Virtual Media Briefing: Update on the Russia-Ukraine War—Will U.S. Long-Range Missiles Change the Equation?

CFR experts discuss the implications of President Joe Biden authorizing Ukraine to use U.S. long-range missiles against targets inside of Russia, and the prospects for the Ukraine-Russia war under President-Elect Donald Trump.

 

LABOTT: Thanks, Isabelle. Thank you, everyone, for joining us to discuss the implications of President Biden’s decision to let Ukraine strike targets on Russian soil with U.S.-made longer-range missiles. And we have another decision this morning about anti-personnel landmines.

So let’s talk about what this means for the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war. Will this change the equation? And if so, how? And how will this affect the transition to a Trump presidency in any policy continuity or change?

I have a really terrific panel to discuss this: Max Boot, the Jeane Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and also the author of a fantastic new biography on Ronald Reagan called Reagan—it’s a wonderful Christmas present, just saying; Liana Fix, fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations; and Charlie Kupchan—or, I should say Charles, but I’ll refer to him as Charlie—senior fellow, Council on Foreign Relations.

I want to remind everybody that this conversation is on the record, and that a video and transcript will be posted online after.

Max, let’s kick it off with you. In addition to the decision to let Ukraine strike those targets in Russia with longer-range U.S.-made missiles, we have a second major policy shift this week when—in fact, today—when Defense Secretary Austin announced that the Biden administration will allow Ukraine to use American-supplied anti-personnel landmines to help slow Russia’s battlefield progress. Let’s talk about both of those, you know, together.

When you talked about those ATACMS, you had said it’s not a gamechanger in and of itself. So let’s talk about, you know, what strategic value, if any, or is it just a symbolic value, does this decision hold. And how would it shape the dynamics on the battlefield as we approach the Trump presidency?

BOOT: Well, there’s actually three major decisions that President Biden has made since the election. The first of those was to allow a small number of U.S. defense contractors into Ukraine to repair U.S.-made weapons systems inside Ukraine instead of forcing the Ukrainians to take them to Poland or other NATO countries. The second was the decision to allow the Ukrainians to use their U.S.-supplied ATACMS, which a range of about 190 miles, on targets inside of Russia. And the third, as you alluded to, is the most recent one to allow the Ukrainians—to give them access to U.S.-made anti-personnel mines.

Now, all of this puts me to mind of that quip which was often wrongfully attributed to Winston Churchill about how Americans always do the right thing, but only after exhausting all the other options. And I mean, this is—you know, this is kind of frustrating to me as somebody who has been a supporter of Ukraine, to see the President Biden has waited until he has, like, two months left in office to make these critical decisions that the Ukrainians have been asking for for many months. And this is part of a pattern of Biden basically giving the Ukrainians what they need, but only after this agonizing, drawn-out delay that then lessens their military impact and costs Ukraine lives and land as they’re facing this larger Russian war machine.

Now, I think all of these steps are important. None of them, as I—as I said before, is going to be a gamechanger. But realistically, there’s no one weapons system that’s going to be, like, this wonder weapon that’s going to win the war for Ukraine unless we give them nuclear weapons, which nobody is advocating. So all these things are just incremental, but they’re important. And you saw that in the first ATACMS strike that the Ukrainians reportedly carried out about a day ago when they hit an ammunition dump inside of Russia. Those are high-value targets. Take out those ammunition dumps before the Russians can fire that ammunition and kill Ukrainian soldiers. That’s hugely important.

In the case of the ATACMS I think one of the things that motivated Biden to give the go ahead at last was the fact that North Korea has sent about 10,000 soldiers to aid in the Russian offensive to retake Kursk, which—part of which the Ukrainians occupied in August, and I think there is a desire on the part of the Biden administration, quite rightfully so, for the Ukrainians to inflict such heavy losses on the North Koreans that Kim Jong Il—Kim Jong-un decides not to send any more troops, and there have been reports that as many as a hundred thousand or more North Korean troops could be sent to Ukraine. So we definitely want to dissuade him from doing that.

I think broader picture this is all part of this, like, last-minute rush to aid Ukraine before Trump comes into office because Biden realizes and everybody realizes that Trump could very well cut off Ukraine entirely.

I mean, we don’t know what he’s going to do but that’s certainly one of the options on the table, and I think there’s this pell-mell scramble right now to provide every last penny of U.S. aid to give the Ukrainians every last authority they could possibly need to allow them to hold out as long as possible.

And potentially, you know, if Trump is serious about negotiating a settlement that the Ukrainians can live with instead of just abandoning the Ukrainians and letting them be defeated, which I think would be a huge blow not only for U.S. security but also for Trump’s own political standing, so if Trump is serious about actually achieving a satisfactory outcome to end the war I think all of these steps are actually—would actually be helpful to him because they’re going to increase the pressure on Putin. They’re going to add to the leverage that Ukraine can potentially have at the negotiating table.

Again, I wish he’d done it earlier but, you know, better late than never.

LABOTT: Do you think that—I mean, we’ve talked a lot about this before that, you know, these, you know, long, agonizing decisions were less about helping Ukraine win the war and more about helping it not to lose the war. So I guess what you’re saying is maybe this does strengthen—if Trump is serious about any kind of deal, then maybe it’s about, you know, just strengthening Ukraine’s hand at the—at the negotiating table. Because as you said, clearly, this isn’t going to be a, you know, defining move by the administration to help Ukraine, got to defeat the Russians as he’s walking out the door; that’s, obviously, not going to happen.

BOOT: Yeah. No, I think it’s basically these are moves that can help Ukraine to achieve, you know, a settlement that they can, perhaps, learn to live with. It’s not going to result in the liberation of the 20 percent of Russian territory that—the 20 percent of Ukrainian territory that Russia controls.

That’s not going to happen anytime soon. It could potentially result in a settlement that might convince Putin that he needs to stop fighting and I could see—you know, you could see, like, a frozen conflict with the Russians in control of 20 percent, the Ukrainians with the other 80 percent.

But even to get Putin to agree to an outcome like that right now I think requires a willingness on the part of the Trump administration to back Ukraine, to make clear to Putin that he needs to make a deal because right now with Russian forces advancing in the Donbas Putin may very well calculate, oh, you know, Trump is going to cut off Ukraine—why should I make a deal? Why should I settle for 20 percent of Ukraine when I can have a hundred percent?

So if Trump is serious about getting that deal he needs to make clear to Putin there will be dire consequences for not making a deal and I think these decisions by President Biden which strengthen Ukraine’s hand potentially make more likely a negotiated outcome.

LABOTT: Charlie, let’s pick up on that. You know, we were talking and you’ve suggested that this is—like, it’s almost risky this late in Biden’s presidency.

Was it—is this kind of, like, too little or too much too late or could it still, do you think, be a strategically sound move to position Ukraine for the next phase of the war or negotiations?

KUPCHAN: Yes, some of all of those, at least. You know, I would say I have two 30,000-foot reservations about the decision.

One is that I think the United States is making the mistake in Ukraine—and this goes back to the beginning of the war—of moving up a ladder of escalation in which the other side has escalation dominance and that’s simply because Russia cares a lot more about the outcome of this war than we do. And every step that we take in terms of escalation, the Russians are going to match us and raise us one. And that’s simply because it matters more to them. They’re ready to put more skin in the game. How do we know that? Well, they’ve lost over 600,000 soldiers dead and wounded. We have not put a single boot on the ground. That speaks to the asymmetry of interest. And so I think that it’s—you know, it’s not a wise move from a strategic perspective to get in a spiral of escalation with another power when you know that that other power cares more than you do, and as a consequence will keep moving up the ladder of escalation.

And then my second broad reservation stems from the timing. If President Biden was going to do this, I think he should have done it before the election. And that’s because this is a significant strategic move. It does raise the risks of escalation. I think in some respects the American people spoke when they elected Donald Trump. I’m in favor of the continued flow of aid to Ukraine. I’m in favor of Biden doing what he can to get the 7 billion (dollars) left over to Ukraine. But it seems to me that this is in some respects too much too late, and I would have counseled against making this move during the lame-duck session.

Final comment, Elise. I think the core issue here is, is it worth the increased risk? And I share the view that you and Max have articulated that if there is a clear benefit from these longer-range strikes it is that it strengthens Ukraine’s hand at the negotiating table, and I’m someone who believes and has believed for quite a long time that this is a war that will end at the negotiating table not on the battlefield. And if Ukraine can raise the costs to Russia, which is now can, then Russia has a stronger incentive to make a deal. The question is, is that stronger incentive strong enough to outweigh the downside risks? And I see three.

One, a risk of escalation. I don’t think the Russians are going to use nuclear weapons, even though we saw over the last few days a lowering of the threshold on the use of nuclear weapons. But I don’t think that it’s—one should be cavalier about this issue. And I applaud Biden for moving slowly from the beginning, from HIMARS to tanks to F-16s to ATACMS. I think that kind of prudence is warranted in a situation in which a non-nuclear power is up against a nuclear power. And I do expect escalation. I think I heard just before this call started that the embassy—the U.S. embassy in Ukraine had closed down and told people to shelter in place. We’re hearing about increased sabotage in Europe. So I do think that there will be a response to this.

Second, completely agree with Max that this is not a gamechanger on the battlefield. It’s not going to really affect the disposition of forces in the key theater, which is the frontline in eastern Ukraine. And in some ways, I think the Ukrainians would be better off using the military assets that they have—the personnel that they have—to defend the frontline. And we’re hearing the Russians are now gaining ground, in some cases a mile a day, and perhaps Kursk is turning into a sideshow that has distracted Ukrainian forces but didn’t really distract Russian forces. And I think one could argue that the Ukrainians really ought to be attempting to hold that line rather than take deep strikes in Russia.

My final comment is that I believe that this move is further indication that the United States has a policy toward Ukraine but it does not have a strategy. It does not have a clear way of matching limited means to limited ends. And I think that President Trump is going to be right, making the right move to try to negotiate an endgame. The mistake I think he’s making, or at least he’s saying he might make, is to cut off the flow of aid to Ukraine. It seems to me that a Ukraine that is able to defend itself and hold the line is essential to getting a ceasefire.

LABOTT: Yeah. I definitely want to get a little bit more into what Trump might do. But I just—I’m hearkening back to a CFR event you did with General Breedlove in which he said this is going to end the way the West wants it to end. And I think this is—you know, the—whether you agree with the kind of long, agonizing, as Max put it, decision—Max clearly doesn’t agree and you do agree—I don’t think they know the way. At least the U.S. doesn’t know how it wants it to end.

KUPCHAN: I don’t believe that it’s correct that it will end the way the West wants it to. I think there is a pathway to that outcome, and that would involve a U.S. decision and a NATO decision to put hundreds of thousands of combat troops on the ground and go to war with Russia. I don’t think that’s going to happen.

LABOTT: Which they’re not going to do.

KUPCHAN: And as a consequence, I think we need to face up to the reality that Russia has the upper hand. Time is not on Ukraine’s side. The sooner this war comes to an end, the better for Ukraine. Let’s face it, Ukraine is getting pummeled, right? They’re running out of manpower. Their electricity grid is getting taken down. This is not a war that Ukraine can afford to fight on an indefinite basis.

LABOTT: Liana, I have two things I want to get into with you. First of all, let’s just talk about the European reaction. Does this—does this kind of series of moves—these, you know, three, but particularly the ATACMS and today the anti-personnel landmines—does this pressure Europe to align more closely with the U.S. position or could it, you know, cause further division? How do you interpret the European—because there have been kind of differing stances among European leaders, such as Germany versus France for instance.

FIX: Yeah. Thank you, Elise.

Actually, the Europeans were, for a long time already—as least for the last year of the Biden administration—ahead of the U.S. administration. So both the Brits and the French have pressured the United States in spring this year to allow the use of long-range strike British and French missiles on Russian territory by Ukraine. So the Europeans have been more forward-leaning, with the exception of Germany that does not want to send its own long-range Taurus missiles because it reaches further and because, from the perspective of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, at least it is the German version of—the best equivalent that Germany has to nuclear weapons, which is doesn’t have. But Germany and—but France and the U.K. have been more forward-leaning on this. So this is a relief, from their perspective, that this has been finally agreed by the U.S. administration, even though it is unclear whether it’s now only limited to Kursk or should extend beyond Kursk.

We will very likely see Europeans following suit, especially France and the U.K., with the allowance. And there have been very strong statements by Macron to Russia’s escalation with North Korean troops because, from a European perspective, this opens up the possibility that Russia can get more and more North Korean troops into Ukraine, making it even more difficult from a European perspective to sustain Ukraine in this war.

There has also been a rather calm reaction, especially by France and the U.K., to Vladimir Putin’s update of his nuclear doctrine, which has basically lowered the threshold of when Russia would use nuclear weapons even further compared to the previous update that Russia has published, but which creates a real dilemma for Russia because its credibility when it comes to the use of nuclear weapons is significantly damaged and has been damaged for the last two years, because Russia has argued again and again that it would do it, but again and again this has turned out a bluff. And the lower the threshold becomes in a doctrine, the more difficult it is to make this doctrine actually credible. So this has been a response on paper by—at the moment by Russia, but I agree with Charlie that the horizontal escalation that Russia can do especially with sabotage in Europe is certainly something that we have to keep in mind.

Europeans do hope that with these long-range strike missiles Ukraine will not be able to turn the war, but at least it will be able to prevent the worst of Russia’s attacks going into the autumn and into the winter. And obviously, from a European perspective—and this will be my last point—the thought in mind is how do we do the best for Ukraine with the last weeks of the Biden administration to prepare for the Trump administration and for the possibility that Trump wants two things from Europe: first, for Europeans to maintain at least all the to—and to overtake, at least, all the financial support that the U.S. does for Ukraine, if not the military support, which Europeans will not be able to do; and, secondly, Trump may very well come up with a proposal that Europeans secure a ceasefire in Ukraine with a European mission, which would mean European troops on the ground—which, for Europeans, would pose a huge challenge both to reject it, because they do want security guarantees for Ukraine and they do want the ceasefire to be complied with, but also with fulfilling it. Because a European mission in the framework of the EU or NATO, coalition of the willing, is just incredibly difficult to set up, and it’s unclear how the U.S. support for that will be.

So from a European perspective, they love to see Biden giving out everything he has ahead of Donald Trump moving into the White House. And at least France and the U.K. would have wished—and of course, Central and Eastern Europe, and Poland too—that the U.S. administration would have been less cautious in this last year of the war.

LABOTT: Well, I mean, was this—was this measured, step-by-step escalation, as Charlie said was wise and Max thought was not a good idea, do you think, ultimately, this was the right strategy for managing the risks? Or, given where we are now heading into a Trump presidency, has it constrained Ukraine’s ability to achieve a decisive—a decisive breakthrough, even maybe not on the battlefield but at least moving towards the negotiating table?

FIX: It’s a really good question to answer, but at least we should be aware of the strategic implications of our gradual approach. The idea was always that the West would cook Putin in the way the frog is being cooked in boiled water with a gradual approach. But we can also make the argument that the frog is actually not Vladimir Putin, but that we are the frog, because with his nuclear threats Vladimir Putin has slowly cooked the West to be slow and cautious in their approach, and has bought the time and the support from North Korea, China, and so on to reconstitute its own military. So even if one supports a gradual approach, one has to acknowledge that the strategic implications have been that Vladimir Putin had enough time to reconstitute its military to even greater strength than at the beginning of the war; enough time to deepen his ties to North Korea, China, and to Iran; and enough time to not only present a danger to Ukraine but also a danger to NATO in the future with some of those weapons being stockpiled right now. So from a Western perspective, one can legitimately ask the question if we are in a better position now in year three of the war than we were at the end of the first year, and if one could have either ended the war earlier or could have given more to Ukraine faster instead of this gradual approach to prevent the slow, drawn-out—drawn-out bleeding that Ukraine is in right now.

LABOTT: Max, let’s go to—you know, to pick up on this Western cohesion, I mean, you know, Trump, as you—has suggested a willingness to broker a deal potentially involving significant concessions to Russia. With growing fatigue in both the U.S. and European capitals, how can the U.S. maintain coalition support for Ukraine, especially in the face of a potential shift under Trump? How does this all influence the negotiating dynamics, do you think?

BOOT: Well, I think we—for the last few years we’ve been asking how the U.S. can maintain coalition support for Ukraine. I think now we have to ask the opposite question, which is how can the coalition—

LABOTT: How can the coalition maintain—right.

BOOT: —maintain U.S. support for Ukraine. And it’s going to be very difficult. I mean, you have people who are outright isolationists around Trump like Donald Trump Jr., who, you know, recently tweeted that President Zelensky is about to have his allowance cut off. I mean, that is very worrisome because if that, in fact, happens, the people of Ukraine will be abandoned. And you know, the ability of the Europeans to step forward and fill our vacuum is going to be very limited. They can certainly provide money, but there is just a manufacturing constraint here because even working together both the U.S. and Europe have been struggling to keep up with Ukraine’s—with the level of munitions that they need to defend themselves against the Russian war machine. And you know, both the U.S. and Europe have been ramping up our production, for example, of 155-millimeter artillery shells, but there is no way that Europe alone can supply Ukraine’s needs. And so if the U.S. cuts Ukraine off, Ukraine is going to start running out of ammunition probably somewhere towards the middle of next year. That’s going to be incredibly dangerous, and it’s basically going to be an invitation for Putin to, you know, put the—put the pedal to the metal and, you know, try to win the war and march on Kyiv.

And remember, this war is not about Putin trying to annex a small portion of Ukrainian territory.

LABOTT: It’s the whole—

BOOT: This war is about Putin destroying Ukrainian sovereignty, destroying Ukraine’s ability to be a sovereign nation. He basically wants Ukraine to be back in the Russian/Soviet empire, where it resided for so many centuries. That’s what this war is about.

And so I think the challenge now is, can we convince Putin to settle for a lesser goal? And you know, Charlie is right that Putin has more skin in the game than we have. But in a way you can argue that Ukraine has a lot more skin in the game than Russia has, because for Russia this is basically an imperial war of choice. This is primarily about Putin and, you know, his ego at this point. But I’m not sure that—this is not an existential war of survival for Russia; it is an existential war of survival for Ukraine. And I think it’s imperative for us to continue backing Ukraine to the greatest extent possible, because this is not just about what happens in Ukraine; it’s also about what happens all over the world.

I mean, if the Trump team comes in and says we want to prioritize China over Russia, we want to focus on Taiwan not Ukraine, we need to keep in mind that what happens in Ukraine is going to be hugely significant to what happens in East Asia, because China and Taiwan, everybody else is watching what happens in Ukraine. And if Putin is allowed to get away with winning in Ukraine, that is going to encourage China to attack Taiwan. So I think this is just an incredibly important geopolitical conflict where we simply cannot let Putin win.

And I don’t know what Trump himself thinks about that. As I mentioned, there’s certainly a lot of isolationists around him, including his own vice president, J.D. Vance, who said, I don’t give a damn what happens to Ukraine. But where is Trump himself? I mean, I think there is a portion of his brain where he must understand that, just as losing and leaving Afghanistan took a massive toll on Joe Biden’s popularity, losing Ukraine would take a big toll on Trump’s popularity and would also harm his ability to coerce other countries, like China, to achieve his ends. So I think it is very much in his interest, if he understands what his true self-interest is, to support Ukraine in achieving a durable peace deal, which I think will require some kind of security guarantees, just as we gave to West Germany, just as we’ve given to South Korea. There has to be some kind of external security guarantees, whether from the U.S. or Europe, or preferably both, if there’s going to be a DMZ to make sure that Russia does not just, you know, retrofit its forces and get ready for another push against—across that DMZ in a couple years’ time.

So, you know, I think getting a durable settlement in Ukraine is very much in Trump’s interest. But, you know, does he see it that way, or does he just want to cut off Ukraine and doesn’t care what happens next? I don’t have any good—I don’t think anybody has a good answer to that question. We’re about to find out.

LABOTT: We’re going to move in a couple of minutes to questions. If you have a question, please click the “raise hand,” and we’ll unmute you, and we’ll take your questions. We particularly—the icon on your Zoom window. And also, we prioritize—we’d like—we’d especially like to have some questions from the—from our media colleagues. So, any questions, raise your hand.

Charlie, let’s pick up on that. There are some small signs as to, you know, if Trump were willing to make a deal where he would go. If you remember back to when he was talking about when he was president in his first term about Crimea, and he was, you know, ready to kind of say, well, you know, that’s Russian. He was pretty close to recognizing it. And I’ve seen some, you know, albeit anonymous quotes from Trump advisors that say, you know, if Zelensky comes to the table thinking he’s getting Crimea back, he’s not serious.

So where do you think—you’ve advocated, as you said, for a shift towards a defensive strategy for Ukraine. I encourage everybody to read Charlie’s Foreign Affairs article earlier in the year on that. How do you think this would play out with Trump in terms of a defensive strategy for Ukraine, in terms of holding onto what they already had? Do you think Trump would expect the Ukrainians to give up, for instance, the entire Donbas? And how does this—let’s just go back to how does this new long-range capability fit or contradict your vision to the best path forward?

KUPCHAN: I mean, I see the landscape quite similarly to Max in the sense that everything else being equal I think that Putin would like to turn Ukraine into a failed state. I’m guessing that he’s realized that he can’t take the country over and that’s simply because he’s turned the country into a country of 44 million or less because a lot of people have left. But 40 million Ukrainians who want nothing to do with Russia.

But he might be able to just break its back and that’s—you know, that goal, I think, requires asking, well, what’s the best way to prevent him from doing that and my answer to that is to try to end the war because I do fear that if this just drags on and on and on and on that the costs to the Ukrainians in lives and infrastructure, in, you know, the ability to sustain a working economy that just decreases over time.

And as a consequence, my measure of success here is can we turn the 80 percent of Ukraine that is still Ukraine into a success story. If the answer to that ends up being yes I would say that it’s a long-term, serious strategic defeat for Putin and success for Ukraine and the West.

So I think the toughest issues—coming to your question, Elise—are not going to be the territorial issues. I think in some ways if there is an agreement, and I’m guessing that this is kind of where Trump will go, it will be with a line, a border, that runs along the current front line on the—at the time of the negotiations and whenever a deal might be struck.

I don’t think that’s the hard part. I think the hard part will be the other issues that Putin is going to put on the table which would include recognition of Crimea and Donbas as Russian. It’s hard for me to imagine Trump being able to get away with that politically.

What about Ukrainian neutrality? As Max said, they’re going to want security guarantees. Putin may well say permanent neutrality. I don’t think you can sell the Europeans on that. What about reducing—

LABOTT: NATO membership. Yeah.

KUPCHAN: Right. What about reducing sanctions on Russia? Very hard for President Trump to move in that direction, given the current political environment on both sides of the Atlantic.

So I think Trump is headed in the right direction when he says, let’s try to end this war. I think he underestimates how difficult it will be to get common ground with Putin and he underestimates the degree to which he’s going to have to keep supporting Ukraine with arms to get the Russians to, as Max said, give up on the idea of turning Ukraine into a failed state.

LABOTT: Well, I mean, it’s the real—it’s really in the terms, right? I mean, he could be a hero or he could lay down terms that Putin wants, you know, and impose them in that way. It’s just, you know, finding terms that are acceptable to both. I agree.

KUPCHAN: I mean, he’s not going to be a hero if the takeaway is Trump just lost Ukraine.

LABOTT: Right. No, obviously. You know, he’s—I think he’s coming to the table—if I could read what he’s saying and what’s going on I think he’s saying they’re going to lose something and I think it’s just a question of whether they lose it permanent, how much they lose, if they lose it permanently, whether there’s—you know, obviously port access is, you know—and, you know, access to the sea is important as well.

Liana, you’ve written about North Korea’s direct involvement. We talked about it a little bit earlier. How much does this, you know, change how European leaders view their obligations to Ukraine?

Is there a sense that this maybe is shifting into a broader—a broader conflict here? And go back to what Max was saying about Taiwan. How does that all fit in?

FIX: Yeah. It has definitely been seen from the European side as a Russian escalation, basically making this a globalized war by tying in the Indo-Pacific, and it has certainly accelerated the European realization that European security and Indo-Pacific security are closer tied than they—than they previously thought.

It took a long while to find this response to North Korean troops, which is—which is surprising. And one of the reasons for that is that it seems unclear to Europeans right now what role China plays in this relationship.

On the one hand, for China it is—it doesn’t like Russia and North Korea. Chinese dependence strengthened their relationship. North Korea had only one option in the past, which was China. Now it has another option, which is Russia.

Russia will also give North Korea something in return, certainly, something in relation to military technology. So China has lost a little bit of the control on its ally. But on the other hand, if North Korea continues to supply troops to Russia it is also difficult to imagine that they would do this against the explicit will of China.

So the question of China’s role in this is unclear. It’s something that has been discussed at the G-20 summit where, for example, Chancellor Scholz discussed with Xi Jinping, the Europeans are having here, obviously, a position of weakness because they have not sanctioned China’s support for Russia’s war sufficiently.

They have only sanctioned 10 mainland companies, and this is another weakness that they will have to deal with if Donald Trump comes in, that he will ask Europeans why they have not imposed greater sanctions on China for its support of Russia’s war for the North Korean troops.

So the China issue and the Ukraine issue, to add just another level of complexity to these negotiations, is even closer tied. And China saw a role for itself in a future negotiated outcome in Ukraine.

Donald Trump would certainly not see that role for China now but the role that China has carved out for itself in European security is not something that will go away. So these two issues will definitely mix in any kind of ceasefire negotiations in the future.

LABOTT: Yeah. OK.

We already have several questions in the queue so we’re going to turn to questions now.

(Gives queuing instructions)

Let’s keep the questions short because I can see we already have several in the queue, and we particularly welcome questions from media—members of the media for this CFR media briefing.

Isabelle, over to you.

OPERATOR: We’ll take our first question from Steven Erlanger.

LABOTT: Hi, Steve.

Q: Hi there, Elise. How are you? It’s nice to see you all. It’s fun to speculate. I have no idea what Trump’s policy on Ukraine is going to be, let alone on Iran. I mean, we’ll see.

But the one thing—and I will be brief—I just wanted to ask anyone who wants to answer but maybe particularly Charlie, if Trump makes an offer to Putin and Putin can’t accept it what do you expect would happen?

I mean, I have the sense there’s going to be a lot of media attention and blah, blah, blah, and it all could fall apart. So I’m just curious whether Trump gets angry at Putin for refusing the greatest deal ever.

LABOTT: That’s what I think.

Q: I mean, again, it’s a fun question. I’m not sure anybody knows the answer but I did want to put it out there and thank you for doing this. I’ll stop now.

LABOTT: Charlie, do you want to start? Maybe then we’ll go over to Max.

KUPCHAN: Yeah. I mean, I think that in many respects that’s the most likely outcome. I do believe that Trump very early on will, as he said, try to cut a deal and he will pull Putin and Zelensky together and say, OK, guys, you got to do this now, and I think he’s just underestimating how difficult it will be.

If Putin does walk away from the table, you know, I think, we’re back where we are right now because I don’t think that Trump is going to cut off the flow of aid to Ukraine unless he gets or even if he gets a deal from Putin simply because he can’t because Ukraine is going to need assistance for the long haul to defend itself.

I’m someone who is skeptical that Ukraine is going to get NATO membership anytime soon and as a consequence the best guarantee that it will have that Putin won’t try this again is strength, is the ability to build a fortified front line and have a glide path of aid for the indefinite future.

So, you know, to me I think he’ll give it a try. I would not put the chances of success high, and then I think even Trump will start the—restart the flow of aid if he does try to turn it off because, as I said, he doesn’t want to be the president who lost Ukraine.

LABOTT: Max, a follow-up on that.

This summer I think Trump said something along the lines of, and I’m paraphrasing here, I’m going to get a deal. I’m going to go to—I’m going to go to Zelensky and say, we need to end this, you know, reasonable, and I’m going to say to Vladimir, Vladimir, you need to take a deal, and if he doesn’t I’m going to make Ukraine make him want a deal, suggesting that he might arm—and I think he might have even said, I’m going to arm Ukraine like he’s never seen before and make him make a deal.

So, I mean, I feel like he was already kind of positioning that he’s not just—or at least in rhetoric that he’s not just going to lay down for Putin.

BOOT: I mean, I hope you’re right. Again, very hard to predict.

I mean, I think his initial foray is going to be thinking that, you know, he has such a great relationship with Putin that as a personal favor to him Putin will want to end the war and I think he’s going to be rapidly disabused of that notion.

The question then becomes what does he do next, and it would be ironic if at the end of the day Trump comes around to actually supporting aid for Ukraine because at that point it would no longer be this agonizing attempt to get Republican votes. It would sail through both houses almost unanimously. It would be very easy to do.

But it would certainly force him to disappoint his hardcore MAGA isolationist base including his own vice president and including his own son. So is he going to do that? I don’t know. I mean—

LABOTT: Well, I think that’s the open question, right? Now that he has his second term is his legacy more important on the world stage, right, Liana? Or the—you know, or the MAGA or the MAGA—

FIX: I mean, I think the appointments that he has made so far are conflicting at the moment because the first wave of appointments seemed to be at least somewhere in the space of reasonable but the last appointment that he made, obviously, shocked many Europeans.

LABOTT: Curious.

FIX: And what makes me pessimistic that he will actually pursue a strategy of coercing Putin into negotiations and to accepting what he puts on the table is that those proposals came from Mike Pompeo to raise support for Ukraine, and Mike Pompeo has not been given any position in the new administration.

And I think that is an indicator, together with Nikki Haley, that he will not pursue a policy which, despite the framing of peace through strength, that will actually succeed to coerce Putin into anything that Putin doesn’t want.

KUPCHAN: I would just add that I think Trump could find himself in a very awkward position because we shouldn’t underestimate the kind of neo-isolationist narrative that has shaped the base, and if he says, you know, I’m going to ask for another X billion dollars for aid to Ukraine it’ll be very interesting to see whether he can bring Congress along with him.

BOOT: Oh, I would—

LABOTT: Max, were you going to say something?

BOOT: He can bring Congress along if he decides. It’s just the question of what he decides.

I would add just to the point that Liana just made, yeah, I think I agree it’s bad news that Pompeo was not appointed secretary of defense. I think there’s a small glimmer of good news in that Mike Waltz, who is the national security advisor, has basically called for that escalate to deescalate strategy—to threaten Putin with more weapons and more permissions to use them to force him to the table, and I think Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, would also probably be in sync with that strategy.

I have no idea where Pete Hegseth comes down, assuming he gets confirmed as secretary of defense, and ultimately, of course, as we know it’s all going to be with Trump. It’s like whoever he spoke to last, whatever he decides on the spur of the moment. So good luck figuring out what that’s going to be.

LABOTT: Yeah. Yeah. OK.

Isabelle, let’s go to the next question.

OPERATOR: We’ll take our next question from Jeremy Young.

Q: Hi, Elise. This is Jeremy Young.

LABOTT: Hi, Jeremy.

Q: How are you?

LABOTT: Good.

Q: I’m a senior producer with Fault Lines on Al Jazeera-English.

I would like to get our experts’ assessment on domestic politics in the context of these actions came after the election.

Do you think we can take away from that that Democrats view support for the Ukraine as an unpopular policy that they didn’t want to run on and—or do you think that’s just their assessment of MAGA voters, independent voters, Republican voters, that they wouldn’t favor this so they put these actions off until after the election?

Thank you.

LABOTT: Yeah. Charlie, that’s an interesting question. Did Biden wait to give the aid because he thought that would be unpopular in the election? I don’t necessarily think so but I think now that he saw the result maybe he figured he might as well go for it. Is that what you—

KUPCHAN: Yeah, I think it had a lot more to do with the North Koreans. At least in terms of what’s been indicated by senior administration officials, that was kind of the trigger. And I think that you are seeing Biden rush whatever he can to Ukraine now because he’s unsure what Trump will do. But that’s much less about domestic politics and much more about just uncertainty about what happens after Trump’s in office.

The one comment I would add, though, is that I think Biden underestimated the difficulty of maintaining bipartisan consensus on Ukraine. You know, he—I think he thought that when the Russians went into Ukraine Humpty Dumpty was back on the wall, and that Republicans and Democrats would come together as they did in the Cold War. And he—I think he’s found out just how difficult it is to navigate this kind of issue through a very divided American electorate.

LABOTT: Max, you wanted to follow up a little?

BOOT: No, I—

LABOTT: You agree?

BOOT: I completely agree with Charlie’s analysis.

LABOTT: OK.

BOOT: And one can’t always say that, but in this case I do completely agree with Charlie’s analysis.

LABOTT: (Laughs.) Yes. It’s been a—

KUPCHAN: I don’t think—this is a—this is a first, Max. This is very new—

LABOTT: I expected a lot more disagreement here.

OK. Next question.

OPERATOR: We’ll take our next question from Jim Zirin.

LABOTT: Hi, Jim.

Q: Ah, I unmuted.

Maybe this is a question principally for Max, but given Russia’s history of making a deal and then coming back, as they did after Minsk in the Donbas and as they did in annexing Crimea, is it at all thinkable in the United States’ interest that there could be a deal such as Trump suggested, one that he could make in twenty-four hours, which means ceasefire in place and nothing else because security guarantees are complicated to negotiate and we don’t know what the dimensions would be of them, without adequate and effective security guarantees? That might be NATO membership, which would be anathema to Putin; or it might be bilateral U.S. guarantees, which would be anathema to Trump. And it just seems to me that it’s going to be another Munich with Trump coming back saying he negotiated peace in our time and the Russians, maybe in four years, maybe in five years after Trump is gone, or maybe sooner will go back into Ukraine because they want to make it a failed state.

BOOT: Yeah. (Inaudible)—Jim. I think that’s a very likely outcome. I mean, that’s basically—that would be a rerun of the Nixon administration negotiations with North Vietnam, where Henry Kissinger basically said we just want a decent interval. He said that to the North Vietnamese, we just want a decent interval before the collapse of South Vietnam. So American troops pull out, and there’s a couple of years’ intermission before South Vietnam falls so it doesn’t look like the U.S. has been defeated, even though everybody knows the U.S. was defeated. So it could very well be that that’s all that Trump wants in the case of Ukraine, is a decent interval—a ceasefire. Which, you’re absolutely 100 percent correct, if there are no security guarantees to enforce the ceasefire it will be no more lasting than the Minsk peace process from 2014-2015, which resulted in basically bupkis.

So, yeah, I think that is a danger. And you could—if Putin is a wily—is interested in wily gamesmanship, you can see from his own vantage point it might make sense for him to say, yes, I will agree to a ceasefire as long as, you know, there’s no security guarantees for Ukraine, as long as they’re not in NATO, as long as there’s no Western troops in Ukraine, as long as, you know, there’s no more weapons for Ukraine, because all of that will basically leave Ukraine at his mercy a couple years down the road. But again, there is—from Trump’s own perspective, there is the danger of Ukraine falling when he’s still in office, and that would be a political catastrophe for him, I think. So, you know, is he willing to sign up to that kind of deal?

And again, at this point in time I think there’s no indication that Putin is even willing to do that deal—(laughs)—the one that he doesn’t even take seriously. There’s no indication that he’s actually willing to do a ceasefire because right now I think he feels like he has the initiative, and he has good reason to think that maybe Trump will cut off all aid to Ukraine. So why does he even need to go through this sham ceasefire when, you know, he has the Ukrainians reeling right now?

LABOTT: And, Liana, you don’t—will the—will the Europeans go along with something like that?

FIX: The problem is that they don’t have the leverage to not go along, especially if Trump mixes the Ukraine issue with NATO. I mean, he can say at any time: Europeans, you either support my initiative here or we’ll have a problem with U.S. security guarantees for NATO. And then this becomes a real trembling question for Europeans, because for what—what do they go for, right—for the thing which is your own security or sort of your extended security in the long term?

By now, I think there’s—that one can argue that Europeans definitely have learned the lessons of Minsk and of the dangers of hoping that something remains contained and frozen even though it—the Ukraine war has never been frozen after 2014, but that something would just stay there and not escalate further. But they might also in this situation calculate that with a Trump administration they will not be able to advance any further, and therefore hope for 2028 for a different U.S. president to come in to secure Ukraine in a way which would be more lasting.

So I would not place my bets on Europeans being the ones who oppose a dirty ceasefire deal in Ukraine, again, because of their dependence on Donald Trump, and because Donald Trump would be—would show no reluctance at all to throw NATO security guarantees into the mix to bring Europeans in line.

LABOTT: OK.

Next question, please.

OPERATOR: We’ll go to Kate Winston next.

LABOTT: Hi, Kate.

Q: Hi. This is Kate Winston. I’m a reporter with S&P Global Commodity Insights.

I was hoping you could go into more detail on sanctions—which sanctions Biden could use right now to give Ukraine some more leverage, what sanctions Trump could use, and whether you think they will—can actually be effective right now with the extensive shadow fleet and economy that goes around sanctions. Thank you.

LABOTT: Charlie, Max? Who’s going to take that?

KUPCHAN: I’ll make a quick comment. You know, I think one of the lessons that we’ve learned over the last few years is how difficult it is to make sanctions work. These are—you know, the sanctions that the U.S. and its allies have hit Russia with are very significant. And the problem is that, you know, we now live in a leaky globalized economy where the Russians have been able to simply shift their supply chains, and stuff is now coming in from Georgia and Turkey and other countries along the southern tier. The energy is flowing to India and China and other places. Yeah, I mean, we can go find a firm somewhere that is breaching sanctions and quietly transferring semiconductors, but it’s Whac-a-Mole because as soon as we sanction that company we’re going to find another one somewhere else. And so I’m not averse to playing that game and trying to tighten the sanctions over time, but the idea that we are somehow going to strangle the Russian economy or shut it down, whereas Trump has suggested push down oil prices so low that we’re going to bankrupt Russia, not going to happen. And that’s one of the reasons that I don’t believe that time is necessarily on our side; it may be on Putin’s side.

FIX: There’s one sanctions measure, just to add a more optimistic note to what Charlie just said, which would be to seize Russian assets fully instead of doing what we are doing now, loans on Russian—on the interest of Russian frozen assets, which has been negotiated in this way because Germany and Japan in particular were reluctant to seize these assets, which are located in Europe primarily. So this could be a moment for Germany and for Japan to review their stance on Russian frozen assets, which would mean that a massive financial support line for Ukraine would come in beyond the loans that are coming in right now. And of course, there’s the question of how to manage this overwhelming flow of money, but it would be—would at least secure the question of financial support, because even if the United States ends financial support to Ukraine this could be a supply line that Ukraine could live on for a long period of time. And it is the lowest-hanging fruit that the Europeans, together with Japan, can agree upon now, much easier than thinking about oil sanctions.

LABOTT: OK.

Next question.

OPERATOR: We’ll go to Anthony Borden next.

LABOTT: Hi, Anthony.

Q: Hi, all. Great conversation. The way this works, you have to sign up for your question early and then you have to have a series of declining questions as the great questions get picked up from Crimea on down, and all of them could merit more discussion. So thank you so much for that.

I wanted to throw in the significant sum of frozen assets that Russia has. How does this fit into the puzzle? And why has the card not been played? Is this part of a negotiating hand that could be played in part of a settlement, or is it something that Europe could have to make up the shortfall of funding should Trump go that route? And why hasn’t Biden done anything with it, or will it be one of the lame-duck fire sale policy rollouts in the coming days? So, discuss.

FIX: Yeah. I can—I can come in on that and elaborate a little bit more.

So the concern for Germany and Japan has been the stability of the euro, historical reparations towards Germany and Japan, which have been used as an argument. None of these arguments seemed particularly convincing even at that time, the argument of stability of the financial system, and it seems even less convincing now. The U.S. actually had a smaller role to play in that because those assets are in Europe.

As a—as a poker in negotiations, I’m pretty sure that Vladimir Putin would put it forward and say, well, let’s unfreeze some of these assets, give us some back. But it would be from a Ukrainian and a Western perspective unacceptable because it’s the only way how Ukraine can achieve any kind of reparations from Russia, forced reparations. There’s no other way how Ukraine can achieve its reconstructions without these kinds of financial funds. So it’s not big enough as a poker chip to be really fully relevant in negotiations—Vladimir Putin knows that these assets are probably gone and it will be difficult to get them back—but it would be something which would be an important chip to uphold Ukraine’s support financially for a long period of time, and just to make sure that the Ukrainian state doesn’t collapse. Because that’s the worst-case scenario, that if a Trump administration is volatile on Ukraine support, Ukraine will domestically face a very difficult time and in the end become a Georgia version of Ukraine where politics are back and the unity that Ukraine has shown so far will be—will be challenged. And keeping up unity and cohesion in Ukraine domestically when ceasefire discussions are on the table all the time, are going on, will be incredibly difficult.

LABOTT: OK.

I think we have time for one more question.

OPERATOR: We’ll take our last question from Anton LaGuardia.

LABOTT: Hello?

Q: Sorry. Just trouble with the unmute button. Can you hear me?

BOOT: Yeah.

Q: It disappeared at the bottom of my screen. Thank you very much for doing this. This has been really interesting.

I just wanted to test a couple of propositions that people have made. First of all, the notion that Trump cares about the defeat of Ukraine, I think both of you mentioned it, sometimes I wondered whether more in hope than actual expectation. I mean, this is a guy who says—you know, who said he was willing to walk away from NATO and so on. So one question is how much does he really care about the collapse of Ukraine.

Second thing I was interested in discussing is if he really does go for a strategy of, you know, escalating to deescalate, or, you know, coming to that strategy after trying negotiations, how much more does the U.S. really have left to give Ukraine given the current limits on production of munitions and so on? Like, where do you escalate to deescalate?

LABOTT: OK. OK. Charlie, I think I’m going to take that last question and ask the panelists to make quick close remarks. Charlie, let’s start with you because I know you got to jump.

KUPCHAN: Yeah. I mean, it’s a—it’s a good question, Anton. You know, I do think that in the end of the day Trump sees himself as a dealmaker, not someone who wants to be known as a—as a surrenderer or someone who capitulated, and his ego alone may make it difficult for him to basically say I’m going to throw Ukraine under the bus. And, yeah, he did talk a lot about pulling out of NATO, but in the end of the day he didn’t pull out of NATO. He didn’t leave South Korea. He didn’t leave Japan. He kept that basic infrastructure intact.

Second Trump term is probably going to have sharper edges than the first Trump term. That’s safe to say. But I still, in my heart of hearts, have a hard time seeing him just walking away.

I’m going to jump off. But thank you, Elise.

LABOTT: Thanks, Charlie. Thanks, Charlie.

KUPCHAN: OK. Take care, everyone.

LABOTT: Could you unmute Anton for a second? Anton, did you have any very quick last thoughts?

Q: No. It was just a point—it was just a point about, you know, is there really a strategy of escalating to deescalate, and what is it. What can—what more can America and Europe give the Ukrainians to—

LABOTT: OK. Great way to—great way to close it out. Max, let’s go to you next.

BOOT: I mean, I agree it’s a great question, and I certainly cannot read Trump’s mind. I have no idea whether he cares about Ukraine or not. I would say, again, to back up what Charlie said, I’m pretty sure he does not care about Ukraine as a humanitarian or strategic issue, but he may care about Ukraine as a Donald Trump political issue. You know, if he shares Charlie’s assessment and my assessment that the fall of Ukraine would be bad for Trump politically, that would be presumably something he would seek to avoid. It would make him look weak, it would make him look like a loser, all these other things that he abhors. So if he sees it that way, I think he would be compelled to do something to prevent Ukraine’s collapse.

But you’re quite right, we don’t really know how he sees it. He may see it in an entirely different way—like, oh, this is Biden’s loser war, and I don’t want any part of it, and Americans are tired, and we don’t want to waste any more money on welfare for Europeans, and let’s just pull out, and who cares if Putin runs Ukraine. That could well be the way he sees it too. I truly don’t know, and he has not given us a lot of clues.

I will say the one thing that is mildly, mildly, and only very slightly encouraging is that last April, when the aid bill was before the House, he did not block it. And I think part of the reason was that Mike Johnson made the case to him that, A, it helps U.S. defense manufacturers; and, B, it would be politically bad for Republicans to block the bill and see Ukraine falling while they’re running for office. And so that is some acknowledgement, perhaps, that Trump does understand the political downside of abandoning Ukraine. I could be engaging in wishful thinking, though.

LABOTT: Liana, closing thought about Trump and how the Europeans will react?

FIX: Yeah. Just to add to that, it’s true that Trump does what sort of the last person told him—(laughs)—advising him. So there is a possibility of influencing Trump’s thought. And I think this possibility has to be used, not only whether the U.S. but also by U.S. allies. And that means, for example, that the Europeans should show up at the next NATO summit in The Hague in June next year with a clear proposal how they will reach 3 percent in defense spending to save NATO. They should now show up with a clear proposal to Trump how they are going to increase their support for Ukraine, both financially and militarily, and also work out how a European mission potentially and theoretically could look like. So if in a proactive approach the criticism that Trump will probably levy against Ukraine, against Europeans, is toned down, there could be a chance that this positively influences Trump’s arguments, because some of his arguments—the Europeans are not doing enough, the United States is getting ripped off by NATO—could be weakened if Europeans go forward in a more proactive approach. The only problem is that, well, we’re waiting for German elections right now, which in a very bad timing—in a very bad timeline right now. But there is a possibility to influence his policy positions.

LABOTT: OK. Well, this was a terrific discussion. Obviously, a lot more to discuss. And this conversation was on the record. The video and transcript will be posted on CFR.org. And you can also visit CFR.org for a lot of additional resources.

We’re also going to have a conversation with former President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko on December 2. That will be on the record. It’ll be livestreamed. So we encourage you to look for an announcement on that.

I’d like to thank my panelists Charlie, Liana, and Max. And thank you to all for joining us.

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