At a time when the crises of the international system are intensified, and the traditional deterrent scales are stumbled, the war in Ukraine becomes more than just an armed struggle for the borders of Eastern Europe, it is a moment of turning in the American strategic perception, and a revealing mirror to transform the standards of political effectiveness in the post -hegemony world.
Since Donald Trump entered the White House, armed with an excessive electoral promise in its simplicity, he promised to end the war within 24 hours, the contradiction began to expand between the discourse of rigor and the performance of the frequency, with the logic of deals and the reality of fire.
It was only two hundred days until the features of the deficit began to appear, as not as a circumstantial failure in managing the crisis, but as an existential test of the remainder of the credibility of Washington as a force capable of managing the system, not retreating before it.
Trump did not find in Vladimir Putin the party that can be attracted to a negotiating table with the flavor of the market, but rather faced an experienced geopolitical mind that does not accumulate points but rather seeks to decide, and only from the position of power.
Putin rejected all efforts to freeze, and raised the ceiling of its conditions to the extent of demanding the withdrawal of Ukraine from the lands that Russia included, and ensuring that it does not join NATO, and remove it completely, putting a new equation that sees the settlement except for a cover for victory, and does not accept less than an international approval of his plan to re -demarcate the security environment of Russia.
These conditions, and if they appear impossible in the eyes of Kiev and Western countries, came supported by an advanced military rhythm; The Russian forces, during the past two months only, have seized more than a thousand square kilometers, while Ukraine has lost nearly seven thousand square kilometers since the beginning of 2023.
This means that the initiative on the ground is increasingly inclined in favor of Moscow, and that the Russian war machine has not yet been affected sufficiently to the balance of the battlefield.
While Washington was looming with new sanctions, old pressure tools seemed to have lost their momentum. The imposition of secondary sanctions on Russia’s commercial partners seemed closer to shooting in a vacuum.
India, for example, continued to buy Russian oil under long -term decades at preferential prices, and even re -exported huge profits, in complete ignorance of Washington’s warnings.
New Delhi has responded with a strict tone, describing her targeting as unjustified and unreasonable, in a clear indication of the boundaries of the American influence even on his traditional allies. China and Turkey were not the least rebellion, which made the imposition of comprehensive sanctions are fraught with economic and political risks at the same time.
Even with the escalation of the dialect, and the definition of time to end the war, Trump himself seemed to question the feasibility of what he threatens, as he acknowledged in a remarkable statement: I do not know whether the sanctions bother Putin, then he added: The Russians are very adept in circumventing it, in a lining of the economic tool’s inability to curb the Russian desire to decide.
At the moment of a search for a political exit that preserves face water, Washington returned to wave the direct meeting, as the idea of holding an upcoming summit between Trump and Putin was again raised as a final embodiment to try to circumvent the field through a personal path.
The special envoy of the American president and his personal friend, Steve Witkeov, arrived in Moscow in an introductory basis, who previously met Putin without an official translator, and exchanged personal gifts with him, including an oil painting for Donald Trump himself, in a scene closer to the diplomatic weather than to actual negotiations.
Information was leaked that the possibility of holding a summit between the two leaders was not completely excluded, despite the absence of any actual indicators of Putin’s willingness to sit from the site of the non -victorious.
And if Trump has wagered from the beginning on the personal relationship with Putin, the facts of the field do not go along with that bet, but rather undermine it. Moscow has continued to refuse to engage in any serious negotiations, to continue its wild operations, and intensively bombing civilian centers, while the American administration was inversely pressure on Kiev, motivating it to accept realistic concessions that may lead to an unprecedented agreement.
On the ground, Russia continues its intense bombardment using drones and missiles, targeting civil and military infrastructure, in a systematic tactic that exhausts Ukrainian air defenses, which depend almost completely on Western aid.
However, this aid, despite its symbolism, began to appear actual limitations, not only due to the decline in political will, but as a result of the structural industrial deficit in both Europe and the United States.
Western factories, designed for limited wars or lightning air campaigns, are not able to keep up with the accelerated demand in a long -term war, especially in the field of air defense, which has become the central weakness in Ukrainian performance.
In this context, the Washington crisis deepens, not because it is unable to support, but rather because it does not have a strategic perception capable of translating support into victory or settlement.
The conflict in Ukraine has turned into a mirror of the American decision -making structure: hesitant to escalate, unable to withdraw, besieging electoral promises, and restricted by alliances that cannot bear sudden shocks.
He increased the darkerness of the image, Trump’s bet from the beginning on his personal relationship with Putin, believing that the man who addressed him directly, and expressed his respect, could be sought, or at least, containing it. However, the field was more severe than compliments, and international policy is more stubborn than words.
The tension reached its climax when Trump escalated his accent after a sharp exchange with Dmitry Medvedev, announcing the movement of two nuclear submarines as a symbolic response to the Russian escalation, and then he soon returned to calm, saying only that the submarines are in their positions.
However, despite these accidental escalators, he seemed unable to understand the Kremlin’s motives, expressly recognizing that he does not know why Russia insists on continuing the war, saying: This has no meaning for me, in a rare recognition of an American president that his opponent is thinking outside the understandable frameworks in Washington.
Amid this complexity, Ukraine appears as someone fighting on two fronts: against an enemy progressing, and against an ally an alternative. It pays the price not only in geography and blood, but in the successive failures of the international system that promised it to support, then let them collapse in stages, just as the candles are extinguished one by one in a room that has no doors.
War is no longer just testing will, but a narrative test. The American president, who built his image as a decisive decision maker, is surrounded by doubts, inside and outside his country, about his ability to influence a conflict that exceeds the limits of traditional pressure papers.
It has been shown that the war in Ukraine is not a resolution conflict through a tweet or deal, but rather a long -standing strategic clash, in which balances are reshaped, during which the sites of power are changed.
Trump not only failed to achieve his promise, but also revealed that the bets based on the personality of foreign policy, and simplifying complex conflicts in media templates, will not stand up to the field facts.
As for Putin, it seemed like someone who writes the text of victory on time, believing that hegemony is not restored by rhetoric, but rather slow and thoughtful crawling, and that when geography holds time, it turns from a battlefield to a writing tool for history.
And between this and that, the international system remains suspended on the wires of the fire, unable to impose the end, or prevent the expansion of the beginning.
The opinions in the article do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al -Jazeera.
