The 2025 forecast for Don T and the Ukraine-Russia war

[Grudge]

For those of you who continue to take an interest in what's going on in that part of the world, I'll give you a short summary, followed by expectations for the incoming T administration.

Short recap

The war started out with a lot of surprises. In the first week when it started, it looked like Russia was going to steamroll Ukraine with overwhelming force from every corner. However, by that time, the Ukrainians had been getting trained in the war against the Eastern Russian-speaking part of the country, and they had set up many defences across the country. So they were quite ready to repel attacks, unlike in 2014 when they were totally unprepared. Moreover, the US and Europe threw in their combined might short of their own troops in favor of Ukraine, and tried to bust up Russia's economy with sanctions.

For the first year this hurt Russia a lot, but as they have been known to do in so many previous wars of history, they adapted quickly, technologically, economically, strategically.

Technologically, the West gave Ukraine those drones before Russia caught on to drone warfare. Well Russia not just caught up but actually bested them through its cheap lancet drones. One of these drones costs like $20,000 a piece and it can knock out equipment that costs a million dollars. Furthermore, innovative electronic signal jamming by the Russians turned those drones launched against them into duds. The West gave Ukraine fancy air defenses, the Russians adapted by modifying their 3 ton bombs to have gliding wings so they can be launched well out of harms way to obliterate buildings off the face of the earth.

Economically, the west tried to choke the economy of Russia, but they adapted by redirecting trade to the East, made adaptations in their economy to stabilize their currency and successfully evaded sanctions. The Russian economy not only did not go bust, it infact grew faster than Germany's and other European countries.

Strategically, the Western press thought Russia was going to lose the war and end up as a broken country and isolated from the world. Ukraine pulled all kinds of maneuvers like attacking Russia's Kursk region, and launching that counter offensive last year. All of this was to keep justifying to the West that their money was well-spent and that they should keep contributing more dollars. On this board you had some crazy people like Lumbergh who tow the Democrat line saying laughable things, like China was going invade Russia and so on. What infact happened was that Russia bolstered its alliances, didn't end up isolated, put its industry on a war footing to churn out military hardware at a scale the West hasn't matched, and fought off the Ukrainian counter-offensives through sound strategy even though the Western press regarded Russian leadership as idiots. Strategically, it is now Ukraine on the backfoot, they are in retreat.

Don T Administration forecast

Don T has made a claim that he will end the war in 24 hours.

Well... first of all, let's not forget, there are still two-and-a-half months to go until T formally becomes president. Until then many things can happen. One possibility is that the Biden government may take the opportunity to seriously escalate support and funding for Ukraine, like give them tens of billions of dollars more, so that it will be too late to reverse by the time T joins. The other possibility is a co-llapse of Ukrainian resistance through demoralization. In that case the bargaining position of US will not be strong since they will not have any leverage.

Don T has a transactional approach as we've seen. E.g., he has in the past asked NATO to match US proportionately in allocating budget, looking at economic value of overseas involvements etc. I think the idea of giving a ruined country like Ukraine membership of NATO will not appeal to him because the US will end up footing the bill for restocking, rebuilding, rearming. So by default T's posture will be averse to spending more on Ukraine. But I'm sure his advisors will present to him a picture of doomsday scenarios of doing that, like "the Russians will attack Poland next", and so on.

I think he will not be keen on anything that seems like capitulation to Russia, so I expect negotiations will be intense and the prospect of arming Ukraine will remain as a bargaining chip, despite his dislike for that. Remember, T is not out to be Russia's f-riend, he wasn't Russia's f-riend in the previous tenure when he imposed a lot of sanctions on them. So he's not going to capitulate and hand the Russians an effortless win.

However, despite what he thinks he can do in terms of ending the war, the Russians themselves are in no hurry to stop their successful offensive. They are skeptical of T because last time they thought he would improve relations but he didn't. The split between East and West is going to endure. Russia has redirected its trade on a long term basis towards eastern countries, the Nord Stream pipeline was busted and is never going to come back. The West holds about $300 billion of Russian cash that they are likely not to give back, so in retaliation Russia is nationalizing or expelling Western investors. Furthermore, some permanent changes have occurred, like the mutual defence agreement with North Korea. This means if North is attacked, Russia will come to its defence. Same as the permanent change with new countries recently added into NATO.

I happen to think that before T takes over, the US will have lost its leverage. Two and a half months is a long time until T takes over, and the Ukrainian front might well co-llapse by then. If that happens, it's going to be more of a surrender rather than a negotiated end.

[jawn galliano]

yeah pretty much tracks with my view, the talk of ending the war is empty bluster. there's simply too much momentum from the western side on prolonging it (even without accounting for the lame-duck measures that are certain to come, nor the stay-behind networks that have been dispersed throughout the EU to keep them in line). to the extent that he's in any way sincere regarding a desire to end that conflict (extraordinarily doubtful) i think he's gonna get rolled by the state department and intelligence apparatus.

as you point out, even absent any domestic hurdles to be cleared, there's also the small complicating matter that russia will be negotiating from an advantage and the US has very little to offer. russian leadership very obviously isn't going to put much stock in western promises either, given they've all been systematically violated at every point, by every administration, and going back over multiple decades.

[User]

prediction noted, will judge your character on its success or failure

[Corpsepyre]

Now let's hear about what he plans on doing in Gaza.

[jawn galliano]

the same thing we're already doing there, probably just more and faster. the fourth reich isn't gonna suddenly grow a conscience and stop itself!

[Grudge]

I am not too pleased to have accurately predicted the escalation in my main post.