I think this may cause Nato members in general to step up both direct support for Ukraine as well preparation for a conflict between a US supported Russia against nato allies.
I think it’s pretty clear to everyone that the Americans will be leaving NATO and forming some sort of alliance with Russia immediately after the election. Putin just needs to hold the line until trump and the Americans get aid and weapons to Russia. After that Ukraine will go down pretty quick and i suspect Poland will be the next target soon after. How that impacts trade between the US and the rest of the world is unclear. Companies like tesla are in for a ride.
Physically Russia can talk a big game, but they are just unable to open another front. Even without the US involved, attacking any NATO country and triggering the alliance would be a huge risk with an already spent force. If Russia could get some breathing space by getting a long cease fire in Ukraine, they could rebuild and be ready to take on another opponent, but taking on NATO with their military in its current state would be suicide.
Russia is critically short of vehicles now. The fighting vehicles they do have are largely older with green crews who have virtually no training. They are doing awful against an army that is short of everything it needs and is bogged down with little air power support. If they attacked NATO, they would be going up against an alliance that trains frequently, is equipped with generally newer kit than Ukraine, and has substantial airpower.
One big problem is by attacking NATO, NATO would be free to give any military assistance it wanted to Ukraine, including flying air missions over Ukraine to take out Russian targets there. NATO could also move troops into Ukraine if it wanted to fight Russia there.
If Russia has a decade of relative peace to rebuild, reequip, and train an army, they might be ready to take on a weakened NATO. It isn't going to happen anytime soon.
As for the presidential election, the polls are profoundly broken. I saw an interview with Larry Sabato yesterday who is one of the top poll analysts in the US and his opinion dovetailed with mine. Something has happened to turn the entire polling landscape into garbage. And polls at this point in a presidential race are often bad anyway. In 2012 the polls showed Mitt Romney stomping Obama in the election, but he lost be 4%.
As the saying goes, the proof is in the pudding. In elections, both special and regular the last three years, there has been a consistent shift of about 9-11 points towards Democrats compared to polls and expected results from the partisan lean of a district. This has been fairly consistent, with only a few outliers. Now that the presidential primaries have started, the trend is continuing.
So far there have been Republican caucus/primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and the Virgin Islands. The Democrats have had primaries in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada.
On the Republican side Trump is hitting within the range of the polls, though often the low end of the polling results going into the election. Biden is consistently hitting the high end of the polling numbers, or exceeding the polls.
One problem the polls have is they are only reaching Gen X and older. Millennials and Gen Z won't talk on the phone unless they have to and all the polls with decent methods are voice polls. A large number of potential voters will not answer the phone from an unrecognized number. Even with the polls we have, when people are asked how a criminal conviction of Trump would affect their vote, at least 14% of current Trump voters say they would switch to Biden or a third party if Trump is convicted of a crime.
I live with a lawyer and we pay close attention to the legal world. Chances are very close to 100% that Trump will have one criminal conviction by summer, and about 80% he will have two by mid-summer.
Add on top of that that about 40-50% of the people who will be voting in November aren't paying any attention to politics at all right now and chances are high that things will change later in the year. Unless the incumbent has done something terrible, the low information voters tend to move towards the incumbent as the election approaches. These low information voters usually know little about Trump's legal troubles. They mostly know he's been indicted, but know little more than that. There will be tons of information coming out about his crimes as the year goes on.
There is no guarantee that Trump will lose, however it's very far from a foregone conclusion. He won a fluke election in 2016. He would need an even bigger fluke to win this year.
This year will unfortunately probably be a lean year for American support for Ukraine. Biden will do what he can to slip stuff to Ukraine on the down low, but what he can do is limited without funding from Congress and that is unlikely unless the Republicans lose control of the House before the election (possible but unlikely). Next year will hopefully be better. Chances are very high the Democrats will take back the House, though they could lose the Senate. The Senate map this year is brutally tough for Democrats. There are enough Republicans in the Senate who are pro-Ukraine that funding probably would get through.
I'm frustrated that Ukraine is going to have to spend a year on defense because they won't have the supplies to go onto offense, but you have to accept conditions as they are.
The money is flowing. Hopefully Ukraine is getting a handle on needless spending and corruption.
Ukraine Mulls Contingency Plan to Keep IMF Funds Flowing If US Aid Stalls
Ukraine's government has been on an anti-corruption campaign since the beginning of this war. Zelensky ran on an anti-corruption platform and the NATO/EU support has put further pressure on them to weed out corruption. Another thing that is driving on the lower level people in the government to find corruption and eliminate it is that corruption hurts the war effort.
