An interesting take on the events in the Oval Office

This has been the essential problem of this conflict.  How do you stop a determined advisory when you know your country won't have the stomach for what it requires? The last 3 years have been an exercise in kicking the can, waiting for a unicorn, just like every other major problem. 

Russia will not go home unless they are brutally defeated. This is clear at this point. Economic warfare has been inadequate, because there are enough loopholes to avoid a killing blow.  So it will take military might.  The US is the one with the necessary volume of guns.  Most Americans probably still can't find Ukraine on a map, and can't even get properly upset about a hostile takeover of their own country, so who cares about what happens in Ukraine. Throw in the risk of nuclear retaliation and WWIII, it's been a non-starter.

Which is what Trump, despite all his flaws does see clearly.  So in this non-winnable scenario his people have decided to just participate in the ruining of Ukraine and make a play for their natural resources.  But as Starmer re-iterated today, if the US gets the mineral deal, Ukraine still has no safety, because there is still no actual, implementable security plan as part of the deal!  Do we really think that if Ukraine agrees to the mineral plan the US suddenly agrees to put troops in Ukraine and planes in the sky? It's entirely dependent on Russian actions.  Do you trust Russia to hold up their end of the deal? I don't. Trump, for some reason does, so the plan is simply: make Ukraine the bad guy for seeing the flaws and refusing, and the US and Russia decide who gets what anyway.  A point Senator Tuberville made clear in his statements today.

"Zelenskyy's gonna play hardball, but you know what? He's not even in the game. It's gonna be Putin and President Trump and the people on our side that will end up making this decision for the future of Ukraine."

So if that is the world we live in what happens next?  My expectation.  World War III.  It's a likely outcome in all but one scenario.  If the US is no longer willing to defend the sovereignty of democratic states then it will usher in a new period of land grabs perpetrated by authoritarian governments and re-militarization by everyone else needing to prep for their own defense. But this is in some nebulous, non-immediate future most people can't see.  China will proceed full speed ahead with everything they've ever dreamed of, and countries who thought the US would protect them will have no choice but to militarize, including the development of their own nuclear programs. This conflict has proven that nuclear power is a successful deterrent.  Taiwan, South Korea, Japan need nuclear, yesterday. Europe will not feel safe depending on France and the US-maintained UK program, so they will have to develop their own.  If a US is an active *participant* in the land grabs as they have signaled they might be via the mineral rights, Gaza, and threats to Panama, Netherlands, Canada and Mexico then it will be unlike either of the two previous World Wars.  No one in the West, on their WWIII bingo card, had the US as an aggressor in that war and now it's panic city. I think Trump is actually just a very big chicken, who hides it with bluster.  The way that we are dismantling our own military readiness, the US will too quickly be rendered impotent, so mostly we will do nothing, while we spiral into economic ruin and the world spirals into actual ruin. And after 80 years, thousands of lives lost and trillions of dollars spent to prevent!, the world falls under the sway of Chinese, Islamic and Russian empires as an unholy triumvirate of likely successors to US hegemony. The part Trump's people, and MAGA voters DON'T see. They already have Asia, Europe becomes a quagmire (per usual), Africa and South America are open for the taking (which is why abandoning our aid programs is such a bad strategy). North America is in a playpen.

The only way to avoid WWIII, IMO, was and is for the US and NATO to fully commit to supporting Ukraine, with troops on the ground and everything. Kuwait / Iraq but bigger.  Call Putin's bluff.  Keep China and nations who wish to be friendly to Russia to keep the hell out of it as their best play. But we are a world full of cruel, spineless and selfish people, and something the US excels especially at right now.  A third imagines themselves as pacifists, a third won't help anyone who doesn't look like them or see how they immediately benefit, and a third can't be bothered to care about anything at all. Rendering it a politically losing strategy. 

So we'll do the other thing, and continue to wait for a unicorn solution to magically appear.  Paralysis is still a choice. Hiding behind, "We can't afford to do X, Y or Z," leaves us on a path of inertia, and the outcome of that path isn't good.  Unless you are Russia.

If Zelenskyy believes that the US may turn around and start funding Russia, he's obviously not going to concede anything for what is likely to be a very temporary peace.

It seems likely to me that there's an agreement between Trump and Putin - Trump will help him get Ukraine, and Putin will help Trump get Greenland.