Among the many reversals in US policy which will occur when Donald Trump replaces Joe Biden in January, the most immediately consequential may be over support for Ukraine’s war against Russian aggression. The president-elect claimed during his campaign that he could bring the conflict to an end within a day. Many supporters of Ukraine fear he intends to do this by withdrawing military aid to Kyiv, forcing Volodomyr Zelenskiy’s government to agree to peace on terms favourable to Moscow.
That certainly seems possible. A majority of Republicans in Congress, along with vice-president-elect JD Vance, have demanded the end of aid to Kyiv. It has become an article of faith within the now-dominant America First wing of the party that the era of the US acting as the world’s policeman is over. Ukraine, they say, is a European problem. There is also a sneaking regard on the far-right Republican fringe for Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian nationalist regime.
None of this is unexpected. For months, European leaders have been discussing how to respond to a second Trump term. It is not clear how fruitful those discussions have been. With weakened minority governments in both Germany and France, a strong response seems unlikely. As Ukrainian forces retreat in some places, and with no realistic prospect of European countries making up the shortfall, it seems grimly inevitable that if no further aid is forthcoming from Washington, the pressure on Kyiv will be irresistible.
But that outcome is not guaranteed. Reports that Florida senator Marco Rubio will be appointed secretary of state highlight the current uncertainty over the foreign policy posture of the new administration. A former hawk in the traditional Republican style, Rubio has shifted his position in recent years to remain aligned with his increasingly unilateralist party. But he, like many congressional Republicans, will not wish to be seen to bend the knee to Moscow.
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And it remains unclear exactly how competing priorities within the Trump White House, which range from the protection of US energy interests to a possible trade war with China, will influence those calculations.
There is also the question of the internal politics of Ukraine itself. Since the invasion took place, it has been unacceptable politically to discuss any compromise over the core war aim of recovering all the territory occupied by Russia since 2014. But with rising opposition to further rounds of conscription and little sign of a favourable military outcome, a change in US policy might offer an opening to begin considering whether other options should be on the table.
Even if that were to happen, though, the fact remains that Putin’s original war aim of bringing a rump Ukrainian state back firmly within the Russian orbit remains intact.