Ukraine: Here is What's Going to Happen

A quick, but durable, analysis

Here is what is going to happen with Ukraine.

If you ignore the noise, you’ll start recognizing what’s really happening and where all of this is going.

Trump’s Stance on Security Guarantees

Let’s start with Trump as he’s currently the most important piece of this puzzle and understanding his thinking is key.

It starts with the fact that the only security guarantees Trump wants to offer are the mineral deal which he sees as aligning US and Ukraine interests. But he has no intention of risking military engagement between the US and Russia over Ukraine beyond the implicit threat of US commercial involvement. He has long held this position and he appears intent on doing so. But it is significant beyond the immediate disappointment or cheers it might bring to the extreme partisans on this issue.

This is significant for two reasons.

First it has caused Europe to finally move its “butt” because the US isn't coming in to save the day vis a vis Ukraine. That safety net will soon be gone. It's a call to action that Europe has no choice but to react to...and I think they are/will. They had 3 years to do something and their anemic response to this challenge, on their own continent, is a wake-up call they are not yet serious about security and their own defense. Hopefully this will move them to action on other issues like immigration reform because otherwise the influence of the nationalist populists will continue to grow leading eventually to a post-liberal Europe…but that’s a topic for another time.

The second, but really more important point is that this also reaffirms the US's commitment to deterrence via NATO. Recognize that NATO doesn't force anybody to do anything. Even if Article 5 is activated, the US can’t be forced to do anything it doesn't want to do. It's important so long as there is a mentality among it's members that it is "the" redline.

By refusing to bring the US (which is the same as NATO in this situation) into the Ukraine deal, Trump is indicating that NATO membership is still a redline that Russia must not cross. If it didn't matter, then he could easily extend security guarantees when it's obvious he would not engage the US militarily against Russia over Ukraine. In other words, by refusing NATO/US involvement, he is implicitly maintaining the sanctity of deterrence via NATO.

For deterrence via NATO to actually work, the US has to be willing to enforce that red line. Trump is indicating that this red line is still a red line which is why he won't casually throw it into a Ukraine peace deal.

Barrack Obama did more damage to the international world order when he issued his feckless red line warning in Syria than anything since…and that includes Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawl. That bluff exposed a perceived gap between U.S. rhetoric and action, weakening global trust in American leadership and deterrence since then.

Trump’s Threats and Bluster

Understand something about Trump: he wants to be the one who makes this peace deal happen. He understands that such a deal is the kind of thing that will define his legacy for posterity. He’s also not beneath sabotaging peace if Ukraine were to try and go behind his back and leverage the Europeans. But the point stands that Trump wants this to happen more than anybody and will continue to bring enormous pressure on the various parties to get this done…though how much of that will be applied to Russia remains a question.

The only thing I’m not sure is whether he understands that the terms of the peace deal also matter. He has the leverage to impose peace in this war, but it’s easier for him to leverage Ukraine than Russia. If he is shortsighted and just wants a quick deal it will be a a weak and unjust peace for Ukraine. If he understands the situation and sees his legacy through the long view of history, he will eventually need to apply a lot of pressure on Russia to get enough concessions so that this can be a just and lasting peace.

Trump will threaten to walk away, he will halt aid, but he’s done nothing to indicate that he does not want to be in the middle of this. JD Vance gave it away yesterday when he commented that "20k troops from some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years" were not enough for peace. He was trying to make the point that America’s mineral deal is far superior to what a weak Europe could offer militarily. In other words, the US needs to be the main driver of this proccess if we want peace in Ukraine.

What About the Europeans?

Zelensky is traveling around Europe trying to cobble together a coalition of the willing to come up with an alternative security guarantee. There is a lot of questioning of Europe’s military and their readiness to get involved in a war.

While that criticism is merited, I don’t think anybody should sleep on what Europe can bring to bear militarily.

First they have a solid military industrial baset:

The U.S. military industrial base employs around 1.1 million people across 13,000 defense-related firms, producing roughly 40–50 combat aircraft (e.g., F-35s) and 300–400 armored vehicles annually, though it faces supply chain bottlenecks and a reliance on a few giants like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics. Europe’s defense sector, spanning over 2,500 companies and employing 2.5 million people, delivers 60–80 fighter jets (e.g., Eurofighter, Rafale) and 500–600 armored vehicles yearly across nations like France, Germany, and the UK, leveraging a more distributed network of firms like Airbus, Thales, and Rheinmetall for greater resilience and output. -Grok3

Second, did you know that Europeans still build ships while Americans really don’t? And I mean a lot more ships.

Europe’s overall shipbuilding capacity spans about 300 shipyards producing 1.5 to 2 million gross tonnage (GT) annually across commercial and military vessels, vastly outpacing the U.S.’s under 100,000 GT from a handful of yards focused almost entirely on naval output.

Militarily, Europe’s roughly 150 shipyards, including 20 major naval producers, deliver 300,000 to 500,000 GT of warships yearly to sustain a 1,500-ship fleet, while the U.S.’s 7 naval yards struggle to exceed 100,000 GT, supporting a 490-ship fleet with limited scalability and a decades-long maintenance backlog. -Grok3

Third and most importantly is Europe’s airforce which totals somewhere around 1,600 warplanes includin 150 Fifth Generation F-35s which will grow to over 600 with all orders placed. It wasn’t that long ago that Israel demonstrated what it’s fleet of F-35s could do when it desroyed most of Iran’s Russian made air-defense systems without breaking a sweat:

Europe doesn’t even need to have a large land army to counter Russia because Ukraine already provides that. European airsuperiority would be sufficient to turn the entire scale of the war if Russia wanted to challenge European security guarantees.

So the premise that the Europeans don’t have the military might to stand up to Russia is not necessarily so. They have everything they need except for the will.

But as we discussed earlier, this is changing.

Bringing it All Together for Peace

So where are we heading with all of this?

First, I think the US and Ukraine will eventually sign their mineral deal because peace is unlikely without Trump as the mediator. There is no love lost between Europe and Putin, and without Trump there to push and sell the deal there is little hope for a peace deal so I think the mineral deal goes through.

Second will come negotiations regarding how the war is concluded in terms of:

• Territorial concessions

• Population relocation

• Reparations

• Sanctions relief

• etc

This will take a long time as there are a lot of details to haggle over. I don’t mean to minimalize the importance of this part because this is where Ukraine gives part of it’s territory away which is what they’ve been fighting over. But for the purposes of this analysis, I’m more concerned with the last part.

Finally will be the negotiation over the future security of Ukraine. And here is where the entire situation will become very difficult.

Ukraine has two prerequisites that are essential for their own security:

• Security guarantees from Europe including boots on the ground

• No demilitarization of Ukraine - Russia wants Ukraine to disarm and limit size of army

And I think this is where Putin will balk. He will claim that this is no different than NATO at his doorstep…etc, etc, etc. We’ve heard all the arguments.

If it seems very strange that the country that invaded should have an objection to this, you are right but this has been Putin’s stance for a while now. Putin knows that Europe can be a formidable military backstop for Ukraine so agreeing to this would largely close the door on any future military adventurism. It’s not that that I think he has any specific plans at this moment, but that this would mean letting go of Ukraine…something Russia has never been able to do.

And this is where it will all come back to Donald Trump and how he decides to proceed. I have no idea what he is going to do because I am not sure that Trump knows it either. But this will be the crux of the negotiation and whether the peace deal will be fair and just ensuring longterm peace for Ukraine or whether it will be a quick and shallow ceasefire that could flare back up within a few years.

Trump has a good amount of leverage in this sense. He can threaten Putin by escalating to deescalate via increase aid/weapons. But he can also use his leverage against Ukraine to try and impose a deal, citing his mineral partnership as sufficent guarantee, inspite of their security concerns.

As I’ve written in the past, this is the key question that I don’t yet have a feel for how Trump is going to go. Some people will tell you that they already know, but I don’t think even Trump knows yet.

In any case, I am far more optimistic than I was when I wrote this tweet.