Yves here. Rob Urie describes below the many, yet often not terribly visible, inertial forces that will keep the Ukraine conflict alive in some form even if Russia achieves a battlefield victory.
I am not as certain as Urie that the enormous discretionary spending that looks to have been significantly devoted to Project Ukraine can’t be redeployed so as to keep arms merchants busy, such as resorting depleted stocks and gearing up to harass our new baddie-in-chief, China. But it may be that the differences in weapons packages are significant enough so as to break a lot of rice bowls if Ukraine were officially abandoned.
Yours truly also has argued that Trump’s “raw earths” deal with Ukraine commits him to being at odds with Russia, as in having a vested interest in preserving some sort of territorial Ukraine and even deluding himself that that lame agreement will enable him to arm-wrestle Russia over economic rights in parts of Ukraine that have joined or will join Russia. Admittedly, an unconditional surrender would be hard to finesse.
Even though experts point out that the economic value of that agreement is zilch until the war is over, Trump is making threatening noises over property rights he can’t begin to treat as America’s, namely Greenland.
And Trump is falling in with escalation. He acted like even more of a child than usual in the Truth Social post below, and in brief remarks in New Jersey, feigned ignorance of Putin having been on the receiving end of a drone attack in a helicopter visit, as in what sure looks like an assassination attempt.
( @realDonaldTrump – Truth Social Post )
( Donald J. Trump – May 25, 2025, 8:46 PM ET )
I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY! He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not… pic.twitter.com/4hzGWP347H
— Donald J. Trump 🇺🇸 TRUTH POSTS (@TruthTrumpPosts) May 26, 2025
( @realDonaldTrump – Truth Social Post )
( Donald J. Trump – May 27, 2025, 11:44 AM ET )
What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD. He’s playing with fire! pic.twitter.com/fDMmApYkkf
— Donald J. Trump 🇺🇸 TRUTH POSTS (@TruthTrumpPosts) May 27, 2025
In a fresh interview on Dialogue Works, Larry Wilkerson speculates that uber hawks were responsible for these messages. But if not, he depicts this as a sign of dementia, and signals he’s not alone in thinking this way.
This temper tantrum was not effective:
BREAKING: Less than an hour after Trump threatened Putin on Truth Social, Russia has fired a large number of ballistic missiles at Ukrainian cities.
Pray for Ukraine. Clearly Putin doesn’t respect Trump. pic.twitter.com/dM584WTU3U
— Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) May 27, 2025
This attack had to have been planned and scheduled well before Trump had his hissy. It’s inconceivable that Russia would call it off. But you’ll see Russia hawks act as if Russia was somehow able to gin up the strikes on a moment’s notice just to further provoke Trump.
By Robert Urie, author of Zen Economics, artist, and musician who publishes The Journal of Belligerent Pontification on Substack
Despite his campaign promise to quickly end the US war in Ukraine, Donald Trump has thus far not done so. His administration’s apparent surprise that the Russians, who have at this point substantially prevailed in the war, aren’t willing to maintain the Western fantasy that the conflict is between Ukraine and Russia, shouldn’t have surprised anyone. Once it is understood that the conflict is between the US and Russia, a different set of problems require resolution.
Merge this observation with competencies that the Americans do have, including money laundering and weapons production and distribution, and the question of how the war funding spigot might be turned off gets murky. US funding for the war is widely claimed to have begun in 2022, following the launch of Russia’s SMO (Special Military Operation). However, discretionary military expenditures leapt in 2013, the year the US-backed coup in Ukraine began, and has remained elevated through today.
Graph: a US-backed coup was launched in Ukraine in 2013, and a US sponsored government was put in place there in 2014. A large rise in discretionary ‘foreign affairs’ spending by the US correlates with the coup and its aftermath. While the data in this graph represents a ratio, and therefore requires nuanced analysis, further evidence presented below corroborates both the scale and approximate timing of the US military appropriations. Source.
The self-serving propaganda offered by the Federal government of the US regarding the war represents all that most Americans know about the conflict. In that fantasy, the West can still prevail in ‘saving’ Ukraine and affecting regime change in Russia. The result to date is one million dead Ukrainians, Europe immersed in its worst political and economic crisis since the mid-20th century, and no clear path to exiting the crisis.
From their public pronouncements to date, most of Mr. Trump’s inner circle and both parties in both houses of Congress are sticking to the talking points crafted by the Biden administration regarding the war in early 2022. A practical problem with doing so is that the Russians have clearly and unambiguously explained 1) what it is that they want and 2) why they want it multiple times, both before the SMO was launched and after. So, why are the Americans and Europeans assigning motives to the Russians that the Russians say aren’t true while ignoring the motives that they have made clear? The answer: for domestic political purposes.
With Western antiwar optimists proclaiming that the war in Ukraine will end when the last of the Congressional appropriations run out in coming months, missing from this logic is the $900 billion per annum (2025) in discretionary appropriations that go to military affairs. With the US Congress firmly in neocon hands, discretionary spending is appropriated by Congressional appropriations committees. From the evidence presented above and below, a large increase in discretionary military spending correlates with the Maidan Coup in Ukraine to the present.
To be clear, the budget process is more complicated than simple correlation suggests. Much of the Federal budget related to the military is secret. This secret funding is allegedly how the CIA funded the building of between eleven and twenty secret facilities in Ukraine following the Maidan Coup in 2014. Conversely, correlation can point to hidden methods. Possibly Congress and the Pentagon care to explain why after the US couped Ukraine, hundreds of billions of dollars in new discretionary military spending immediately followed?
Also missing from this logic is the European plan. The Europeans have pledged— not funded, something in the range of $680 billion for weapons purchases over the next four years. This could be viewed as posturing for negotiation advantage if the Biden administration hadn’t previously arranged for NATO to move intermediate range nuclear missiles into Germany in 2026. Here is MIT nuclear physicist Ted Postol explaining the escalation logic and likely consequences of doing so. As Postol intimates, insane is too kind a description of the plan.
Graph: the US Defense discretionary budget in 2024 was $700 billion. It is a slush fund of sorts, allowing planned, if politically inconvenient if revealed, military actions to be funded without specifying end-use in a public budget. The evidence points to this being a major source of funding for the war in Ukraine from 2013 – 2022, at which time the war was brought onto the books with better defined appropriations. Source.
Americans should understand that US direct appropriations for the war in Ukraine only represent a fraction of US expenditures on the war to date. The $182 billion top-line number of dedicated appropriations since 2022 is dwarfed by the 1) rise and 2) shift in discretionary military appropriations since the US assumed effective control of the Ukrainian government following the Maidan Coup in 2013 – 2014. While the data in the graph above only begins in 2015, it illustrates an increase from $500 billion USD per annum in 2015 to $700 billion in 2024.
What does this mean? Donald Trump has proposed leaving discretionary military appropriations unchanged, at just under $900 billion per annum (2025) in his 2026 budget. The process of allocating these funds belongs to Congressional appropriations committees. Recall, both parties in both houses of Congress are peopled by neocons who have their names on the war in Ukraine. In the US, the Libertarian – Right has put forward the only visible opposition to the war to date. The same party that launched the American genocide in Gaza now wants to keep the war in Ukraine going.
In history, the US botched its transition from the industrial monopoly position it held following WWII, having the only intact industrial economy in the world. It did so by jettisoning its industrial base in favor of an economy based in money laundering, artificial intelligence, and military production. Politicians in the US are ‘talking their book’ by selling war. Almost every Congressional district in the US engages in some stage of military production. And campaign contributions from military producers keep lawmakers in Congress.
The point is that between American and European politicians, they all have economic and political incentives to perpetuate the war. Backing away suggests that the rationales for war were either lies, poorly conceived, or never materially relevant. And Western efforts to control the narrative using censorship and propaganda suggest increasing desperation in the face of events unraveling. What is absolutely clear is that none of the motives that Western politicians attribute to the Russians reflect what the Russians have offered regarding their own motives.
While predicting what Donald Trump will do from one day to the next is beyond the ability of mere mortals, a look at US institutional capabilities and capacities suggests that American presidents have limited ability to control the actions of Congress and the permanent government. Discretionary spending is by definition undefined until it is defined through the allocation process. Since 2013, the date of the start of the US coup in Ukraine, US discretionary military spending has grown to levels last seen during the Vietnam War.
After suggesting that he would cut US military spending if elected, Donald Trump’s 2026 budget proposal calls for discretionary military spending in the same amount in 2026 as was allocated in 2025 ($900 billion USD). Whatever Mr. Trump’s war intentions, there is no ‘peace dividend’ reflected in the US military budget. This could reflect additional funding for the American – Israeli genocide in Greater Israel. By deducing intentions from past and planned expenditures, Donald Trump appears to be planning for more war, not less.
Rumor has it that former US president Barack Obama never approved military aid for Ukraine because he didn’t want to provoke the Russians. However, and again, there was a large jump in discretionary US military expenditures that began with the Maidan Coup, and which haven’t ended yet. According to press accounts at the time, these military expenditures correlate with the CIA arming and training the Ukrainian military to attack Russian-speaking Ukrainians in Ukraine. Yes, the US was paying to kill Ukrainians when Russia launched its SMO.
There is sincere hope here that the antiwar optimists are correct and that as war funding runs out, the war will wind down. However, 1) the European political leadership sees no path forward outside of continued war, 2) the Trump administration doesn’t know enough about the conflict to negotiate an end to it, 3) the CIA can and will continue its operations in Ukraine until it is made to stop, and 4) through discretionary military appropriations and other sources of hidden funding, it (CIA) can keep the war going outside of the dedicated appropriations that the Biden administration provided.
The covering up of the historical prelude to Russia’s SMO (‘unprovoked’) makes it difficult for Americans to understand the context of the war. Use of discretionary and hidden funds allowed the CIA to craft an army and launch a war against Russia that Americans knew nothing about until the New York Times produced two extended articles by Adam Entous on the conflict. Of my friends who support the war in Ukraine, devotees to the New York Times all, none will read the articles. Their ignorance renders them blameless, goes the logic.
As hegemon, the American conceit that it can slaughter and pillage abroad with impunity had descriptive value, even if doing so is morally repugnant. With the empire now in economic, political, and geopolitical free-fall, who the legitimate authority is within the US is less clear than it once was. Donald Trump is familiar with this process. Mr. Trump was President when the CIA, acting in league with rogue elements in Congress, used hidden and discretionary funding to launch a war that the American people were told nothing about.
The US and Europe are too politically dysfunctional to end the war as the optimists are forecasting, even after Russia has achieved a military victory over Ukraine. The US experience as the money-laundering capitol of the world suggests that hard determinations based on future funding constraints only apply to we little people. Direct appropriations have little to do with how the US funds its wars. This renders the US ungovernable and its wars unstoppable. Until they are stopped. God help us.
