By Gilbert Doctorow
GilbertDoctorow.com
December 23, 2025
Ever since Donald Trump issued his new National Security Strategy document two weeks ago, there has been shock and dismay in the foreign policy communities of both the United States and of Europe. Indeed, these communities have drawn even closer together in their joint effort to frustrate, to stymie the new NSS, which overturns the fundamental principles of America's relations with the world ever since 1949 and the creation of NATO.
How ? There are now no enemies, no adversaries, no axis of evil, no modern-day Hitlers, no windmills against which America's valiant armed forces can tilt. Russia and China are barely mentioned in passing, as competitors. To be sure, the ambitions of the Chinese to have a blue water navy operating beyond the first chain of islands have to be held in check, and the 'freedom of navigation' in narrow passages to the south and east of the Chinese mainland has to be secured. But none of this implies a war.
Most shocking for the Establishments has been the downsizing of America's commitment to Europe and the ferocious criticism of Europe's sacrificing freedom of speech on the altar of political correctness. The points that we first heard in J.D. Vance's fiery speech to the Munich Security Conference in February are reconfirmed and expanded upon. Now the United States offers support to what Brussels maliciously calls the Extreme Right parties in Europe, support for their ideological combat against the woke, Left leaning consensus politics.
The consequence of administering shock and awe was revenge by Trump's many enemies. I have little doubt that there was a rumpus on Capitol Hill that compelled Trump to draw in his horns on Ukrainian capitulation. In the States, Senator Lindsey Graham tabled his bill naming Russia a state sponsor of terror, which would kill off any chances of establishing normal relations. In Europe, Witkoff and Kushner emerged from the meeting in Berlin of the Coalition of the Willing hosted by Chancellor Merz on Monday smiling and declaring that peace was now closer than ever. But, given the maximalist Ukrainian negotiating terms backed by Merz, Macron and Starmer, they should have left the room in protest.
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This weekend there are renewed negotiations over possible peace terms being conducted in Miami between Trump's emissaries Witkoff and Kushner, on the one side, and Putin's emissary Dmitriev, on the other side.
If you listen to mainstream reporting, you might believe that these talks in Miami will bring peace closer. Rubbish ! They are an empty exercise without any prospect of success
Now that Zelensky has received the full backing of the European Union, including the issuance shortly of 'loans' amounting to 90 billion euros over two years to continue the war, he has no reason to consider territorial concessions, neutrality, a prohibition of foreign military personnel and installations on Ukrainian land, as the Russians demand.
Now that the Russians have captured the two most important fortified cities of Kupyansk in the northeast, close to Kharkiv, and Pokrovsk, in the center of Donetsk oblast, they have a clear path to advance to the Dnieper River without encountering dug-in Ukrainian resistance. Why, under these conditions, should the Russians compromise on any of their key demands?
Putin, Trump and Zelensky are all stalling for time now. The problem is that if the war continues to be run as it has till now by the Russians, as a war of attrition, with small incremental extension of territorial holdings, then it will go on for at least two years more at the end of which a pan-European war will break out, one that could easily become nuclear.
It is for these reasons that I am saying time and again that Vladimir Putin must change course, must destroy the civilian and military decision-making centers of Ukraine right now, to put a stop to this insanity while Russia has the upper hand and Europe is barely starting to remilitarize. If he is unable, unwilling to assume the risks that this entails, then he should take his well-earned retirement and pass the baton to someone from the next generation who has the nerve to do what must be done.
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Now, I propose to take a step back and consider what has gone wrong in Trump's political calculus over ending the war in Ukraine.
I said some time ago that Trump was/is dependent on the pro-Israeli majority in both chambers of Congress to pass his domestic and foreign policy initiatives. I viewed his enabling Israeli genocide in Gaza from this perspective, as being essential for him to enjoy political capital for his overarching priority of normalization of relations with Russia, that in turn was part and parcel of plans to draw Russia back from its embrace with China.
However, what Trump surely underestimated was the deep anti-Russian feeling in American Jewry, particularly of the older, politically active generations. Witkoff is the exception, not the rule. Indeed, the whole Neocon movement was from its founding rooted in that ethnic-religious community. Surely this anti-Russian stance also was fed by the Israeli lobby in Congress.
Now, perhaps, Trump is trying to gain back support on Capitol Hill that he has lost from his de-ideologized, Realpolitik-inspired National Security Strategy document by flexing muscles in the Western Hemisphere, and especially by bullying Venezuela and provoking it towards war that he, Trump, mistakenly believes will be a cheap and easy victory.
War with Venezuela may well bring in both the Chinese and the Russians, which would by itself destroy Trump's overarching foreign policy ambitions stated in the NSS. But that is a separate issue.
My point is that this bullying exercise in Latin America is playing to the interests of Trump's Secretary of State Marco Rubio and to the Cuban diaspora in Florida and elsewhere in the States. Here again, Trump could be ignoring how the Cuban émigré anti-Communism carries with it deep resentments against Russia.
The conclusions that I draw are that Trump's hoped-for rapprochement with Russia is doomed and that as the tsars concluded, Russia's only friends are its army and its navy, to which today we may add, its aerospace forces.
This article was originally published on GilbertDoctorow.com.