Pausing Ukraine to Prepare for a Bigger War

Bidding for peace and taxing trade to fund the empire, while the rest of the world coordinates for the multinodal world.

Published: 2025-04-27

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NordStream Revisited

In Patrick Lawrence's third part of his series on modern Germany he returns us to the fateful moment on February 7th, 2022, in the White House, with US President Biden and German Chancellor Scholz standing at their lecterns following private discussion and their delivery of prepared remarks.

Biden declared that if Russian forces entered Ukrainian territory—as he was by this time confident they would have no choice but to do—“then there will no longer be a Nord Stream II. We will bring an end to it.”

[Lawrence]

We now understand that for decades, with a coup in the middle and a tacitly approved civil war, the US coordinated the provocation of Russia to start an international war to "weaken" it. There stood Chancellor Scholz, who must have understood what was being done, like a deer in the headlights. Not only would the US attempt to weaken Russia, but would succeed in weakening Germany by denying its industry cost-effective power, supplied as Russian natural gas. It would then directly participate in the de-industrialization of Germany by offering incentives for German industry to re-locate to the US.

Having weakened Germany, but not Russia, the US is now playing mediator in the war it constructed, attempting to control who profits from the end of hostilities settlement. While this simple analysis, or understanding, may not be clear to Western populations due to their unhelpful media, it is clearly understood in Russia and by extension China and Iran, along with any other BRICS+ member states who wish to know.

The trillions of dollars of spoils on offer include $300 billion in Russian Central Bank assets frozen in Western banks (the interest on which has already been stolen), future mining profits on Ukrainian minerals, control of ports and other infrastructure in Ukraine, and the profits of rearmament of European "partners" in the NATO-Russia Ukraine war. War is a business in which the US has no partners but its corporations. Germany be damned, and Ukraine destroyed.

Bids for a Peace

The Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs publishes "Russia Matters". It assembles and condenses significant announcements and events in international affairs related to Russia. These are regularly re-posted by N.S. Baldwin at her "Understanding Russia" site as an informative antidote to the ill informed and wild speculation which is the mainstay of US media.

In the most recent "Russia in Review, April 18–25, 2025" edition, the Belfer Center tabulated Ukrainian and European counter-proposals to that from the US to settle the Ukraine war. This in itself informs us that the US is not a mediator but a party in the "peace" [pause] process. Perhaps more revealingly, Russia's position is omitted from the tabulation.

This is exceedingly strange, given that Russia is one half of the conflict.

Behind the Curtain

John Helmer introduces his most recent article on the discussions to "freeze" the Ukraine war with:

it is Trump’s ambition — also his innovation in presidential politics — to adapt the century-old US empire’s war for hegemony in Europe against Russia by compelling both his allies in the war (Germany first of all, then France, Poland, UK), and his war targets (Russia and the Ukraine), to pay him for protection against the enemy he claims to be making peace with. A short-term armistice or truce on the Ukraine border, accompanied by a long-term war plan that preserves the US protectorate in Europe, at the Europeans’ expense, serves the president’s personal ambition, and also the strategy which has been written for him by his advisors.

Helmer provides comments from two sources to explain the Russian position for possibly accepting a ceasefire, upon current lines, which contradicts their core demands, recognition of all of Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhye and Kherson as Russian. One understands that there is plenty of bloody fighting still required to achieve this territorial control militarily, assuming that Ukraine can continue to field an effective defense.

“I believe a bad deal is coming, but we are clear-eyed about this. There will be a ceasefire, but how long it lasts, who can tell. This isn’t a sell-out. We have no illusions about the reliability of American agreements or Trump’s stability. Putin is telling the General Staff: we’ve got to sign something — prepare for war. He’s also got to convince Russians of this for the longer term. In this future, the pre-war oligarchs haven’t the power of the new military-industrial complex. They will profit by going along. They realize that if they don’t, Putin’s successor is coming, and he won’t be as friendly to them.”

[Helmer source]

The other source notes that even with a ceasefire, should Trump, or an equivalently minded successor, lose the US 2028 election, the war will start all over again. This assumes the Ukraine doesn't break the ceasefire beforehand. Russia is not starry eyed about the political process which Trump's divided team of limited experience is trying to finesse.

Helmer observed that the current discussions between Dmitriev and Witkoff have excluded Lavrov (Foreign Minister), Belousov (Defense Minister) and Gerasimov (Chief of the Military). The discussions have been financial. They do not address the causes of the war. Their purpose is to freeze, or pause, not end, the war. This is entirely obvious to the Russian leadership.

The final quote by one of Helmer's sources provides insight into Russia's (and thus, China, Iran, India, ... BRICS+'s) strategy.

“At this point in time, we have no reason to want to fight a US president who says he doesn’t want to fight Russians. We also know he can’t lift the sanctions legally without Congress. But he can use his executive orders to stop enforcement, and that’s a break we can use to our advantage, as well to the benefit of the Chinese and Indians. We understand a bigger war is coming. The military needs two to three years of preparations, improvements, reorganization. Also, Putin needs to prove he has tried peace with the Americans, and they can’t be trusted. Russians have no illusions about the stability of US politics. This is a deal that is as stable as Trump’s mind.”

[Helmer source]

Empire Games

The primary understanding from the above reinforces that which has become increasingly obvious. This, not the least because of the recent declaration of it by A. Wess Mitchell in the Council for Foreign Relation's publication Foreign Policy.

The US is fighting Russia, China and Iran and trying to not do so all at once. Conversely, these members of the SCO and BRICS+, are coordinating their foreign policy as evidenced by the repeated gatherings of their foreign ministers, senior diplomats and heads of state.

We have moved beyond the "insurgency wars" to the advantage of Israel in southwest Asia, and the disruption of central Asia in Afghanistan. The US Empire has entered "peer competitor" warfare. This is fundamentally, as the war in Ukraine demonstrated, economic military-industrial warfare. Mitchell's trivial analysis of "do not fight multi-front wars" is neither novel nor interesting to the Pentagon. They have studied WWII. They understand that Hitler and the Wehrmacht's fatal error was creating an "eastern" front by invading Russia. Mitchell has been paid to inform the US political elite of this well understood military dictum.

The US has yet to display any cohesive strategy to win the economic component of the peer-power war. Trump's gambit of requiring the world to fund the US Empire via a blanket 10% tariff regime didn't make it through triage.

[US Treasury Secretary] Bessent said that the high tariffs were unsustainable and that he expects a “de-escalation” in the trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

[Guardian]

China was fully ready for the trade war and defeated it in a fortnight. International traders are warned of the instability of trading with the US and will likely engage with more stable markets. The minor reduction in the value of the dollar cause by the tariff policy would assist in US manufacturing exports. First, however, those industries need to be built. Where would the production technology for the manufacturing be built? A lower dollar raises the price of importing these technologies to the US.

There is no "master strategy" behind Trump's policy, apart perhaps from extorting a peace in Ukraine. The US Executive, unleashed by years of incremental advance empowering the unitary executive, is implementing economic policy based on poorly considered, nostalgic ideas which do not comport with modern economics or the now globalized trading system which the US built during its hegemony.

Behind in military technology, years behind schedule in stocking its armories and missing a coherent strategy to fuel a increase in exports via manufacturing, the US Empire is wholly ill-prepared for the coming "bigger war". It will be, for many years.

Given these imbalances, one would expect that the US Empire's peer-competitors will stretch the differences between them and the empire during the three year "pause" potentially being constructed over Ukraine.

Technological Surprises

A significant advance in nuclear power research was made in China recently.

The US abandoned research in Thorium based nuclear reactors a little under 50 years ago. The Chinese have spent over a decade reading the published research and re-running the experiments behind it. At the direction of state policy China expanded its research base and constructed a large experimental Thorium reactor. Advances in materials science, engineering and the Thorium nuclear fuel cycle were achieved by Chinese researchers to achieve their result.

That was the resupply of Thorium based fuel to the reactor while it was still running. This creates the foundation for further research and testing to construct larger stable reactors on a timeline of around a decade.

Thorium is far more abundant than Uranium. China has tens of thousands of years of supply, as do many other nations. It is the far superior fuel.

As Forbes wrote in 2012 at the time of the Fukushima disaster:

thorium is more abundant in nature than uranium, is not fissile on its own (which means reactions can be stopped when necessary), produces waste products that are less radioactive, and generates more energy per ton.

[Forbes]

Should this research advance as China wishes, to operational cost-effective power sources, they will revolutionize the global energy economy shifting it away from its current reliance on fossil fuels.

While China has been building its research sector and making advances like the above, the US is currently destabilizing its research sector by grabbing researchers off the streets and deporting them.

Chaos, fanciful policies and ineptitude will not lead the Empire out of the challenges it sees.

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Sources

Russia Is Ready For A Bad Deal With Trump For Good Russian Reasons; John Helmer; Dances with Bears; 2025-04-26

Putin Hosts Witkoff on Ukraine Again, As Trump Hopes for Peace Soon; Russia Matters; Natylie's Place: Understanding Russia; 2025-04-26

Germany in Crisis Part 3: A Culture of Submission; Patrick Lawrence; Scheerpost; 2025-04-26

Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine [book]; Scott Horton; 2025

The Road to War in Ukraine — The History of NATO and US Military Exercises With Ukraine — Part 2; Sonar21; Archive.today; 2025-04-26

The Road to War in Ukraine — The History of NATO and US Military Exercises With Ukraine — Part 3; Sonar21; Archive.today; 2025-04-27

Trump says China tariffs will drop 'substantially – but it won’t be zero’; Theguardian; Archive.today; 2025-04-23

Poisonous Tariff Uncertainty; b.; Moon of Alabama; 2025-04-26

China has world’s first operational thorium nuclear reactor thanks to 'strategic stamina’; South China Morning Post; Archive.today; 2025-04-18

The Thing About Thorium: Why The Better Nuclear Fuel May Not Get A Chance; Forbes; Archive.today; 2012-02-16

China Won the Economic War; Glenn Diesen; Glenn's Substack; 2025-04-25

China Strikes, Iran Resists, Russia Repositions — Trump in the Line of Fire!; Alkhorshid interviews Larry C. Johnson; Dialogue Works; 2025-04-25

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