Tipping Point
President Donald Trump thought he had gotten the deal terms and the cover story right, and also the prize for himself (the Nobel Peace Prize ).
The deal was that under cover of an authorized leak to the press from Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Eldridge Colby, that the US was running out of ammunition for Israel’s war with Iran, for the Ukraine war with Russia, and for US military stocks at their DEFCON levels, Trump would pause ammunition deliveries to the regime in Kiev, and then persuade President Vladimir Putin to agree to an immediate ceasefire in exchange.
That’s the ceasefire which, since February, Trump has been asking Putin to announce at a summit meeting between the two of them. That’s also the fourth ceasefire in the row which Trump has been counting as his personal achievements – between Pakistan and India on May 10; between Iran and Israel on June 23; and between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda on June 27.
Only the scheme has failed.
A Moscow source in a position to know explains: “The Russian calculus recognizes the tipping point [for US arms supplies to the Ukraine]. Until then the General Staff will grind away methodically, slowly. Then when the Western supplies run low, we will hit fast and hard. If you total the June attacks, the picture emerges clearly that Putin has chosen the Oreshnik option – without firing it yet — over compromising on Trump’s terms. The outskirts of Kiev are burning like never before.”
There are American exceptionalists who insist they thought of this before — in 1943, in fact, when Walter Lippmann spelled out what has come to be called (by Ivy League professors) the “Lippmann Gap”. This is no more nor less than the ancient maxim — don’t bite off more than you can chew. But in Lippmann’s verbulation: “Foreign policy consists in bringing into balance, with a comfortable surplus of power in reserve, the nation’s commitments and the nation’s power. I mean by a foreign commitment an obligation, outside the continental limits of the United States, which may in the last analysis have to be met by waging war. I mean by power the force which is necessary to prevent such a war or to win it if it cannot be prevented. In the term necessary power I include the military force which can be mobilized effectively within the domestic territory of the United States and also the reinforcements which can be obtained from dependable allies.”
From the Russian point of view, the first two of Trump’s ceasefires have been clumsily concealed rescues for Pakistan and Israel; the Congo-Rwanda terms remain undecided; and the “necessary power” to reverse the defeat of the US, its “dependable allies”, and its proxies in the Ukraine has already been defeated. It won’t be Putin, however, to announce publicly that Trump has no “comfortable power in reserve”.
That, however, was Putin’s private message to Trump in their telephone call on July 3. “Russia would strive to achieve its goals,” was the way Putin allowed his spokesman to disclose: “namely the elimination of the well-known root causes that led to the current state of affairs, the bitter confrontation that we are seeing now. Russia will not back down from these goals.”
This is the reason Trump later acknowledged: “[I] didn’t make any progress with him today at all.” It’s also the reason Trump beat a retreat from failure. “I’m very disappointed. Well, it’s not, I just think, I don’t think he’s [Putin] looking to stop. And that’s too bad. This, this fight, this isn’t me. This is Biden’s war.”
Here are the pieces of the intelligence assessment assembled in Moscow which led to the escalation of drone and missile attacks on Kiev since last Thursday night.
The first announcement came from the Pentagon on July 1. “The Pentagon has halted shipments of some air defense missiles and other precision munitions to Ukraine due to worries that U.S. weapons stockpiles have fallen too low.” The sources were authorized to identify Elbridge Colby, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, “after a review of Pentagon munitions stockpiles”. “The Pentagon had been dividing munitions into categories of criticality since February, over concerns that the DOD was using too many air defense munitions in Yemen…Plans were in place to redirect key munitions, including artillery shells, tank shells, and air defense systems, back to the U.S. homeland or to Israel.”
Source: https://www.politico.com/
Note the timing, according to Politico’s “three people familiar with the issue…The initial decision to withhold some aid promised during the Biden administration came in early June, according to the people, but is only taking effect now as Ukraine is beating back some of the largest Russian barrages of missiles and drones at civilian targets in Kyiv and elsewhere. The people were granted anonymity to discuss current operations. The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.”
Colby has been the brains behind the strategy of sequencing Trump’s wars according to the bite-off-and-chew rule. But he has not been acting alone. He reports to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg, a Jewish financier of Trump’s campaigns whose wealth has been accumulated in part from the US defence industry and from his one-time stake in Israel’s largest bank, Bank Leumi.
The Colby-Feinberg idea was not to admit there was a “Lippmann gap”, but instead to persuade Trump the Israel war should take priority over the Ukraine war; and that if that choice was made public, the Jewish lobby would prevail over the Ukraine lobby in supporting the president. Trump was also persuaded to acknowledge publicly there is a domestic shortfall of weapons, and in private get Putin to accept the ceasefire Trump had been promoting since their first telephone call on February 12.
Trump dutifully announced at the NATO summit on June 25: “we’re going to see if we can make some [arms] available, they’re very hard to get. They [Ukraine] do want to have the anti-missile missiles, as they call them the Patriots, and we’re going to see if we can make some available. You know, they’re very hard to get. We need them, too. We were supplying them to Israel and they’re very effective. 100 percent effective. Hard to believe how effective. And they do want that more than any other thing, as you probably know.”
Trump then tried with Putin on the telephone on July 3. He “once again raised the issue of ending the hostilities as soon as possible,” Putin’s spokesman Yury Ushakov confirmed Trump’s ceasefire pitch in the Kremlin read-out.
But Putin said no ceasefire now. “In turn, Vladimir Putin noted that we still continued the search for a political, negotiated solution to the conflict…the elimination of the well-known root causes that led to the current state of affairs…Russia will not back down from these goals.”
“I’m not happy about that,” Trump said five hours later. “No, I didn’t make any progress with him today at all.”
Another hour went by and Trump repeated: “Yeah, very disappointed with the conversation I had today with President Putin, ’cause I don’t think he’s there. I don’t think he’s there.”
In Moscow an official source noted: “He is not telling why Zelensky is not there, not signing on the terms.”
Trump followed on the morning of July 4 in a telephone call with Vladimir Zelensky to discuss new Patriot missile and other arms deliveries to the Ukraine.
After the call with Zelensky, Trump was uncharacteristically silent. Zelensky did all the talking instead. “We spoke about opportunities in air defence and agreed that we will work together to strengthen protection of our skies. We have also agreed to a meeting between our teams. We had a detailed conversation about defence industry capabilities and joint production. We are ready for direct projects with the United States and believe this is critically important for security, especially when it comes to drones and related technologies.”
Source: https://www.kyivpost.com/post/55728
“We also touched on mutual procurement and investment,” Zelensky added — “we exchanged views on the diplomatic situation and joint work with the U.S. and other partners.”
This was a reference to proposals from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz to run down his remaining stocks of Patriot missiles and their radar and launch batteries; send them to Kiev; and buy more from the US. The list of US arms shipments which have been halted reportedly include 155mm artillery rounds, Patriot air defence systems, Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, Stinger, AIM-7 and Hellfire missiles.
As the Kremlin interpreted the call, there was no sign from Trump that he was asking or telling Zelensky to accept any of the Russian terms which have been tabled in Istanbul.
At the State Department, spokesman Tammy Bruce stumbled awkwardly over what to admit was the Feinberg-Colby plan which Trump had accepted, and what alternatives remained for the Ukraine. The decision-making had come from the Pentagon, not from State, Bruce claimed. She then read out from a prepared script quoting a White House press release and a statement from Colby. “We don’t make decisions about the shipping of weapons,” Bruce said. “The DoD statement made clear that they have robust options as we continue to work to assist Ukraine when it comes to the options they might have from the DoD, and I don’t doubt that. So we should, I think, be cautious about judging the nature of what has just occurred, considering our commitment that remains for the country of Ukraine.”
Left: State Department statement by Tammy Bruce. Right, Defense Department spokesman Sean Parnell reads out prepared script. For more on the gap between DoD and State, read this.
“A capability review is being conducted,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell read out, “to ensure US military aid aligns with our defense priorities, and we will not be providing any updates to specific quantities or types of munitions being provided to Ukraine, or the timelines associated with these transfers,” he said. “We see this as a common sense pragmatic step …to evaluate what munitions are sent and where. But we want to be very clear about this last point. Let it be known that our military has everything that it needs to conduct any mission anywhere, anytime, all around the world.”
In fact, as Colby said, the “capability review” had already concluded and Feinberg had agreed with the White House in early June — before Israel launched its war on Iran on June 13. As the US and Israel fired far more ordnance at Iran than Colby and Feinberg had anticipated, they became nervous at the backlash this caused at State and National Security Council. “The Department of Defense continues,” Colby told the New York Post, “to provide the President with robust options to continue military aid to Ukraine, consistent with his goal of bringing this tragic war to an end. At the same time, the Department is rigorously examining and adapting its approach to achieving this objective while also preserving US forces’ readiness for Administration defense priorities. Department of Defense leadership works as a cohesive and smoothly-running team under the leadership of Secretary of Defense Hegseth. This is yet another attempt to portray division that does not exist…America’s potential adversaries know all of this and are acting accordingly.”
Putin has acknowledged publicly there has been no movement from Washington or Kiev towards the Russian end-of-war terms. “These [Russian, US-Ukrainian] are two absolutely opposing memorandums,” he told the press, “but that is precisely why talks are set up and held – to find ways to bring positions closer. The fact that they were diametrically opposed does not seem surprising to me, either. I would not like to go into details, as I believe it would be counterproductive – even harmful – to get ahead of the talks.”
From Ushakov’s read-out of the July 3 call, it is clear Trump and Putin were unable to agree on a date for a new round of Istanbul negotiations. “The two presidents will naturally continue communicating and will have another conversation soon,” Ushakov reported. This is Russian for don’t call me, I’ll call you.
The General Staff then launched its largest air attack on Kiev since the war began, continuing the operation from the night of July 4 through the night of July 5. The majority of the weapons used were Russian and Iranian drones. According to Boris Rozhin, the leading military blogger in Moscow, “it is not entirely clear how the supply of missiles for the Patriot air defence system — if the United States will allow them — will save Ukraine from the growing flow of Gerans [and Gerberas ]. Shooting down the Geran heroes with Patriot missiles is absolutely pointless from an economic point of view.” July 4 Min 22:54.
Oleg Tsarev, a leading Ukrainian opposition politician based in Crimea, commented “several thoughts about the termination of the United States’ supply of some weapons to Kiev. This is certainly great news, but we should not forget that, firstly, we are not talking about stopping the supply of all weapons, but only about some of the names, and secondly, the rear of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is the entire European Union, all Western countries, on which we do not strike. And thirdly, Ukraine is largely holding the front with drones and electronic warfare, and with the supply of these components they have no problems and none is foreseen.”
Map of Russian air attacks on the evening of July 4 -- source: https://t.me/boris_rozhin/171383
For the July 5 map, click: https://t.me/boris_rozhin/171467
The Moscow consensus now is to escalate westwards from the front on the ground, and by air attack on Kiev, and wait for Trump. “Either Trump agrees on fresh direct shipments, or he will pretend that indirect shipments are a compromise, or he will abandon Zelensky to his fate. So we talk peace and keep moving on all fronts, keep hitting everything military. It is fast reaching the point where even if there was no Israel sector, Iran sector, Yemen sector, the US cannot save Ukraine. The US and Europe certainly can’t defeat Russia. That’s the calculus.”
