Posted on 07/24/2022 4:39:04 AM PDT by Alas Babylon!
Biden is repeating what he is told to say by the people who actually run this government. His administration believes we are at war with Russia and their actions reinforce that assertion.
We are not at war with Russia, the Russians are at war with Ukraine.
Stop the gaslighting. We, along with our allies, have imposed the harshest economic sanctions ever against a country. The objective is to create conditions so painful for the Russian people that Putin will be forced from office, i.e., regime change. Amidst the diplomatic fog, occasionally the truth comes out whether from Biden or Austin. Using Orwellian language cannot disguise what is happening on the ground. “War is peace. Freedom is. slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
Are We Sure America Is Not at War in Ukraine?
Are we at war in Ukraine? If we swapped places — if Russian apparatchiks admitted helping to kill American generals or sink a U.S. Navy vessel — I doubt we’d find much ambiguity there. At the very least, what the United States is doing in Ukraine is not not war. If we have so far avoided calling it war and can continue to do so, maybe that’s only because we’ve become so uncertain of the meaning of the word.
The history of US involvement in Vietnam is not repeating itself.
We are just at the beginning of the war in Ukraine. We are sending arms and training the Ukrainian military to use them. We are using our intel in real time to help the Ukrainians on the battlefield. Next will be advisors on the ground (publicly disclosed) to assist the Ukrainians. Our advisers in Vietnam were actually involved in combat operations despite public denials. All it will take is an incident to trigger direct confrontation with the Russians.
As I indicated to RG, we fought a proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. The eventual blow-back from that war gave us AQ and 9/11. We responded by invading Afghanistan to take out AQ and the Taliban. Mission creep to nation-building kept us there for almost two decades and the squandering of trillions of dollars and thousands of lives lost by us and hundreds of thousands of Afghan lives. We left in ignominious defeat, similar to the sad exit from Vietnam after more than a decade of sacrifice. Trump won because he wanted to stop these endless wars.
The Russians could stop it all tomorrow. They can’t only because Putin’s salty ego won’t let them.
Stop it by doing what? Putin will not give up Crimea and the Donbas region. Zelensky, encouraged by us, will not make any territorial concessions. He wants to return to the status quo ante bellum in 2014. You seem to forget there has been an ongoing war for 8 years prior to the second invasion of Russia in February 2022. Why didn't Ukraine implement the 2015 Minsk Agreement? They could have retained the Donbas region under that agreement. If Putin were to leave tomorrow, there is no way Russia will ever give up Crimea.
Everything they are doing is their own choice—not ours. They could stop the war, claim the Donbas, and call it victory, even now.
And what would be Ukraine's response? Zelensky is orchestrating a counterattack to take back the lost territory. Ukraine will not accept the loss of the Donbas or Crimea. Neither will we. The Rubicon has been crossed.
Their attack against Odessa’s harbor facilities proves their word cannot be trusted.
So how can Putin end the war? The US has escalated the kind of weaponry we are supplying. It could even be used to launch attacks against Russian territory. Increased Russian casualties will escalate the level of the conflict. Putin and Russia cannot accept defeat. The Russians will go after strategic targets like power plants, electrical grids, port facilities, bridges, water purification plants, dams, etc. We have not seen yet the next level of warfare. The Russians have been fairly restrained when it comes to target selection. And when that happens, what will we and NATO do?
I’m not gaslighting.
The United States of America is not fighting. We have a right to support or NOT support other countries with weapons if they ask for them. We don’t have to, but in many cases, this is our policy. Lend Lease, in 1939-41 is such an example. Note that neither Germany nor Italy was happy with that, but it didn’t start a war with us. And yes, I’m aware of incidents such as the Reuben James sinking, etc. Same with us supporting the ROC in China. We even flew fighters for them.
But we are not at war with Russia. There is no historical analog. So called egging on an adversary with dirty tricks and deals has always been going on, for the Russians and the USA, and most other powers.
The Ukrainians and Russians are at war due to the Feb 24th invasion.
Stop being so emotional. The US doesn’t have “apparatchiks”. If so, I wonder what the pay grade is?
People in and out of government express their opinions. Are these opinions worthy of fighting a global war? When Russian State TV personalities said the Russians should nuke the United Kingdom and cause a tidal wave over England, is that an act of war? Medveded saying the Russians should take back Alaska?
Nope. The Russian have it in their means to stop the war right now. No one else could do that.
Not yet. But warfare takes may forms. We have declared economic war against Russia. That is undeniable. And it can lead to kinetic war.
How U.S. Economic Warfare Provoked Japan’s Attack on Pearl Harbor
Lend Lease, in 1939-41 is such an example. Note that neither Germany nor Italy was happy with that, but it didn’t start a war with us. And yes, I’m aware of incidents such as the Reuben James sinking, etc. Same with us supporting the ROC in China. We even flew fighters for them.
Germany declared war on the US first on December 11, 1941. Nazi Germany declared war against the United States, in response to what was claimed to be a series of provocations by the United States government when the U.S. was still officially neutral during World War II. Lend-lease contributed to that declaration of war.
On Thursday 11 December 1941, American Chargé d'Affaires Leland B. Morris, the highest ranking American diplomat in Germany, was summoned to Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop's office where Ribbentrop read Morris the formal declaration; the meeting lasted from 2:18 to 2:21 pm. The text was:
MR. CHARGE D'AFFAIRES:
The Government of the United States having violated in the most flagrant manner and in ever increasing measure all rules of neutrality in favor of the adversaries of Germany and having continually been guilty of the most severe provocations toward Germany ever since the outbreak of the European war, provoked by the British declaration of war against Germany on September 3, 1939, has finally resorted to open military acts of aggression.
On September 11, 1941, the President of the United States publicly declared that he had ordered the American Navy and Air Force to shoot on sight at any German war vessel. In his speech of October 27, 1941, he once more expressly affirmed that this order was in force. Acting under this order, vessels of the American Navy, since early September 1941, have systematically attacked German naval forces. Thus, American destroyers, as for instance the Greer, the Kearney and the Reuben James, have opened fire on German submarines according to plan. The Secretary of the American Navy, Mr. Knox, himself confirmed that American destroyers attacked German submarines.
Furthermore, the naval forces of the United States, under order of their Government and contrary to international law have treated and seized German merchant vessels on the high seas as enemy ships.
The German Government therefore establishes the following facts:
Although Germany on her part has strictly adhered to the rules of international law in her relations with the United States during every period of the present war, the Government of the United States from initial violations of neutrality has finally proceeded to open acts of war against Germany. The Government of the United States has thereby virtually created a state of war.
The German Government, consequently, discontinues diplomatic relations with the United States of America and declares that under these circumstances brought about by President Roosevelt Germany too, as from today, considers herself as being in a state of war with the United States of America.
Accept, Mr. Charge d'Affaires, the expression of my high consideration.
December 11, 1941.
RIBBENTROP.
But we are not at war with Russia. There is no historical analog. So called egging on an adversary with dirty tricks and deals has always been going on, for the Russians and the USA, and most other powers. The Ukrainians and Russians are at war due to the Feb 24th invasion.
Gaslighting again. Again, we and our allies declared economic war on Russia. War can take different forms: economic, cyber, kinetic, etc. We are in a state of hostility, conflict, or antagonism with Russia. Remember the Cold War?
Russia invaded the first time in 2014 and annexed Crimea. What's different this time?
People in and out of government express their opinions. Are these opinions worthy of fighting a global war? When Russian State TV personalities said the Russians should nuke the United Kingdom and cause a tidal wave over England, is that an act of war? Medveded saying the Russians should take back Alaska?
It matters as to who says what when. When Biden calls for the removal of Putin, it matters. When SecDef Austin says the objective is to degrade Russian military capabilities and remove Putin, it matters. When we have Western leaders making pilgrimages to Ukraine and making bellicose statements, it matters. When Zelensky says Ukraine will never accept territorial gains by Russia, it matters.
Nope. The Russian have it in their means to stop the war right now. No one else could do that.
Wrong. The US is keeping the war going by providing the money and weaponry Ukraine must have to continue to fight. Removing or threatening to remove that support would force Zelensky to negotiate. Remember how Congress withdrew military aid from Vietnam in 1974, which effectively ended the war? The South Vietnamese fought on creditably after all US combat troops were withdrawn in 1973, a process that began in 1969. But the lack of US financial and arms support sealed their fate.
Again, we are just at the beginning stages of our involvement in this war. US public support will wane the longer it goes on.
Nope, again.
Not yet.
We are not at war with Russia.
Who knows the future? Maybe next year? Maybe next month? Maybe tomorrow, or maybe... Never.
As far as Dec 11, 41 and Germany... Seriously, that's just a wall of text. Regardless of any events, Hitler ordered it so, and it was. The reason is Pearl Habor and Japan's attack. That's the difference vis-a-vis the Nazis from December 6th to December 11th. Ribbentrop was so ordered to draw up "reasons". He did. Hitler's Generals were flabbergasted and dismayed; Churchill, BTW, was euphoric. He thought that meant the end of Germany.
It was.
Japan's aggression in China was there for everyone to see.
Just like today with Russia.
Japan, like Russia, had reasons. But we supported China. Did that mean we'd eventually have to fight Japan? No, Japanese aggression could have stopped.
The last of the economic sanctions that were "too much" for Japan were because Japan took French Indochina. We had a right to oppose that.
But all this history does not change the FACT that Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 Feb 2022.
Again, we are just at the beginning stages of our involvement in this war.
Probably. But not written in stone. Putin could be gone tomorrow (I don't see that); both parties will agree on terms (I would like that); Russia will break the stalemate and take Kiev and dispose Zelenskyy (honestly, I don't see that) or Ukraine will defeat Russia (and I really don't see that).
Or, as you say, this could be just the beginning.
The biggest problem in American foreign policy is that the institutions and postures that were supposed to bring security have in fact brought profound insecurity. U.S. officialdom is edging closer to armed conflict, but seemingly without consciousness of the profound vulnerabilities war would bring. This contradiction is not a novel feature of the American position in the world, but it is perhaps more manifest today than ever before. Assuming responsibility for the world’s conflicts, the United States has enmeshed itself in all the world’s conflicts. Its national security state has become a threat to the security of the American people.
The present age is distinguished from the past in one vital respect. It is marked by the existence of embedded interdependencies in numerous domains—military, financial, economic, ecological, cyber, biological—all of which have immense harm-producing potential. To go to war, even to the brink of war, brings all these vulnerabilities into play. In effect, it makes hostages of the American people to the vicissitudes of America’s world role. That prospect doesn’t seem to frighten our rulers. It should frighten the ruled.
It hardly needs demonstration that the United States is closer to war with Russia than at any time in the past three decades, and more so than most times during the Cold War. By the 1960s there were clear “red lines,” understood and respected by both sides; that is no longer true. That the United States has revived the Lend Lease legislation of 1941 is eerily symbolic, because that earlier moment featured both a fierce determination to aid the allies and a no less emphatic public unwillingness to get into the war. We know how that contradiction was resolved. The United States is not formally at war with Russia, but it has adopted aims that cannot be achieved without a war.
Official U.S. aims are to support Ukraine. “Whatever Ukraine wants, Ukraine gets,” sings Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a reprise of the old Broadway tune. Blinken noted on April 26 that “the United States would support the Ukrainian military in pushing Russian forces out of eastern Ukraine if that is what President Volodymyr Zelensky aims to do. If that is how they define their objectives as a sovereign, democratic, independent country, that’s what we’ll support.” Ukraine’s leaders have demanded that Russia abandon both Crimea and the Donbass, then submit to reparations and a war crimes trial for Vladimir Putin.
How far America’s prodigious aid for Ukraine, at $54 billion and counting, will go in enabling these goals is unclear. Russia appears on the cusp of encircling important pockets of Ukrainian forces in the East—a major defeat for Ukraine that would lead to recriminations—but Ukraine also promises to raise a million-man army paid for by the USA, and ready for offensives in the summer. If Ukraine does go on the offensive, eyeing its lost territories, it can only do so with stout American assistance. In that effort there are lots of paths to a real war between the United States and Russia. The celebrated realist Hans J. Morgenthau wrote, in his rules for effective diplomacy, that you should never let a weak ally make your decisions for you. The Washington establishment rises every morning seemingly determined to violate that injunction.
Russia is now front and center, but Blob and Swamp—the ideological superstructure and material base of the security establishment—had also previously concluded that China was America’s number one threat. 2020, the year of Covid, crystallized the judgment that America and China were locked in an inexorable competition that brought with it a heightened risk of war. The priority that America and the West have placed on the defeat of Russia in Ukraine has added fuel to the Sino-American competition. The threat of U.S. sanctions against China, if it stays faithful to Russia, finds America and China in a game of chicken. Signs that they will turn off the road are wanting, as both powers find “appeasement” to be yet more hazardous.
Toward Taiwan the United States maintains a posture very similar to that which it held toward Ukraine over the last decade. That posture has said “you’re in and you’re out,” you subsist under our protection, which yet falls short of full protection. In East Asia, as in Eastern Europe, Washington’s stance toward its protectorate required a repudiation of past pledges to its great power adversaries, to which its adversaries have been expected to adjust. When Biden blurted out, in a press conference in Tokyo, that America would come to Taiwan’s defense, he and his spokespeople immediately took it back, bringing “strategic clarity” to the proposition that U.S. policy is in fact a muddle. As with Ukraine before the war, America’s stance is to threaten China, protect Taiwan, and reassure the U.S. public that nothing will come of it. Washington is pretty convincing on the first two points, utterly unconvincing on the third.
Rounding out the trifecta of war scares is the demise of prospects for a revival of the Iran nuclear agreement. That was an attempt by the Obama administration to avoid war with Iran while yet keeping Iran within key restraints. Trump’s repudiation of the agreement, together with the inability of the Biden administration to find a path to renewal, has led, predictably, to calls to bomb Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. That does not come only from hawks outside the government; unfortunately, the call seems to be coming from inside the house, as the United States and Israel are slated for military exercises this summer which simulate an attack on Iran.
The JCPOA was intended as a route away from war; its collapse paves the way for one. Given Iranian declarations, it seems likely that Iran will do things that the hawks find intolerable, raising the prospect of a U.S or Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. Biden can’t come to terms because Iran remains for the Washington consensus an enemy to be defeated, and any reconciliation is seen as strengthening Iran in its competition with U.S. informal allies (the Saudis in Yemen, the Israelis in Syria, especially). Yet it is difficult to see how such a war would not deliver a huge shock to the world’s energy system, among other potential ill consequences. Instead of seeking to salvage the agreement, the administration seems to be trying hard to provoke escalations, as with the recent U.S. confiscation of Iranian oil on a Russian-operated ship near Greece. (Asking for a friend: when did piracy become an acceptable method of U.S. statecraft?)
Of these three great conflicts, one would be hard pressed to say which is most likely to produce a real war. Indeed, the prospect of war with all together cannot be excluded. Neoconservatism, once repudiated, is back in the saddle in Washington, having now conquered the Democratic Party with astonishing rapidity. With few exceptions, the national security cadre that was formed over the last generation reads from neocon scripture, which holds that America’s civil religion is to do battle with these three states. Its remedy is the full-court press against them all. In doing so, it replicates the contradiction seen in past imperial thinking, in which opponents are “seen as unappeasably aggressive, yet somehow inert in resisting aggressive measures to contain their expansion.”
What all these scenarios have in common is that war would directly threaten the security of the American people. America’s military interventions over the last 30 years were against small powers, none with a population at the time of intervention above 25 million; its adversaries today are altogether larger and more powerful. Each state has formidable means to injure the United States, and in every instance the national security establishment has no answer to such threats, or rather its only answer is the threat to do even greater harm to the adversary. American “means” are almost wholly offensive, not defensive. It can threaten an adversary state’s infrastructure through cyberattacks; it cannot protect America’s infrastructure. It can threaten escalation against others, but it has no remedy if they counter with escalation against us. In the old days, U.S. “power projection” capabilities enabled America to float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, or so officialdom fancied. Nowadays, we’ve got the strategic equivalent of the rope-a-dope, with the American people in clear view of the counterpunches.
Consider, for example, the U.S. commitment to Taiwan. America’s military position in East Asia is not about “freedom of navigation”; it is focused on China’s threat to Taiwan. It is a given that China will continue to resist stoutly American attempts to protect the island, as it sees U.S. military superiority in its near abroad as a threat to its vital interests. U.S. military plans aim at “escalation dominance,” which entails massive conventional strikes on the Chinese homeland. U.S. military commanders speak of “winning the battle” with China via such a war plan, but those commanders would obviously be in no position to prevent further escalation by China against the U.S. homeland, if China should respond to an attack on its territory by inflicting harm on the United States. Neither side lacks the capability to do enormous damage to one another, on an unprecedented scale. This would be so even if nuclear weapons were not brought into play, though the higher the stakes the greater probability that they would be.
Worse, the ability of the rival armed forces to win their first encounter would heavily depend on who was able to get at the other’s offensive power “the fastest with the mostest,” creating strong escalatory pressures in a crisis exactly paralleling the road to war in 1914. We have created in East Asia a Doomsday Machine with a built-in escalatory potential if deterrence fails.
If relations between China and America have increasingly acquired a dynamic that recalls the era before 1914, so likely would the consequences if at last a great war should come. Why should a major war between China and the United States, when all is said and done, not have 1914-like consequences, confounding human progress and development for three-quarters of a century? Once begun, why should it ever end? Would not a U.S. “victory” produce in China nothing but the meditation of revenge? If it were to end, miraculously, in a negotiated settlement, would not the United States rather than China likely be the first to break? The balance of vital interests between the two sides—the United States fighting for a glittering generality, China claiming Taiwan as part of its national patrimony from distant times and seeing its U.S. adversary as intent on another century of humiliation—suggests a concomitant imbalance of resolve that makes a U.S. “win” extremely difficult to conceive. This would be true even if the American nation had not divided itself into intensely partisan tribes who hate each other a lot more than they hate “the Chicoms.” America’s internal divisions clearly put its staying power further in question. These factors must command our attention. They point to a war that cannot be won and must not be fought.
Making Americans hostage to ill fortune abroad can be seen in many areas of policy. It appears to be a feature, not a bug. Consider another example: the United States now seeks to eliminate Russian oil and gas from world markets but can only do by risking a potentially catastrophic energy shock. When Biden said that the well-being of America’s middle class would be his first thought in considering America’s role in the world, he evidently forgot to add that it would not be his only thought, or his last thought. The E.U.’s promise, in an accord with the United States, to buy 50 billion cubic meters a year of U.S. gas until at least 2030 would put the North American gas market to Europe in a stranglehold, inexorably raising the domestic price to sky-high European levels. Energy security used to mean seeking to mitigate the danger of disruptions to world energy markets, such that “the oil weapon” wouldn’t be used against us. Now energy policy is enlisted on behalf of a geopolitical gambit whose objective, the starvation of Russia, inexorably produces grim economic shocks for the United States and the world.
Historians and analysts have long argued about the role that “ideals and interests” have played in American foreign policy. For policymakers, “national security” has usually won out in rhetorical appeals. Even George W. Bush, when he made the call to end tyranny, held that this objective was indispensable to the achievement to national security. Freedom, in Bush’s telling, was a glorious end, but it was also an indispensable means. Only if the world were set free would the nation be secure.
The truth is that America’s struggle against the world’s autocracies badly threatens American security. It requires the United States to stare down the throat of many different powers. It makes their existence rather than their containment the issue and in effect renders diplomatic compromise impossible. It substitutes a moral judgment—the Russians shouldn’t feel this way about Crimea, or the Chinese about Taiwan—for the evident fact that they consider each territory a vital interest, a U.S. challenge to which greatly enhances the risk of war. Far from being enhanced by this aggressive policy, U.S. security is imperiled by it. In effect, the security of the people has been sacrificed on behalf of perceived American ideals. A vision of the world’s reformation has been insidiously substituted for practical measures to keep Americans safe.
David Hendrickson is president of the John Quincy Adams Society and the author of Republic in Peril: American Empire and the Liberal Tradition (Oxford, 2018). His website is davidhendrickson.org.
Ain't that the truth!
However, I don't think we could have it ever work out.
The world is a tough, dog eat dog place where brother raises his arm against brother and there is no peace.
Man is inherently evil or sinful, until the Peace of Jesus finally comes.
I doubt Hendrickson could make things any better.
There you go again. Denial just ain't a river in Egypt.
As far as Dec 11, 41 and Germany... Seriously, that's just a wall of text.
Who needs stinkin' facts? Dismiss the predicate for war all you want. FDR wanted us to enter the war, but the American public wasn't receptive. WWI had soured many people on getting involved in another European war. Would we have entered if the Germans had not declared war on us first? Certainly, Japan initiated the shooting war with the attack on Pearl Harbor. Would we have gone to war without that attack?
Japan's aggression in China was there for everyone to see. Just like today with Russia.
When the Japanese seized Manchuria in 1931, WWII was inevitable. The Greater Co-prosperity Sphere was the vehicle for Japanese domination of Asia free from the influence of the West.
Russia sees Ukraine as within its sphere of influence just like the US uses the Monroe doctrine to assert its control of the Western Hemisphere. NATO expansion was a colossal mistake.
But all this history does not change the FACT that Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 Feb 2022.
Russia also invaded Ukraine in 2014 and annexed Crimea. That is also a FACT. We have no treaty obligations with Ukraine or the defense of its sovereignty. There are no strategic national interests involved. This is a European problem. We have no business in this corrupt quagmire.
Probably. But not written in stone. Putin could be gone tomorrow (I don't see that); both parties will agree on terms (I would like that); Russia will break the stalemate and take Kiev and dispose Zelenskyy (honestly, I don't see that) or Ukraine will defeat Russia (and I really don't see that). Or, as you say, this could be just the beginning.
No matter what happens, we are now stuck to this tar baby for a generation. We will be stuck funding the rebuilding costs along with arming the Ukrainians. Nation building will be expensive. The US will have to borrow the money to pay for this debacle. Hopefully, it will not include the sacrifice of more American lives in another endless war.
Russian national interests will not change with the departure of Putin. It is pure folly to pin any hopes on the removal of Putin. And how will this affect our descent into a new Cold War. It took 50 years to exit the old one. We are in a free fall. Our "leaders" have not looked at the long term consequences of our involvement in Ukraine.
This is money line. We can't afford to be the world's policeman. We are broke.
You ever hear of KISS? Keep it simple, stupid?
I’m not ignoring history by not being impressed with a wall of OPINION.
Ribbentrop’s war declaration is just that.
Sorry, we’ll have to disagree on that. The Nazi’s declaration of war was NOT a predicate. It was propaganda.
In fact, much of everything I see here and elsewhere is a bunch of opinion and propaganda. I’m not anymore wrong or right than you are.
We don’t get facts from the Western Press. It’s all opinion and propaganda.
HOWEVER, that’s true with RT, or Pravda or the South China Morning Post.
You don’t know and neither do I. It’s all opinion.
That’s why all of us should be suspicious of most anything that goes as news. We all are hoodwinked by our own “trusted” sources. You could read them all day, going down one rabbit hole after another, and be just as wrong as when you started.
I simplify it. Who threw the first punch? Insults and threats aren’t punches. Joining alliances aren’t punches. Beyond that, it’s just conjecture, opinion and just plain guessing.
I look at a map of Ukraine and simply see Russia has grabbed what it said it would, and now would be a good time to stop.
How ‘s THAT for taking Ukraine’s side?
If that’s not good enough for them, then it is easy to see who is prolonging the conflict.
I will state the obvious. Ukraine and the US want victory, which means no territorial concessions. As long as the US and the West supply the weapons and money, Ukraine will continue fighting. To suggest that Putin could end the conflict by retaining what he has achieved, i.e., taking 20% of Ukraine, ignores what Ukraine wants. Zelensky will not end the hostilities. He wants a million man army supported by our tax dollars. Zelensky wants victory.
This recent article in Foreign Affairs reflects the Ukrainian mindset. How Ukraine Will Win--Kyiv’s Theory of Victory By Dmytro Kuleba June 17, 2022
Putin provided four demands to end the war, namely:
1. Russia wants Ukraine to stop all military action
2. Russia wants Ukraine to change its constitution to enshrine neutrality
3. Russia wants Ukraine to acknowledge that Crimea is officially Russian territory
4. Ukraine must also recognize Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states
Well, you have your opinion. I don't think it is so obvious as you do but I'm not going to argue. The Ukes won't win them back (the Russian occupied territories), if that's what you mean, and by that I'd say, yeah, that's obvious.
The other points, all except #2, are doable.
Number 2 is a bridge too far if all we have left is stalemate. Russia would have to take Kiev. That's not going to happen as long as this is a "special military operation". There are domestic factors Putin must consider if he needs to go beyond that.
Say they're still fighting into January 2025--very doubtful--but if so, then I think Trump will end it with full diplomatic pressure.
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