Biden hands off Ukraine to Trump: a winning hand?

Will Trump be able to end the war or just lose it?

Time has always been on Putin’s side in Ukraine, but some in the Biden administration think differently. Though the U.S. Congress has granted $175 billion in budget authority since the start of the war, only just under $70 billion is directed to direct military aid. Much of that $70 billion is a “top-line” number—the replenishment cost of new purchases to replace stockpiles sent to Ukraine using the Presidential Drawdown Authority, and financed through the Foreign Military Financing Program. We don’t know the actual cost, since it’s buried somewhere in Pentagon records that are not subject to normal business accounting rules.

The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

None of that really matters when the limiting factor in Ukraine’s effort to tilt the war in its favor is manpower. Russia has more manpower than Ukraine, despite taking massive losses to avoid any kind of Ukrainian breakthrough by piling troops into gaps, troops who are invariably slaughtered, captured, or forced to withdraw, one bloody kilometer at a time. But then, fresh troops are pushed into other places where the grinding Russian artillery, missile and drone attacks force Ukraine to retreat and give up destroyed villages.

Russia also has the benefit of land, which has been its chief wartime asset since before the days of Napoleon. Manpower and land are Putin’s two unassailable advantages, and Ukraine has not been able to leverage its small incursion into the Kursk oblast of Russia. A recent change in longstanding policy by the Biden administration has given Ukraine permission to use U.S.-made ATACMS missiles for strikes inside Russia. The stated reason for this change is that Russia has augmented its forces with around 10,000 North Korean troops in Kursk—a reported “tit for tat” escalation.

Russia’s response—as it has been during the Ukraine war—is to threaten the use of nuclear weapons, according to ABC news reports.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told journalists that new changes to Russia's nuclear weapons doctrine signed by President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday mean "the use of Western non-nuclear rockets by the Armed Forces of Ukraine against Russia can prompt a nuclear response."

It is 62 days until the end of President Biden’s term, and the beginning of Donald Trump’s. U.S. media, and some interested citizens (like the ones who read this site) are more consumed with the potential damage a Trump presidency could do to American institutions and legal doctrines than the ethereal threat of nuclear war. But Biden is handing Trump a volatile situation in Ukraine, with a new crew in Washington, including Sen. Marco Rubio as the likely Secretary of State, who are not in love with the idea of supporting Ukraine forever with billions of American taxpayer dollars.

But here’s the facts. You can’t put the missile restriction genie back in the bottle. Whatever equipment and weapons are already in the hands of the Ukrainians, including F-16 fighters, ATACMS missiles, and other advanced tech, is theirs to use, and once the U.S. decides (if the Trump administration does) to stop the flow of more weapons, there are no further threats or checks against Ukraine using what they possess in any way they want (I suppose we could sabotage, or try to cripple, or repossess the weapons), regardless of Putin’s nuclear saber rattling.

It would seem that Trump’s best play would be to get the parties to the negotiating table and end the war, as he promised. Perhaps that would preoccupy his administration with its first bona-fide crisis in office versus pursuing plans to deport 11 million immigrants, or replacing the entire staff of the Department of Justice and the FBI with Trump loyalists.

Putin could be the foil that the Biden administration leaves behind to put Trump into the reality of the world situation, versus his own plans to consolidate power at home.

Another fact: there’s almost certainly no way for Ukraine to achieve its own victory conditions of taking back the Donbas and Crimea. Russia is too embedded, and has so heavily mined the battle line in eastern Ukraine that the manpower and logistics to create and exploit a “hole” in the line don’t exist. And Russia can continue to pour fodder men into that defensive zone for longer than Ukraine can provide fresh troops. We’re talking a 1,600-mile front.

But the situation in Kursk is different. It’s a smaller area—about 1,000 square kilometers—and with the ability to use American long-range strike weapons, Ukraine may be able to hold the land it took. But Russia is pursuing a strategic campaign of pain against all of Ukraine, sending large drone and missile swarms against Ukrainian power stations and other critical infrastructure. With winter coming, this will make life difficult, with potential rolling blackouts. It also serves to demoralize Ukrainian citizens, making Zelensky’s wartime government unpopular.

As I first wrote above, time is on Russia’s side here. The only leverage Ukraine has is to strike deep enough into Russia to slow or stop the long-range missile and drone attacks. And that creates a crisis which could threaten nuclear war.

Of course, incoming President Trump could continue the Biden doctrine of no escalation, “tit for tat” moves, and try to extend Ukraine’s “shelf life” in the war while back room negotiations proceed. We all know that is not Trump’s style, nor is it his promise to end the war “day one.” Even if Trump promises to hand Ukraine over to Putin by cutting off all future aid, Ukraine still possesses weapons and U.S. capabilities to escalate the war on its own. However, a public announcement that the U.S. is no longer supporting Ukraine might mean the end for Zelensky’s government, at the hands of his own people.

We can’t predict the future. Trump may trade quite a bit to Putin in exchange for a no-nuclear promise. And there’s also the other European nations who have a great interest in the outcome.

As a related aside, I don’t subscribe to the Euro-doom that some are resigning themselves to, regarding Russia’s ability to capture a route from Kaliningrad to Belarus through the Suwałki Gap. Poland and Germany are still in NATO and are well equipped to prevent that. The Baltic nations are also in NATO, as are both Sweden and Finland. No matter what happens in Ukraine, Russia is contained to the north and the west. I’d be more worried about Turkey and the Black Sea—Moldova—than the Baltic. And honestly, the fate of Moldova is not high on the list of national security threats for NATO countries.

The most probable outcome here is a negotiated end to the fighting, where Ukraine pledges neutrality, no entry into the E.U., and not to become part of NATO, with Russia keeping its gains in Donbas and Crimea, giving back the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, and Ukraine ceding Kursk. Some kind of U.N. or other peacekeeping force would technically enforce the agreement, and some other kind of financial incentives would help both Ukraine and Russia recover—likely brokered by Germany. This would restore the flow of Russian gas into Europe, and seek to economically distance Russia from the close orbits of Iran and China.

There’s also the chance Trump will botch it all and there will be a major escalation in the war. And there’s the outside chance Putin will be crazy enough to use a tactical nuclear weapon. We simply don’t know what kind of response that will bring from a Trump White House.

We do know that with the latest “tit-for-tat,” Biden has frozen everything until January 20, 2025. He will hand it over to Trump ready for negotiations, a possible winning hand, as much as can be a winning hand. I do blame Biden for the current bleak situation. The Biden doctrine of forever wars as long as the U.S. isn’t directly fighting is both frustrating and against American long-term interests. Russia could have been defeated—in 2022 and 2023. But Biden purposefully didn’t allow it to happen, and therefore, we have this ugly stalemate with Russia slowly creeping toward inevitable degradation of Ukraine’s resolve.

It’s almost like Biden’s best offramp was to leave office and hand the whole mess to Trump, which he’s doing. Perhaps the only player with a winning hand here, besides Putin, is Biden.

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