TL;DRussia Weekend Roundup

23 February 2025: (Un)motivated reasoning, plus texts and tunes

“The Forest at Winter in Sunset”, Théodore Rousseau, ca. 1846-67

When Donald Trump was elected back in November, I remember saying to a colleague that I felt preemptively exhausted just thinking about all of the damage control we’d be doing in the next four years. One month into his administration, I have to admit that I could never have imagined just how extraordinary the pace would be.

That said, I’m not finding myself exhausted—at least not yet. This stuff matters too much to be exhausted. But, alas, I am finding myself strapped for time, struggling a bit to keep up with deadlines and commitments, as a result of which this week’s edition is a bit thinner than usual, and, at the risk of turning this into a massive exercise in self-promotion, anchored by some work I’ve done in other venues. Sorry for that!

What I’m thinking about

Among those analysts and policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic who want to see a durable peace emerge from the war in Ukraine—a peace that would be predicated on a robust defense of Ukraine from further potential aggression—there appears to be a new political dividing line. Perhaps oddly, it is not between those who believe that such a peace can only be achieved on the battlefield and those who believe it must be achieved at a negotiating table; the former have not abandoned their analysis, but in the absence of consistent American support, they have largely ceased to believe that a battlefield victory is available and have all but acquiesced to the idea of negotiations.

Rather, the new political dividing line has to do with how people are interpreting the means and intentions of Donald Trump. In and around Washington, you will find one camp who believe that Trump is pursuing a shrewd, if ham-handed and cynical, ploy to extract pounds of flesh from Ukraine and Europe before driving a very hard bargain with Russia, in a process that might end up delivering Ukraine what it needs, but also might not. You will then find another camp who believe that Trump has already all but agreed to give Vladimir Putin everything he wants, and all he needs to do is cow Kyiv into submission.

Over here in Europe, this division plays out slightly differently. You have one camp (notably German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Miloni, and some others) who believe, like the ‘credulists’ in Washington, that Trump ought to be given the benefit of the doubt, and thus the best course of action for both Europe and Ukraine is to avoid antagonizing him and, so far as possible, to align their efforts with what the US is trying to achieve (never mind that no one knows exactly what he’s trying to achieve). And you have a second camp, epitomized by Britain’s Keir Starmer and France’s Emmanuel Macron, who appear to have concluded that there Europe will have to go it alone, perhaps even in the face of American resistance.

What strikes me about this discussion is how closely it resembles debates in Europe and the US about Vladimir Putin’s intentions vis-à-vis Ukraine. Leading up to February 2022, the arguments about whether he was seriously planning war, whether he meant what he wrote about the “unity” of the Russian and Ukrainian (and Belarusian) people, or whether he was just posturing, were more reflective of the ideologies and anxieties of the arguers than of any genuine analysis of Putin and his intentions. Because no one had access to Putin’s inner thoughts and thus no one could discern his cost-benefit calculations, many decision-makers and even professional analysts engaged in something social scientists called “motivated reasoning”—i.e., opting for the interpretation of reality that is most congruent with their existing political biases and their economic interests. In part as a result, almost everybody got it wrong.

A similar dynamic has taken hold in the discussions about Trump, whether he really thinks Putin wants to make peace, whether he really believes that Volodymyr Zelensky is a dictator, and so on. Because we don’t have access to Trump’s inner thoughts, we are left imputing into his thought process either our greatest hopes (things might not turn out so bad!) or our greatest fears (we are hours or days away from disaster!), or some combination of the two. Whatever we are doing, we are not gaining any genuine insight into how Trump is making his decisions.

Apart from just being bad analysis, it leads to a denial of agency. Because proponents of each side of the debate can’t base their arguments on a clearly structured model of cause and effect when it comes to explaining and predicting the behavior of Putin and then Trump, they pore over every new statement and facial expression from the respective leader in order to find evidence corroborating what they already believe to be true. As a result, they end up building both their ‘analysis’ and their policy recommendations on a tendentious reading of Putin or Trump and are constantly reactive to whatever Putin or Trump say or do, thus abdicating their own agency.

A better approach would still need to acknowledge the black boxes between Putin and Trump’s respective ears—areas of the world to which we simply have no access—but would, as I’ve argued before ad nauseam, embrace the obvious uncertainty rather than pretending it doesn’t exist. In practice, that means accepting that you cannot predict the behavior of the person you’re worried about, but remembering that you can understand your own position and interests, and you can develop a plan for pursuing your own interests against a range of potential eventualities stemming from said person you’re worried about.

For me, at least, this approach points in one clear direction: absent the ability to know whether Trump can be trusted in the long run, and given the certainty that security in Europe and in the West more broadly is best served by ensuring durable Ukrainian security, the only viable option is for European leaders (and American friends of Europe and Ukraine) to pursue policies that are not reliant on the US for success.

Indeed, I laid out the basic flesh and bone of this argument across three venues this week.

On Tuesday, I published a piece in The New Statesman arguing that “no one will secure Europe but Europe,” and that:

Taking a direct role in deterring Russian aggression in Ukraine gives European governments and societies a stake in a just and sustainable long-term resolution to the war. More than that, it restores Europe’s control over its own future, demonstrating to would-be aggressors of any stripe that it has the means and resolve to defend itself.

Then, on Wednesday, I published a piece with CEPA arguing for European leaders to take a long view but to move quickly to put that view into action:

If … Europe can turn its indignation into decisive action, matching and indeed overtaking the American pace, there is an opportunity to mount a genuine defense of Ukraine and the continent as a whole.

Moving quickly, however, does not mean succumbing to short-termism. Europe’s security can only be achieved by working with Ukraine to lay the foundation for its long-term sovereignty and integrity, as well as its European integration, while preventing Moscow and, if necessary, Washington from sowing the seeds of further insecurity.

The decisions made will shape the lives of generations of European citizens, and while it is imperative that those decisions are made now, their costs and benefits should be weighed in terms of years and decades, not the days and weeks afforded to American and Russian negotiators.

And on Thursday, I gave a long (as in, 22-minute long) talking-head interview to Times Radio here in the UK, summarizing where we stand and the stakes for Ukraine and Europe:

There will be more coming this week, with a focus on the negotiating process and altering Kremlin’s view that time is on its side, so please stay tuned. And, as before, please join the chat here on Substack to feed questions into subsequent editions of this newsletter. (Apologies to those whose questions I haven’t yet answered. They will be in next week’s issue, I promise!)

What I’m reading

Given everything going on, I’m afraid way too much of my reading this week was absorbed by reports of goings on in Washington, plus various European capitals. As a result, what follows is a little unusual for this newsletter, but hopefully it is still useful.

On the topic of the role that Europe can play in Ukraine—and with an emphasis on the boots-on-the-ground proposal being spearheaded by Keir Starmer—the week saw a number of useful analyses come out. Particularly useful, I think, were:

• An ‘X’ thread by Michael Kofman, arguing, inter alia, that “while I’m skeptical that European nations can deploy and sustain a large force in country, I also don’t think they have to. The initial requirements are not insurmountable and should not be exaggerated as an alibi for doing nothing.”

• A report in Wednesday’s Financial Times on the emerging shape of the what Paris and London are now calling a “reassurance force”, including the use of air power;

• An excellent long paper by Eric Ciaramella and Eric Green at the Carnegie Endowment, written before all of the latest events kicked off, arguing that there is no viable alternative to NATO membership for Ukraine.

Separately, the following pieces also caught my eye this week:

• On Tuesday, Radio Azattyk—the Central Asian edition of Radio Free Europe—carried a fascinating and curious investigation in to the evidently burgeoning market among Russians for obtaining Kyrgyz citizenship;

• Lawry Freedman’s regular column in The New Statesman on Wednesday puts a finer point on many of the arguments I’ve been trying to make on the critical nature of the present moment for Europe;

• On Friday, amidst all the noise of an impending deal between Trump and Putin, and Washington’s discussion of rolling back sanctions, the Financial Times reported on preparations being made in Moscow for the potential return of Western business, including moves to prevent those businesses from outcompeting the domestic interests that have captured market segments in the absence of Western competitors;

• On Saturday, The Cipher Brief carried an intriguing article on the complexities and challenges of negotiating with the Kremlin, written by a long-serving US diplomat with direct experience on the subject;

What I’m listening to

The non-Russian-speakers among my readers may struggle a bit with this one—it’s not the prettiest composition, and even if you can find a translation of the lyrics, they may not resonate quite the same way when they’re not sung. But this song has been on my mind for weeks. (In case you’re wondering, the group went into exile in 2022 and are opposed both to Putin and to the war.)