Trump's Latest On Ukraine

Via the UK Daily Mail -- there's not much on this in the US.

Former President Trump said he hopes is 'wrong' about the possibility of World War III because the U.S. is being run by 'stupid people' at a rally in Wilmington, N.C. on Friday.

'I was right about Ukraine. I was right about what, Taiwan and I'm hoping I'm not going to be right about World War Three, because we have stupid people dealing,' the former president said, as he predicted the U.S. would lose a conflict to Russia.

. . . 'Putin mentioned the N word,' Trump told the crowd. 'You know what the N word is? It's-- no, no, no, it's the nuclear word. You mentioned the N word yesterday. The nuclear were not supposed to be mentioned,' Trump continued, as he claimed the Russian invasion 'never would've happened' under his presidency.

As far as I can tell, Trump's remarks in Wilmington mainly covered US domestic politics and focused on endorsements of his favored list of North Carolina candidates -- the mentions of Ukraine and nukes were offhand and non specific. However, I've got to question what's up with two of his implications.

The first is that the US would "lose a conflict with Russia" as reported. At the moment, the Russo-Ukraine War is a proxy conflict with Russia in all but name, and the takeaways for now include:

• Ukraine fought Russia to a standstill within days of its initial invasion even without US weapons.
• Once largely obsolete second-hand weapons from former Warsaw Pact countries began to be supplied, Ukraine scored battlefield victories.
• US intelligence did provide a major advantage to Ukraine.
• Russia never achieved air superiority at any point in the invasion and has kept its strategic bombers well away from the area.
• Putin's recent mobilization suggests the invasion has drained its armed forces of trained manpower, and Russia will need to recruit and train new forces even to continue the Ukraine conflict, much less prosecute a wider war.

These circumstances reinforce the observations I've seen that had Russia invaded Poland rather then Ukraine, the result would likely have been immediate rout rather than a stalemate. So I've got to conclude that Russia simply doesn't have the capability to prosecute a major conflct even in a wider European theater -- it's being defeated in detail in Ukraine alone without any direct confrontation with any NATO power. So I simply have to conclude Trump is wrong on that assumption about World War III, at least if he means any sort of conventional war.

If instead he means Putin could push the doomsday button and just try to vaporize major cities without otherwise sending military forces abroad, I'm just not sure how that would work. Given how poorly the Russian weapons systems we've seen have performed, I'm not sure how his missiles would do much better, but even the short-term result of any such exchange would likely be the end of the Russian state.

Trump's next position is that the US is being run by "stupid people". In cases like Secs Mayorkas, Buttigieg, and Grantholm, and Attorney General Garland, I have no disagreement. The puzzles are Secs Blinken and Austin. It almost seems as though they've been able to work out some sort of deal with Biden's handlers whereby in exchange for promoting wokeness in military training and general diplomacy, they've received some type of firm carveout in Ukraine policy, whereby on on hand, Biden promises not to interfere, and on the other, as in his UN speech, he says exactly what he's told to say with no wandering off script.

At this point, as I've said here now and then, US Ukraine policy is achieving positive results in a remarkably cost-effective manner. This is, however, given the circumstances the US and NATO were handed as of late last year, that Putin made a reckless and destructive decision to invade Ukraine, followed through on it, and is currently doubling down to the point that a negotiated outcome short of complete Russian withdrawal to pre-2014 borders is unlikely.

What would Trump have done differently to avoid this? But whatever he might have done, how would Russia not invading Ukraine have led to a better outcome for the world, if the current more likely result of the war will be the disintegration of Russia as a geopolitical force? What are Trump's plans for this outcome now, if any?