approach was straightforward: Grow NATO and weaken the military and aspirations of a long-time opponent of the United States and its allies.
On Mar 4, 2025, at 12:18 AM, Pieter Steenekamp <piet...@randcontrols.co.za> wrote: Under Biden, the end goal was never discussed—only the emphasis on supporting Ukraine’s war effort to punish the "evil" Putin. What a change under Trump! America is no longer leading the effort; Keir Starmer is now stepping up to lead Europe in handling its own war. In a press conference following a Ukraine war summit on Sunday, Starmer announced that: - The UK, France, and other European nations will work with Ukraine on a plan to stop the fighting. - They will discuss this plan with the United States. - Together, they will take it forward. - Their goal is to strengthen Ukraine and support a just and lasting peace. - He emphasized that he sees America as a reliable partner and spoke with Trump before the summit. This shift, triggered by Trump, is surely a huge improvement over the situation under Biden. Or not? PS: Starmer’s press conference can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4a5N_zSNJU On Tue, 4 Mar 2025 at 06:44, steve smith <sasm...@swcp.com<mailto:sasm...@swcp.com>> wrote: Friday afternoon the simple term "WWIII" took on a whole new understanding/context for me. Before that it was some variation on a nuclear exchange between any 2-3 of the major nuclear powers (US/USSR/China) which was held at bay mostly by variations on MAD. Not only did the possibility of retaliation (before first-strike lands, or soon after) make it unthinkable, but so did the challenges of regional and global nuclear contamination and a likely nuclear winter (minimum of northern hemisphere, but global consequences). Now I see it being something more like a new European War similar to WWI & WWII, not involving North America directly (we don't pitch nor catch any) 1. Europe sends in air and ground troops (and more equipment) to Ukraine to squash Putin's vestigal army. Marcus' no-fly-zone. * Ukraine continues to punish Russia (e.g. destroying military assets inside Russia) * The European coalition masses conventional forces on Russian borders with a "ready posture" * Russia is humiliated. * Putin (not Russia) in his humiliation decides to use his nukes... craters half the major cities or capitols in UK/EU. * France and UK have a *handful* of nukes. I'm out of date, most or all are on nuclear subs which Russia may or may not know the location of. * Moscow and a few 'grads become craters. * Nuclear Winter * Misery across Eurasia, the likes of which Russians are more accustomed 2. Europe can't agree enough to give Ukraine decisive support (as in 1 above). * Russia grinds Ukraine down, while using up yet more of it's own dwindling military and human capital. * Europe and Russia rattle sabers for months or years but Russia is too depleted to continue a conventional war. * Russia (Putin) gets impatient or arrogant and decides to nuke European powers. * Again, the handful of non-US nukes targeted on Russia are enough to make a bad mess and maybe even win but only if used pre-emptively. * (Western) Eurasia is a mess for a century. 3. In either case MAGA (with/without Trump alive/vital/engaged) sits back and eats popcorn. * If MAGA holds US power, they grind away at European and possibly Russian resources, stealing and war profiteering boldly. * Maybe anti-MAGA backlashes MAGA out of power (probably has to be a strong political win followed by some minor but decisive bloodshed). Maybe we help them rebuild (similar to post-WWII) or maybe we just sit back on our side of the Ocean. 4. China waits patiently for the right moment to grab Mongolia for it's "raw earth" (trump SIC) and/or Taiwan.... possibly are both worth their effort... possibly the US uses the European distraction as an opportunity to treat China as our only overt competitor. I don't see the world "a better place" for any of this except in the extreme case of significant depopulation of both (sadly) third-world innocents and first-world belligerents (military, political, economic), and even then it isn't clear to me just *when* or *how* the "meek inherit the earth" but I'll be damned if it isn't an outcome I find myself rooting for! Feels like if COVID had just been slightly more virulent, we might have gotten there by a vaguely more graceful route? GAH! On 3/3/25 9:10 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: 1. NATO creates a no-fly zone over Ukraine, and destroys any Russian asset in Ukraine 2. The Ukranians continue to develop their drone programs for targeted attacks in Russia 3. Europe gives them long-range weapons, Storm Shadow and Taurus for larger targets Biden should have just done this, knowing that Trump would throw the world into chaos. From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com><mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp Sent: Monday, March 3, 2025 7:50 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com><mailto:friam@redfish.com> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Back at the ranch, I'm enjoying the popcorn. A Case For and Against Trump in the Context of Ukraine The Case Against Trump Russia invaded Ukraine, and Ukraine has been fighting back heroically for three years. It is crucial to take decisive action against countries that invade others unprovoked. A good example is the First Gulf War, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, and the U.S. led a coalition to push Iraq out. That kind of response helps maintain international order. However, Trump now portrays Ukraine as the aggressor and openly aligns himself with Putin. His stance undermines the principle of standing against aggression and emboldens authoritarian regimes. His willingness to cozy up to Putin is simply wrong. Period. The Case For Trump Maintaining international order is important, but only if you have the power to enforce it effectively. If you can't win a war, engaging in it is a mistake. Consider how the U.S. aligned with Stalin in the later stages of World War II—not because Stalin was good, but because confronting him directly wasn’t a realistic option at the time. Putin may be an amateur compared to Stalin, but the logic remains: if you can’t stop him, you may have to find a way to work with him. Looking at today's reality, there is no viable path to pushing Russia out of Ukraine unless the U.S. commits fully—boots on the ground. But no one in America supports that. Given this, there’s a case for engaging with Russia pragmatically, much like how the U.S. dealt with Stalin, to bring the war to an end. Continuing to support Ukraine half-heartedly, without full military commitment, has serious downsides. The war could drag on indefinitely, and if Ukraine eventually wins, Russia would be humiliated. A humiliated nuclear-armed Russia is a dangerous prospect. History offers a warning—Germany’s humiliation after World War I directly contributed to the rise of Hitler. The consequences of a humiliated Russia could be similarly unpredictable and catastrophic. My Take In my lifetime, we had an almost perfect leader in South Africa—Nelson Mandela. Unfortunately, he is no longer with us. But surely, with today's AI, we could create a virtual Madiba, and he would know exactly what to do. On Mon, 3 Mar 2025 at 22:28, Tom Johnson <jtjohnson...@gmail.com<mailto:jtjohnson...@gmail.com>> wrote: So as usual: Follow the Money. If Trump gets a deal with Ukraine on those rare earth minerals, upon leaving Ukraine, where does that ore go and to whom? My bet is to some company(ies) that Trump et al. have interests in. TJ On Mon, Mar 3, 2025 at 12:33 PM Santafe <desm...@santafe.edu<mailto:desm...@santafe.edu>> wrote: It’s such an encapsulation of that part of the society (including t and v) to think that they could “humiliate” Zelenskyy. By insisting, in a conversation with toxic scum, on the relevance of reality, he was about the only clean thing in the room that could be heard. There are people like Fareed Zakaria who think that trump can be somehow managed by a canny player. That doesn’t ring correct to me, unless the player has a lot of power and money, and it is the power and money that are managing trump. No agreement with trump is worth the paper it is written on. We all understand that he will do anything he is not stopped from doing. The problem with the american presidency is that there become fewer and fewer actors who can stop its occupant from doing things, in the era of political parties as universalizing corrupting bodies. If this whole train continues, they will eventually degrade the u.s. in wealth and power enough that its ability to do damage declines. But there is so much accumulated right now, that they can do enormous harm before they undercut themselves. I am persuaded by those who opine that trump has no intention of doing anything to aid Ukraine, and that the point of the performance was to put up a front for not doing anything, for the same audience who interprets any of that as a humiliation of Zelenskyy. If trump could extort money or resource access, and then backstab in return for it, I expect he would be interested in that opportunity. But not more than that. I also think that people are living a little bit in the past when they comment that, with trump, it’s always about money. That was before the first presidency, when his possibilities to exercise abusive power over other people in a country with some degree of rule of law was limited, relative to the amount of spending he could do (whether solvent or insolvent). But the access to abusive power in the presidency, for a sociopath, is on a scale not available to anybody else. If money was heroin for that addiction, the power of the presidency is fentanyl, and I don’t think trump is going back now. Money: fine; but that’s now the second motive. (I think there are elements of this for Musk as well, but there is enough about him that is different that I wouldn’t put him in the same category, or in the same post here.) I, of course, don’t _know_ anything, and I don’t even have any sophistication thinking in this sphere. But from my long distance from it, I can imagine that the calculus is roughly this at the moment: It is still possible that trump won’t direct the u.s. military to attack Ukraine directly. The question whether it is possible comes back, entirely, to what force is available to stop him from ordering it. I don’t doubt for a minute that, if the EU starts to get scared, and if they have time to act constructively, enough to start to give Ukraine meaningful ability to hold land or push back a bit, the u.s. under trump would act as a saboteur of that effort. If that is the correct vantage point, I would imagine that Zelenskyy’s challenge is to try to orient the rest of the world into some structure that will hem trump and the trumpers in as much as possible from direct attack, and where possible against sabotage. (Sabotage is harder, because to even find out that it is going on, you need somebody on the inside to report.) If they can get some weapons out of the weapons contractors and the congressmen, sure; try to do what you can. But any of that has meaning only when it is in your hands and being used. Don’t put weight on anything short of that. (I don’t mean, in this, btw, to downplay the true problem that the current condition is a WWI-type trench warfare with drones, and the prospect of extending that to a point of collapse is already so bad, that it takes something truly awful for that not to be the worst. I don’t see indication that any good-faith actor anywhere is denying that, though I don’t think saying it, alone, makes one a good-faith actor.) I had a conversation with a friend over the weekend who is a NASA program manager, and who interpreted a recent directive they had received, to discontinue the use of paper straws, and replace them with plastic straws, as a kickback to some petroleum company that had bribed trump. Given that this is a smart person I am talking to, the quaintness of that interpretation took my breath away. It seems clear beyond daylight, to me, that the images of turtles with straws in their noses, and seabirds dead of them, were the breakthrough that the environmental groups finally got with the public, to get some action to ban that specific plastic item as one of the most insidiously dangerous and cruel. The point of the paper-straw ban was the point of everything with these people. Most directly, it was an intent to deliver a “defeat” to the environmental groups, focusing on the image that had succeeded for them precisely because it is so awful to have to see more of. But more generally, this is the core of meanness. It is a rage, by those who are defiled in their nature, against the existence of anything that isn’t defiled. This is again Hannah Arendt’s summary of the last-century European political actors: that they didn’t understand the distinction between the parties and the movements. The parties wanted to control the government, whereas the movements wanted to destroy the government. Public commentary on this drives me nuts, because it seems to exactly repeat this error. People talk about the appointments of degraded morons to agency heads as being about loyalty: take somebody who couldn’t earn anything in a world of merit, and put him on a plush perch that he knows he will only retain as long as he can continue to curry favor. But I believe that only to about a 30% level as the motive. And it is an inward-facing motive; how to keep various functionaries on a leash. There is an outward-directed motive, and I think that is about 70% of the drive. These people are put there, because he couldn’t find anybody worse. It is again the effort to eliminate the notion of legitimacy from the concept of society people will adopt and live within. The word I wanted to use for the latter, thinking over the weekend, was “vesting”. It’s a bit of a bland word, but it wraps up several things that otherwise I can’t encompass in one word. The cognitive concept of truth; abstract notions such as justice; the society as an agreement underpinned by legitimized institutions. What all these have in common is that people accept restraint to uphold a prior commitment to these other things as “higher” over the long run. And when the mob wants to destroy the state — meaning, really to destroy that concept of society — it is this “higher” that they can keep their attention fixed on, as all the other particular targets (immigrants, academics, civil servants, black people, gay people, etc.) get rotated in and out as opportunities arise. So anyway: if every dealing with trump turns out to be, over time, a loss for Zelenskyy — the reality behind the literary Faustian Bargain — he may not be worse off having the break occur earlier. I don’t know what it may buy him to have humiliated t and v, by having the dignity to not accept those terms of conversation, in terms of coalition-building with other heads of state. I do continue to wonder what China’s play in this will be. I imagine they think they will have no trouble “managing” Russia into some kind of continuing subordinate status, when it is alone with a gigantic land area but a limited economy and population. If it were even just Russia swallowing Ukraine, China might still think of that as an okay outcome. I feel pretty sure they want the rare earths, in view of their relations with Mongolia up to now, and the fact that the only thing protecting Taiwan is that it holds the entire world’s highest technology as a trust, and collapsing it would cause such a large global implosion that it would destabilize China as well, for now. But they probably figure they can get those from Russian control, where Russia couldn’t develop them internally anyway. An actual coalition of Russia with the U.S., however, could become more worrisome for China, even if the U.S. is undergoing a process of self-degradation. So it is not inconceivable to me that China could want some stalemate to go on a while longer, which limits the coordination of the trumpers with other large actors as much as feasible. Another Faustian bargain for Zelenskyy if it is offered. But maybe more predictable in the short term. But there, too, I don’t know anything. Eric > On Mar 3, 2025, at 11:34, steve smith > <sasm...@swcp.com<mailto:sasm...@swcp.com>> wrote: > > >> It's way too generous to say "Trump has a case". Trump and Vance's "case" >> consists of "You should be grateful to us because we give you money". I.e. >> suck up to me and I'll deign to give you more money. > I don't think Trump or Vance have backed any significant support for Ukraine. > The US people through our elected representatives and tax dollars *HAVE* > supported Ukraine (albeit a little slowly an a little anemically and a little > timidly sometimes?). Zelensky has been extravagantly and eloquently > thankful to all of the above. Trump and Vance were spoiling for an > opportunity to try to humiliate Zelensky in front of the cameras, so they > contrived it. >> Maybe someone makes the case you say is Trump's. But it's not Trump making >> that case. If he sporadically vomits words that sound like that, it's >> because they were put into his mouth by someone else. The question is Who >> put them there? Putin? Elno? Thiel? > > The "raw earth" (sic Trump) deal was extortion. Whether Ukraine's mineral > resources could or should be mortgaged to secure the financial support is one > thing, but the idea that the point of the West supporting Ukraine against the > hyper-aggressive Putin-led Russia is about economics completely misses the > point. Zelensky is right to avoid "doing business with" anyone who is not a > clear staunch ally when in this situation. > > Trump & Allies are clearly "War Profiteers", a fine old tradition among the > industrialists and financiers of the "free world". > > >> >> On 3/2/25 7:42 PM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote: >>> Just watched a new episode where two toddlers threw their toys out of the >>> cot. >>> >>> Zelensky makes a strong case — Putin is unreliable, having broken numerous >>> agreements in the past, so any peace deal would need ironclad security >>> guarantees. But lecturing Trump is hardly the way to secure a favorable >>> minerals trade agreement. >>> >>> Trump also has a valid case — the war is stagnating, there’s no realistic >>> military path to driving Russia out of Ukraine, and pursuing peace makes >>> sense. But losing your temper at an international press conference is not >>> the way to get there. >>> >>> At the end of the day, they’re all human, and it makes for great real-life >>> drama. 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