President Trump’s endeavours to bring the Ukraine-Russia war to a peaceful closure would bring sorely needed harmony to Europe and the world. However, it heralds multiple, deep, and fascinating geopolitical implications.
While President Biden wanted to win the war against Russia, President Trump is fixated upon just stopping it. He now threatens to unilaterally dump Ukraine and sign a peace deal with President Putin—leaving his European allies stumped, stupefied, and floundering about in vacuity, searching for a viable, comprehensible way out of this conundrum. This profound paradigm shift in US policy has left the Ukrainians and the Europeans high and dry, wondering how to re-engage Russia while simultaneously securing Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.
The US and Europe had taken up principled and integrated policy positions on Ukraine, Russia, and the war between them. It was a collective effort with very significant geopolitical, geostrategic, and geoeconomic ramifications. They had jointly invested a great deal of political, financial, economic, diplomatic, military, and technological capital in supporting Ukraine’s war against Russia. Europe feels quite undone by this totally unexpected, incomprehensible, unilateral US U-turn on Russia. Europe suffered immensely when the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline was “sabotaged” and was literally coerced into limiting all economic ties with Russia. However, without the active support of the US, Europe is in no position to offer any genuine security guarantees to a beleaguered Ukraine. Its approach to the Ukraine-Russia conflict was—and will continue to be—a subset of the US’s relations with the two belligerents. It has no option but to tamely fall in line with the US diktat. Furthermore, it will require a monumental effort to revive its relationships with Russia.
President Trump, though, is determined to achieve multiple economic objectives through his geopolitical manoeuvring in Europe: one, stop the unrelenting, one-sided flow of economic and military resources to Ukraine; two, gain hold of at least 50% of Ukraine’s rare earth metals, minerals, and fossil fuel deposits/wealth, alluding to it as compensation for the aid already given to it; three, regain ingress into the massive Russian market, re-engage it in wide-ranging bilateral trade, create a harmonious trade and investment environment for its multinationals, and most importantly, gain unrestricted access to Russia’s massive deposits of rare earth metals and minerals too. President Putin is quite amenable to such an investment by the US. Four, coerce the Europeans to enhance their defence spending, thus reducing the burden on the US to bear the bulk of the expenditure on the defence of Europe—NATO. The UK has already announced a rise in its defence budget!
The worst-off would be Ukraine. It has been yet another sorry victim of the US’s infamous Strategy of Offshore Balancing. It has been ruthlessly exploited to achieve the US’s grand strategic objectives, ostensibly against the Sino-Russia combine in general and Russia in particular. To start with, it was pitilessly duped out of its nuclear warheads and missiles under the Budapest Agreement of 1994, leaving it defenceless and grossly vulnerable to external aggression. Had it retained those strategic assets, it would have easily deterred all forms of military aggression by the Russians. It would have maintained its booming economy, bustling industrial and agricultural potential, independence, territorial integrity, sovereignty, and prospects for a brighter future. However, if President Trump succeeds in freezing hostilities immediately, Ukraine would have already conceded almost 20% of its territory to Russia, lost hundreds of thousands of its soldiers and civilians in battle, and seen many more Ukrainians emigrate during the war. Ominously, it would have pledged access to its very significant deposits of rare earth metals, minerals, oil, and gas to the US. This will be the “most unkindest cut of all.” It will take decades and hundreds of billions of dollars in investment to bring Ukraine back to its earlier prosperity and glory.
President Trump’s policies might turn out to be comprehensively in President Putin’s and Russia’s favour. The US has already indicated that Ukraine is neither likely to get its lost territories back from Russia nor will it become a part of NATO. This literally vindicates President Putin, who will thus claim to have achieved his most critical war objectives in Ukraine. All this could accrue further geopolitical and geoeconomic advantages for Russia. It would have finished off its crippling international isolation, and the US would have created the enabling environment for that.
On the economic front, Russia will primarily stop spending enormous financial resources on an unending war and instead will perhaps receive meaningful investments from the US into its economy. It is likely to welcome US multinationals back onto its soil. At some stage, it will also endeavour to become a free-of-sanctions, full, and active member of the global economy once again. Furthermore, President Putin has consolidated and strengthened his strategic partnership with China. President Xi has been quoted as saying that Russia and China are “inseparable.” So, he ends up with the best of relations with the US and China, with Europe scrambling to regain its working relationship with him.
In the final analysis, President Putin’s Russia thus appears profoundly successful in the war—President Trump’s self-serving compulsions and geoeconomic objectives notwithstanding!
The saga of Ukraine highlights the fickleness and mercurial nature of US policy formulation, decision-making, and its impact. Ukraine might ruefully recall Henry Kissinger’s famous adage: “To be an enemy of the US is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal!” The US’s strategic partners and allies (especially QUAD, AUKUS, and others) must be wondering—if this could happen to Ukraine-Russia today, could it be Taiwan-China tomorrow? Geopolitically, the Trump Effect guarantees interesting times ahead!
Imran Malik
The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan Army. He can be reached at im.k846@gmail.com and tweets @K846Im.