Binary politics and a new Warsaw pact

The outgoing year can be characterized as a period of sobering up and shedding naive illusions. Enjoying a cup of coffee in Yalta in the coming years isn’t in the cards – only with our drones and missiles. This has been understood and even accepted by both the Ukrainian government and society.

As for the year ahead, the situation is highly non-linear. Political turbulence is off the charts, and a catastrophic disruption of the flow could occur anywhere, anytime. Predicting anything specific in such circumstances would be blatant quackery. However, identifying trends is entirely possible.

The main development we’ll observe (and participate in!) next year is the transition from quantity to quality. In other words, things won’t continue as they have before.

There will be no more widespread admiration for the courage of Ukrainians or the desire of global politicians to somehow join our heroic resistance. There will be no more standing ovations for our president in the parliaments of the world. This two-year period of our situational agency has come to an end, and once again, we will be played. We will be pressured into certain decisions, with any assistance being tightly conditioned and controlled.

The election of Donald Trump marks the shift to a binary political system. That is, either one or zero, with no analog nuances. Either a compliant junior partner or an unwanted burden. Either the leader of U.S. policy or someone who can only be defended for money. And if the senior partner suddenly needs Greenland or the Panama Canal, they should be handed over with joy and gratitude. At least that’s what the 47th president of the United States believes.

Earlier, Trump demanded that European NATO members contribute 2% of their GDP. Now, he’s talking about 5%. How much will it be tomorrow?

This binary approach to European countries (either a vassal or an enemy) may lead the EU to reconsider: why do we need such a defender, who is not much better than an aggressor? Wouldn’t it be easier to create European security forces? Especially since Europe’s defense industry is now the main source of arms and ammunition support for Ukraine, nearly doubling its output in the past year.

At the same time, the EU will be able to independently, without looking to the U.S., build its relationships with China and the Global South. This works in our favor. Because the Ukrainian Armed Forces will become the main force in such a European defense alliance, and that will be the best guarantee of our security. It would be very fitting for the member countries of the collective security pact in Europe to sign it precisely in the capital of Poland. In that case, the Warsaw Pact would be reincarnated in the opposite form, and the Kremlin would be absolutely furious…

Trump has not yet ruled out the possibility that he could end the war in Ukraine. But not in a day, of course. Voices from Trump’s entourage suggest a sober perspective: in the most optimistic scenario, hostilities could end in the fall of 2025. And the pessimistic scenario is one that no one wants to even mention, as it involves the war continuing for years with varying levels of intensity.

An optimistic scenario is possible if Putin attempts to place himself on the same level as Trump during negotiations, which would personally insult him. And then, an extremely interesting option would emerge: American high-tech startups, led by Elon Musk, could create something like a consortium with the aim of capturing a significant portion of the Pentagon’s $850 billion budget. The new weapons, powered by artificial intelligence, would, of course, be tested in Ukraine. This would help compensate for the lack of our mobilization resources, and the army of the non-empire would face serious problems.

However, if China, with its own cutting-edge military developments, sides with Russia, then the front-line part of Ukraine could turn into an area uninhabitable for biological organisms larger than a rat.

But there are also more favorable trends. For example, events in Syria could become a prototype for the collapse of Russia in the medium-term future. The driving force behind this collapse would be the Muslim population of the Russian Federation, and Turkey could play a key role in producing this process, as it did in Syria.

Two resurgent empires cannot exist in the same geopolitical space. And Erdogan’s Turkey is building its empire much more effectively than Putin’s Russia.

So, Ukraine’s main task is to not get swept away in the whirlwinds of global change that are currently stirring the world.

Alexandr Kochetkov

Tags: Politics russia ukraine war