The Five Most Likely Motives Behind Trump’s Flip-Flop On Ukraine

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

Trump surprised the world with a lengthy post expressing his newfound view that Ukraine might not only reconquer all of its lost territory, conditional on continued support from NATO, but might “even go further than that!”

It’s unclear at this point whether he’s serious about repeating Biden’s policy of backing Ukraine “for as long as it takes”, which could turn the conflict into another “forever war” and/or risk World War III with Russia, but here are the five most likely motives behind his rhetorical flip-flop:

1. Signal Displeasure With Putin

Trump believed that his friendship with Putin would help him mediate peace, but that hasn’t happened because Putin didn’t want to make military-strategic concessions in Ukraine in exchange for promised US investments. Trump also showed no interest in coercing Zelensky into the same in exchange for Putin allowing these investments into Russia’s resource sector. Trump’s post was therefore a way of signaling displeasure with Putin over this zero-sum dilemma that Trump himself is responsible for creating.

2. Signal Pleasure With Ukraine & NATO

At the same time, his post also signals pleasure with Ukraine and NATO after each bent to his demands in their own way, the first by agreeing to an amended minerals deal in spring and the second by agreeing over the summer to purchase new US weapons at full price for transfer to Ukraine. Paying lip service to those two’s shared goal of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia is thus the least he could do in return. It also serves to encourage them to comply with his future demands whenever he decides to make them.

3. Promote The Military-Industrial Complex

Building upon the above, his arrangement with NATO will further expand the US’ role as the world’s largest arms supplier by far, which SIPRI estimated to be a whopping 43% of the global share between 2020-2024 compared to second-place France’s 9.6% and third-place Russia’s 7.8%. Accordingly, Trump probably expects that NATO orders of US arms will spike after he lent false credence to the political fantasy of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia, which showcases the business acumen behind his post.

4. Respond To Warmongers’ Whispers

Zelensky, Lindsey Graham, and other warmongers have been whispering in Trump’s ear for a while already so it can’t be ruled out that he’s finally responding to them after they successfully manipulated his perceptions. After all, he prefaced his post by specifying that it was made “After getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine/Russia Military and Economic situation”, which suggests that he was finally disabused of his hitherto comparatively pragmatic views about the conflict in favor of escalating.

5. Create More Opportunities To Exploit

And finally, perpetuating the conflict might be seen by Trump as a means of creating more opportunities to exploit following the lopsided trade deal that he got the EU to agree to over the summer for essentially making it the US’ largest-ever vassal state. So long as tensions remain manageable, which appears to be the premise (correct or not) upon which he’d maintain and possibly even escalate American involvement, the US could potentially take more advantage of its allies to benefit accordingly.

It remains to be seen whether the US will escalate and what form that would take if so, but any moves in that direction would compel Russia to either escalate in kind or compromise with the US to avoid World War III.

Russia might also preemptively escalate to deprive the US of its expected advantages if Putin is convinced that this is inevitable, but that could also be spun to justify an even greater US escalation.

The proxy war has therefore reached a very dangerous point where tensions might soon spiral out of control.