Updated 2 months ago
This isn’t copium.
1. Let’s start with a raw facts on the ground. Back in 2022, remember that huge miles-long caravan of Russian tanks and Ukraine had pretty much nothing, and still fought them back? Now Ukraine has much more weaponry thanks to Biden, faces a 2-1 rather than a 10-1 artillery ratio, and is holding firm as Russia as getting increasingly depleted and desperate.
2. Ukraine can sell its mineral rights to anyone. Even China. If you look at the details and day by day Trump went ballistic once Zelensky put some goodies on the negotiating table in the form of mineral rights. Trump immediately pounced like a squirrel seeing a new shiny trinket. Trump’s negotiating style is to throw bombs and create chaos, and he hopes for self-aggrandizement. It’s a very blunt and primitive negotiating tactic and when you realize that’s what you’re up against, you realize he is 99% bark and 1% bite. (Elon is a very clean 50-50 btw) And consequently, take Trump much less seriously.
The downside of this tactical style is that you make everyone hate you and your allies to not trust you anymore. Not everyone operates on a pathetic zero-sum view of the world. Ukraine actually has much more leverage and power than it seems at first glance. If Trump gets shut out, he will look like a fool, a chump, lose on the victory parade and all those billions spent by Biden will have gone to waste, according to his fragile ego.
This also applies to everything else – Trump has in short order taken a ball peen hammer to whatever soft power we had, which is the 90% of the iceberg underwater that he Is intellectually incapable of registering, and at the end of the day **China** is looking more and more like a stable trading partner every day.
