Marc Thiessen on Trump and Ukraine
Here’s Marc Thiessen’s opinion on where Trump is currently, in terms of Ukraine and Putin:
When it comes to Ukraine, Trump has been clear about what he would do if Russian President Vladimir Putin did not agree to end the war: Trump promised to impose crippling secondary tariffs on all oil coming out of Russia and give Ukraine more weapons than they’ve ever received from the U.S. Now that Putin has rejected Trump’s peace efforts, I am confident Trump will do exactly what he said.
Already, the president has reversed a Pentagon pause in weapons shipments to Ukraine, declaring, “We’re going to send some more weapons. We have to. They have to be able to defend themselves.” But, as Putin defiantly escalates his attacks on Kyiv, and the last of the weapons authorized under President Joe Biden will soon run out, Trump needs a new way forward.
I have noticed lately that Trump seems fed up with Putin, and that he’s talking about being about to further arm Ukraine. But is this a feint, a negotiating tactic? I don’t know. What I do believe is that Putin is unlikely to give in; he’s staked his entire reputation and regime on what he’s doing in Ukraine.
More from Thiessen:
So, what should Trump’s strategy be? The goal can’t be to help Ukraine restore its pre-war borders — something every reasonable person knows is unrealistic at least in the near term. But the answer is also not to revert to Biden’s feckless policy of slow-rolling weapons, arming Ukraine just enough to stop Russia from overrunning the country, with no endgame in sight.
Rather, the goal should be to force Putin to do what Trump has demanded from the very beginning — end the war at the negotiating table — by imposing such heavy economic and military costs on Russia that Putin has no choice but to sue for peace.
Although I think that’s the goal, I don’t see Putin giving in, no matter what. I hope I’m wrong about that.
Thiessen again:
How to do that? Russia is in economic trouble as war spending has unleashed double-digit inflation, soaring interest rates and catastrophic labor shortages. The only things keeping the Russian economy afloat have been oil and gas sales, which skyrocketed under Biden. But under Trump, Russia’s oil and gas revenue has begun to collapse, falling 33.7 percent last month.
Trump should further tighten the screws with a “maximum pressure” campaign designed to drive Russian oil and gas from the global market, much like he did with Iran in his first term. …
As he crushes the Russian economy, Trump should also apply maximum pressure on the battlefield. He has announced that he will provide Ukraine with more defensive systems to protect Ukrainian civilians from Russian attacks. But to force Putin back to the peace table, he will need to provide Ukraine with increased offensive capabilities as well — including weapons that Biden slow-rolled, such High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), long-range Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), Stinger and Javelin missiles, as well as 155mm artillery rounds.
I think Trump is in a bind in Ukraine. Would he go as far as Thiessen says he should? I don’t know. The original goal, I believe, was to find a way for both Putin and Zelensky to have a face-saving way out. That hasn’t happened, and I don’t feel optimistic about it ever happening. If Trump can pull that off, my appreciation for his deal-making – already high – will rise even higher.
To make a threat credible, you have to have leverage. Trump has none. Sanctions haven’t worked. Weapon inventories are critically. What can he threaten?
@ Rick T > “What can he threaten?”
Does Mossad know where Russia’s nuclear facilities are housed?
PS to Trump – I wasn’t serious, really!
https://thenewneo.com/2025/07/10/open-thread-7-10-2025/#comment-2810875
“Hopefully, no one will start WW3 this month,”
Part of the issue for Trunp, which I’ve seen in some places, is that our missile stock is getting low. Especially as we supply Israel and hit Iran. I’ve heard some estimates we need to ramp up production NOW and even then we’ll need 2 years to refill to what we should have. (Which I think Trump has been doing but the man is only mortal.)
So the simple fact may be that he can’t supply Ukraine as much as he wants. We may not have the munitions. (I could be wrong, I’ve just heard things.)
Rick T:
Russia appears to be loosing it’s oil revenue, so to say President Trump has no leverage is to ignore what the president has been saying about tarrifs on those who buy and trade Vladdy’s oil.
Trump had to start by urging peace, and if that didn’t work, its failure would justify increased aid to Ukraine. One has to follow the dance steps as choreographed. Whether we can do much to affect the outcome is another question. There is still plenty of room left in the sanctions, the EU hasn’t been that strict in enforcing them, but that seems to be changing. We will see.
Neo, quoting Thiessen:
But under Trump, Russia’s oil and gas revenue has begun to collapse, falling 33.7 percent last month.
Trump should further tighten the screws with a “maximum pressure” campaign designed to drive Russian oil and gas from the global market …
I’d like somebody to explain for me how this U.S. pressure on Putin/Russia works. If we’re not customers of Russia, how do we pressure them? By refusing to allow U.S. business with other countries that would, otherwise, trade with Russia? Is this what’s meant by “secondary tariffs”?
I really don’t understand … and would like to be enlightened.
How ‘bout “Drill baby, drill”…followed by “Sell baby, sell”…accompanied by “It really would be recommended that you DO buy from us…”?
The Deep State is pleased with Marc Thiessen. Trump is caught between the proverbial ‘rock and a hard place’. It’s a political non-starter to walk away from the Ukraine debacle and the Russians truly view NATO’s continuing attempt to place itself upon the Russian/Ukraine border as an existential National Security Threat. Exactly analogous to how we would view China enabling a heavy arms buildup and domestic military mobilization on our border with Canada and/or Mexico. It’s unsurprising that the decades long demonization of Putin in the Western mass media has entrenched its dogma in the minds & beliefs in much of the public. Ukrainian neutrality, a provisional guarantee in Ukraine’s 1991 Independence documents and an end to the Zelensky regime’s long persecution of Ukraine’s Russian speaking minorities was all that Russia requested of Ukraine prior to the Feb. 2022 invasion. In March of 2022, Zelensky was prepared to sign a peace treaty in Istanbul with Russia when Boris Johnson conveyed Washington’s adamant objections to Zelensky signing it. Russia has and is winning this war and there’s literally nothing the US can do to prevent it. Talk of further, ‘more serious’ measures is empty bluster. A tragic waste of blood and treasure by our ‘betters’.
IF I heard it correctly, the NBC (or maybe ABC) newscast tonight said US arms for Ukraine would go through (and be paid for by) NATO. And that NATO was finally stepping up.
If true, this helps with the money side of it, but I suspect our full production capability is not what it now needs to be for this “preventive deterrence stage” of war.
Just read GB’s comment now, too.
It is hard to believe that Trump really expected Putin to be “reasonable” and persuaded by “good feelings” remarks about strong leadership, etc. The Russians have been surprisingly successful at mitigating some of the sanctions (via BRICS, etc.?) but perhaps more stringent pressure will help a wider domestic Russian response?? Fog of war for sure.
Or a real guessing game as to who really does hold the better set of cards.
Geoffrey lost all credibility on Ukraine and Russia more than three years ago with the 13 minute existential threat that NATO and Ukraine posed to dear Mother Russia.
His dog don’t hunt.
”The goal can’t be to help Ukraine restore its pre-war borders — something every reasonable person knows is unrealistic at least in the near term.”
Not only is it reasonable to restore Ukraine’s pre-war borders, it’s something every freedom-loving person on the planet desires.
”Russia is in economic trouble as war spending has unleashed double-digit inflation, soaring interest rates and catastrophic labor shortages.”
Russia is losing 100,000 men a year to death on the battlefield and another 100,000 a year are being maimed. Many Russians, including Putin, have said they will keep this up for 20 years if they have to in order to take Ukraine. They don’t care about inflation, interest rates, or labor shortages.
”But under Trump, Russia’s oil and gas revenue has begun to collapse, falling 33.7 percent last month.”
This has nothing to do with Trump. It has to do with Ukraine hitting Russia’s oil infrastructure hard. In the past month or so six oil tankers have been hit by Ukraine and taken out of action. Four oil refineries have been struck by drones, significantly reducing their capacity. Another four oil depots were hit, starting fires that burned for days. And several oil wells were hit in Chechnya starting them on fire. This is in addition to several European countries boarding Russian oil tankers and seizing them for environmental noncompliance.
”The original goal, I believe, was to find a way for both Putin and Zelensky to have a face-saving way out.”
If this was the goal then it shows just how delusional the whole Trump administration is. Russia is genociding the Ukraine. Its stated objective, discussed openly by high government officials on Russian media owned and operated by the Russian government, is to destroy Ukraine as a nation, as a people, and as a culture.
To that end Russia has raped thousands of Ukrainian women as a matter of policy, kidnapped tens of thousands of Ukrainian children to “make them Russian”, killed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian men, and leveled whole Ukrainian cities to the ground. The Russians have struck hundreds of Ukrainian power plants and home heating plants with the stated objective of freezing millions of Ukrainian civilians to death. They have struck thousands of food distribution warehouses, grain silos, and grocery stores with the stated objective of causing a famine. Russian pilots have gone on TV explaining how they are trained to hit a five- or six-story urban apartment building at just the right place to bring the whole building down in order to kill everyone inside.
And you think Zelensky is trying to “save face?”
Putin is trying to re-create the Russian Empire, for which he has broad support among the Russian people. Ukraine and Moldova are the current objectives. Then the Suwalki Gap and the Baltics. Then Poland and Finland.
There is nothing that Trump can offer the Russians to get them to willingly give up this goal. No sanctions are going to dissuade them and no trade deal is going to persuade them. The best he could do is offer to lift the sanctions to help them rebuild and modernize their military so they can conquer the rest of Eastern Europe later, which he has done. They rejected that offer.
It’s maddening to see people reject all evidence and stick to their initial premises from February 2022 (“Russia stronk!”, “It’s NATO’s fault!”, “Putin’s a born-again Christian at war with the Deep State!”). This war has been going on for eleven years with the full-scale invasion going on for 3-1/2 years now. People should be smarter than that, especially people in the Trump administration.
mkent:
You seem to have misunderstood much of my post. First of all, much of it is quoting Thiessen, not necessarily my own point of view. But my own words – such as that Trump’s original goal in his opening negotiations was to give both Putin and Zelensky a face-saving way out – certainly don’t indicate what I think either Putin’s or Zelensky’s goals are. So why would you write, “And you think Zelensky is trying to ‘save face?'” I did not say Zelensky was trying to do that. Plus, as I say in my post, I think Putin is highly unlikely to give in.
As for what Trump really thinks, I simply don’t know. But I believe he’s quite aware that Putin is a very tough nut to crack, and that Trump is presently feeling around for his soft underbelly. I think people in the Trump administration are actually quite smart and are quite aware that the problem may be intractable. I think what we see from them is merely the tip of the iceberg. But I’m not optimistic about the possibility of Putin giving in to pressure, and I think I made that quite clear.
Russia is losing 100,000 men a year to death on the battlefield and another 100,000 a year are being maimed. Many Russians, including Putin, have said they will keep this up for 20 years if they have to in order to take Ukraine. They don’t care about inflation, interest rates, or labor shortages
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You can find weird cranks in any country. They’re seldom in charge of anything. As for VP, he’s 74 years old and has an essential tremor. He’s not likely to be around in twenty years.
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Putin is trying to re-create the Russian Empire, for which he has broad support among the Russian people. Ukraine and Moldova are the current objectives. Then the Suwalki Gap and the Baltics. Then Poland and Finland.
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Given that they’re stymied trying to fully occupy five of the Ukraine’s 25 regions, that’s an ambitious goal.
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https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/how-strong-is-russian-public-support-for-the-invasion-of-ukraine-2/
Putin could care less how economic sanctions will harm the citizens of Russia.
Since when do Russian governments give a shite about the well being of Russians?
Putin and his govt officials will still live high on the hog no matter how bad Russian citizens suffer economically.
The sanctions may have the average Ivan and Olga suffering, but the Russian leaders will do just fine.
And if some of the people begin protesting against Putin, there will be an epidemic of people falling off tall building balconies.
As for Russian military deaths; since when does any Russian govt. give a crap about how many dead Russian soldiers it will take to prevail in a conflict?
The Russian govt. does not care and they never have.
As for sanctions Putin can always count on China, Iran and probably a few other countries to help him out.
And Europe is STILL !!!! importing about 20% of its natural gas from Russia.
As for Putin’s ultimate goal recall his comment that the worst thing that ever happened to Russia was the dissolution of the USSR. Not that this means he wishes to reconstitute the USSR – it doesn’t – but nobody knows what his real goals are.
Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland and Sweden have joined NATO because they really believe Russia / Putin represents an existential threat to their independence. And Poland – also in NATO – is re-arming and will have the strongest military in Europe.
The actions of these nations – joining NATO and/or re-arming – suggest that Putin’s actions / goals will continue to be aggressive and contradict the notion that Putin only wishes to have secure borders.
These NATO nations have lived with the Russian bullies for a thousand years and they know better than anybody what Russia’s goals really are.
Putin is a real bad apple and cannot be trusted at all; that is the message being conveyed by those nations near or bordering Russia.
By the way, check out how many former members of the Eastern Bloc and former USSR republics have joined NATO since 1991.
Geez, now why would they have done that???
And that policy was very unpopular with Russian citizens this is something noted in phillip elliots bio of putin
Oil revenue made the invasion possible as well as putins contempt for biden as with obama
For more than 50 years there were promises to liberate cuba when the wandering coma sloughed off his mortal coil crickets btw the same european powers who cry ‘ukrainia slava’ were the one who bailed out fidel in the 90s not surprising who designed the eu they also groveled to arafat and now hamas
The ‘good oligarchs’ like khodokorsky and the late berezovsky were the ones that made average russians look down on democracy because they associated it with chaos and penury
That was the fruit of sachs and summers why they should be shunned everywhere
As for Putin’s ultimate goal recall his comment that the worst thing that ever happened to Russia was the dissolution of the USSR. Not that this means he wishes to reconstitute the USSR – it doesn’t – but nobody knows what his real goals are.
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I’ll set myself an ‘ultimate goal’ of being Janeane Garofalo’s sidepiece. It will have a similar chance of coming to pass.
Russia is going to lose 2 million people over the next five years simply because the birth rate is so low and the population is so old. That’s not counting any losses in the war. TFR is 1.48, median age is 41.5, annual population growth rate -0.2%. Life expectancy at birth for males is 67.
The average age of Russian soldiers killed in 2020 was 30, and now it’s closer to 38. The more young people killed in Ukraine, the worse Russian demographics get in ten years. (Ukraine of course has the same problem and that’s why young men have been exempted from conscription.)
Even if the “next Hitler” card hadn’t been maxed out in 2003 and never paid off, even if Russia weren’t taking nearly as long to conquer part of Ukraine than WWII from Barbarossa to the surrender of Germany, Russia is not conquering an empire of any kind anywhere; they can’t afford to outfit enough mobility scooters.
I don’t know about war but what I read in books, and I’m guessing I have no sound intuition about how war works in 2025, not only because of the changes in technology, but because we now live in a world with very different demographics than the past. In WWI and WWII European populations were much younger and growing. I don’t think any intuitions we have developed from wars in the past make much sense any longer.
“killed in 2020” should read “killed in 2022”, I regret the error.
One has to hope that Putin’s rational self can have at least some influence. But, given the results so far, it’s not looking good.
Or he was incredibly poorly informed about everything; the crumbing state of his military, Ukraine’s wish for independence, western resistance. Not just one, but all three huge gaps in his you-would-have-thought basic info about the situation were necessary for his current difficulty.
Has he gotten smarter? Has his rational self surfaced yet?
It is apparently a given among both the pro- and anti-Putin commenters here that war casualties are meaningless to Russia, they can just forge ahead and not worry about how many Russians get killed. But here is an interesting tidbit:
From the end of WWII to the beginning of the Ukraine war – a not inconsiderable period of 69 years – Russia suffered barely half the war fatalities that the US took in Vietnam alone. Maybe the Russian people like it that way, not that they have a lot of influence on the government as a few have pointed out.
I’m sure if you polled Russians if they’d like to have Ukraine back in the fold you’d get 90% or more. But that’s not the same as wanting to die for it. It’s not WWII when they were invaded by a rogue tyrant openly determined to enslave them.
FOAF
Good points. However, I’d suggest the issue is not all or nothing about losses. But a small percentage difference from our culture’s views.
Somebody, maybe me, made a point early on that Russia’s history of being invaded might make it a bit easier to sell invading a neighbor as a necessary defensive move in Russia than in the US. Or western Europe. Not 100%. But possibly not trivial, either. Same would be the case about losses. Not for the Next of Kin, but for the population in general.
See also Victor Hanson’s “The Russian Way of War”.