Ukraine Proxy-War: Trump Picks Up Where Biden Left Off

July 21, 2025 (NEO – Brian Berletic) – The announcement by US President Donald Trump that his administration would pick up precisely where the previous Biden administration left off, and continue shipping billions of dollars in weapons and ammunition to Ukraine has taken commentators and many across the general public by surprise. 

Previous attempts by the Trump administration to coerce Russia into a ceasefire and implement a Syria-style bufferzone in Ukraine were misinterpreted by many as genuine good-faith efforts to end the conflict.

Through careful analysis, however, it was clear before President Trump even took office that no such desire existed in Washington or on Wall Street – including anywhere within the incoming Trump administration – to end the conflict. 

Instead, the US seeks merely to freeze the war in Ukraine as part of a wider approach referred to as “strategic sequencing” in which the US pivots the majority of its resources toward dismembering the Iranian nation-state and containing China in the Asia-Pacific region, before ultimately returning to more aggressive and direct conflict with Russia.

These policies have been documented in papers spanning decades, including through a number of think tanks associated specifically with President Trump himself such as the Marathon Initiative (co-founded by Elbridge Colby, current US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy under President Trump), the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, and the America First Policy Institute – all of which identify Russia along with Iran, China, and North Korea, and “threats” the US must confront.      

These think-tanks serve as interfaces between the Trump administration and well-established institutions funded by the largest most influential interests in the collective West, where mainstream US foreign policy pursuing American primacy worldwide is merely copy and pasted over to these think-thanks before being re-branded and sold to the public under the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) or “America First” slogans. 

Global Primacy at Any Cost: Washington’s Only Objective Past, Present, & Future 

The pursuit of US primacy worldwide has been the overarching geopolitical objective of the United States spanning the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, with the most current iteration of this policy rooted in the end of the Cold War and the establishment of strategies meant to prevent the emergence of any peer or near-peer competitor around the globe.

The New York Times in its 1992 article, “U.S. Strategy Plan Call for Insuring no Rivals Develop” would explain: 

…the American mission will be “convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.” The classified document makes the case for a world dominated by one superpower whose position can be perpetuated by constructive behavior and sufficient military might to deter any nation or group of nations from challenging American primacy. 

Under a section of the article titled, “Rejecting Collective Approach,” the NYT would state: 

With its focus on this concept of benevolent domination by one power, the Pentagon document articulates the clearest rejection to date of collective internationalism, the strategy that emerged from World War II when the five victorious powers sought to form a United Nations that could mediate disputes and police outbreaks of violence.

Today, “collective internationalism” is referred to as “multipolarism,” the containment and reversal of which remains US foreign policy’s highest priority. 

President Trump’s threats upon coming into office in 2025 to dismantle the BRICS intergovernmental organization through a combination of tariffs and the continuation of wars and proxy wars targeting its members and allies, represents the latest manifestation of this policy introduced to the public by the NYT in 1992. 

Through a variety of means, from the establishment of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) used to undermine and politically capture the governments of targeted nations, to decades-spanning wars and proxy wars from Eastern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, to Central Asia and the Asia-Pacific aimed at destabilizing and/or toppling allies and potential allies along the peripheries of Russia, Iran, and China, the US has established an arc of control spanning across the entirety of Eurasia and beyond. 

The targeting, encirclement, containment, and even toppling of the pillars of modern multipolarism – including a reemerging Russian Federation, a rapidly rising China, and a resilient Iran – have defined decades of US foreign policy, transcending all presidential administrations including those of the 21st century, from Bush Jr. and Obama, to Trump, Biden, and once again during the Trump administration’s second term in office currently. 

The Trump Administration’s Real Intentions Were Public for all to See

While many who supported Donald Trump’s bid for office in 2024 believed he would end the “forever wars” inherited by the previous Biden administration, even campaign rhetoric itself betrayed this notion. 

Then vice president nominee JD Vance in October of 2024 said that any shift away from the conflict in Ukraine would only be to double down on escalation with China in the Asia-Pacific region. The month prior, JD Vance’s proposed “settlement” in Ukraine was simply a Syria-style freeze rather than any actual resolution of the root cause of the conflict.  

Long before elections, the Trump campaign had repeatedly stated Trump administration policy toward NATO would demand vastly greater spending from its member states – the organization itself existing solely as a means of pursuing US primacy worldwide, and more specifically vis-a-vis Russia. 

In essence, even before stepping foot into office, the Trump administration was laying out the “division of labor” and “strategic sequencing” policies defined by unelected corporate-financier-funded think tanks years before the 2024 elections even took place, policies that the Biden administration itself had helped set the stage for throughout its 4 years in office. 

The above-mentioned Marathon Initiative in an October 2024 paper titled, “Strategic Sequencing, Revisited” would explicitly lay this out: 

The United States faces a growing risk of multi-front war against Russia, China and Iran. The optimal response to this danger would be a sequential strategy aimed at inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia in Ukraine on a faster timeline than China is prepared to move against Taiwan. But for that strategy to work, the United States must use the current window wisely to shore up the situation in Eastern Europe, broker a more effective division-of-labor with allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, and reform the U.S. defense industrial base.

Having won the elections in November 2024 and as early as February 2025, Trump administration Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth would repeat the phrase, “division of labor,” verbatim in this regard, during a directive he delivered to Washington’s European client states in Brussels. 

Secretary Hegseth would say: 

We also face a peer competitor in the Communist Chinese with the capability and intent to threaten our homeland and core national interests in the Indo-Pacific. The U.S. is prioritizing deterring war with China in the Pacific, recognizing the reality of scarcity, and making the resourcing tradeoffs to ensure deterrence does not fail. 

As the United States prioritizes its attention to these threats, European allies must lead from the front. 

Together, we can establish a division of labor that maximizes our comparative advantages in Europe and Pacific respectively.

Secretary Hegseth would also demand NATO member states increase military spending from 2% to 5% of their respective GDPs – a demand NATO member states have since committed to. 

Regarding the continuation of arms shipments to Ukraine (simply laundered through NATO), Secretary Hegseth demanded Europe, “double down and re-commit yourselves not only to Ukraine’s immediate security needs, but to Europe’s long-term defense and deterrence goals,” through Europe providing the “overwhelming share of future lethal and nonlethal aid to Ukraine.” 

Worse still, Secretary Hegseth demanded America’s European and non-European client states prepare their own troops to deploy into Ukrainian territory as part of “security guarantees” to freeze, not actually end the conflict.  

Even this early into the Trump administration, the intention was clearly not to “end” the war in Ukraine, but simply freeze it while pivoting toward wider confrontations with both Iran and China – both of which have since escalated, including through open war of aggression by the US against Iran. 

The ending of US arms shipments would be the most basic prerequisite toward ending the Ukraine war, especially considering the Trump administration’s own admission that the conflict is indeed a US proxy war fought against Russia. It was during an interview in March 2025, when US Secretary of State Marco Rubio would admit, “frankly, it’s a proxy war between nuclear powers, the United States helping Ukraine, and Russia.” 

The New York Times has revealed over the last 3 years of the conflict that the US had captured in 2014 and now directs the entirety of Ukraine’s intelligence agencies while US commanding officers operate at the top of the Ukrainian armed forces’ chain of command from a military base in Germany. 

Thus, ending the war depends entirely on the party which deliberately provoked it and continues to sustain it to dismantle the means by which it has done so, while addressing the geopolitical objectives that drove this proxy war to begin with – Washington’s desire to eliminate “rivals” and any manifestation of “collective internationalism,” or “multipolarism.”  

The Trump administration is doing none of these things and is instead escalating the proxy war further, based on policy papers pre-dating the 2024 elections the current Trump administration has obediently implemented since. This has resulted in Russia’s own steadfast policy of refusing ceasefires designed to freeze and ultimately prolong – not end the conflict. 

US Ukraine Proxy War Meant to Tie Down/Overextend, Not “Defeat” Russia 

Analysts, commentators, and many across the general public have made the mistake of believing the US proxy war against Russia, fought through Ukraine, has “failed” because of the deterioration of Ukrainian forces and the depletion of US and European weapons stockpiles. 

However, another policy paper published by the RAND Corporation in 2019 titled, “Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground,” stated explicitly that the goal wasn’t to “defeat” Russia in Ukraine, but rather, “increase the cost to Russia” of already ongoing military, economic, and political concern regarding the US overthrow of the Ukrainian government beginning in 2014. 

The paper explained: 

Expanding U.S. assistance to Ukraine, including lethal military assistance, would likely increase the costs to Russia, in both blood and treasure, of holding the Donbass region. More Russian aid to the separatists and an additional Russian troop presence would likely be required, leading to larger expenditures, equipment losses, and Russian casualties. The latter could become quite controversial at home, as it did when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.

The paper made no elusion regarding the ultimate fate of Ukraine, warning US attempts to lure Russia deeper into conflict with Ukraine could: 

…produce disproportionately large Ukrainian casualties, territorial losses, and refugee flows. It might even lead Ukraine into a disadvantageous peace.

These are all demonstrable consequences of the conflict as of 2025 with the trajectory of the conflict pointing toward even greater costs for Ukraine the longer it continues. 

The purpose of miring Russia in a conflict in Ukraine is to prevent it from spending resources checking US aggression, encroachment, and even outright regime change elsewhere. Another option described by the 2019 RAND paper was, “increase support to the Syrian rebels,” in reference to previously US-listed terrorist organization Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an Al Qaeda subsidiary. 

Because Russia prioritized the conflict in Ukraine, its ongoing military operations in Syria could not be expanded to meet continued US support toward regime change there, culminating in the collapse of the Syrian government in late 2024 under the Biden administration. 

As with Russia, So with the Rest of the Multipolar World… 

This process of creating strategic dilemmas along Russia’s peripheries to both overextend it, and prevent it from countering US geopolitical objectives elsewhere is also being employed against Iran and China, all as part of a “division of labor” and “strategic sequencing” approach toward maintaining global domination as described by the NYT in 1992 and pursued by Washington ever since.

Considering the Trump administration itself is openly committed to this overarching geopolitical objective and has demonstrated its commitment to the policies required to achieve it, the continuation of the wars and proxy wars facilitated by these policies should come as no surprise.

While some commentators claim President Trump has been since coerced into or convinced to adopt the continuation of the Ukraine war, both think tanks connected to his administration long before even the 2024 elections were held and the administration itself since, have merely picked up right where the previous Biden administration left off. 

Trump administration talk of ending the conflict was a means to both pander to segments of the American voting public as well as lure Russia into a ceasefire that would allow the US to freeze (not end) the conflict and pivot with many more resources to pursue war and proxy war against both Iran and China. 

Russia’s refusal to capitulate to US demands has forced the US to continue committing weapons, ammunition, and other resources to the conflict in Ukraine, reducing the amount of resources the US can pursue global war with elsewhere. 

Despite the many weaknesses of the US exposed by its proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, its ability to nonetheless continue the conflict, overthrow the Syrian government last year, ignite direct war with Iran in the Middle East, and continue building up military forces in the Asia-Pacific against China demonstrate it still possesses global-spanning power and thus poses a serious global-spanning danger.

The continuity of agenda demonstrated by the Trump administration despite diametrically opposite rhetoric during the 2024 campaign is a reminder that change within the United States will not come through elections

The US will continue to pose a global-spanning threat until there exists interests in the US that can displace those currently directing its foreign policy, who choose to cooperate with the rest of the world rather than maintain dominion over it. Until then, it is incumbent upon the multipolar world to create the conditions worldwide within which the US is simply unable to pursue interference, coercion, and aggression any further. 

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.