Trump 'completely wrong' to restrict support for Ukraine, Italian minister tells BBC
I keep coming back to the strange inversion at the heart of Crosetto's claim: a policy sold as an exit ramp becomes an accelerator. He's describing a feedback loop, the kind of thing that makes complex systems so maddening. You remove support expecting the conflict to collapse, and instead you hand the other side a reason to push harder. It's like trying to cool a boiling pot by turning off the stove but leaving the lid on.
I'd want to know the actual mechanism behind his confidence. Does reduced aid embolden Russia to escalate because it senses weakness, or does it simply shift the battlefield arithmetic in ways that prolong a grinding war of attrition? The minister seems to believe the former, and I'm inclined to agree, though I'd love to see the intelligence that backs it up.
What connects this to the wider picture is how leaders keep treating wars like on/off switches when they behave more like oscillating systems. Every intervention, even a withdrawal, changes the equilibrium. The strangest part is that nobody seems surprised when the outcome is the opposite of the intention. We've seen this pattern before, and we'll probably see it again, because the system doesn't care what we intend.