Mary Kissel

The idea that, you know, we're talking about ends of wars after a couple weeks or months or years is really ridiculous when you look at the history of warfare.

Well, first of all, I want to change your characterization just a little bit.

We often talk about these wars as bilateral affairs, but they're not.

These are actually proxy battles between China, Russia, Iran, and the United States and our Western allies.

And it's really important to say that because if you make it a bilateral conflict, you can simply talk about something which doesn't really reflect reality.

So how is the war going?

the war has changed.

Ukraine has not just successfully stopped the Russian invasion, but is starting to make gains itself.

And secondly, you've seen Ukraine's role as an arms exporter, as an arms innovator,

changed very significantly in the last couple of months, with Zelensky going out to the Gulf, signing agreements with some of those nations, stopping in places like Syria, Saudi, UAE.

So this is an important shift in the war and in its dynamics.

In Trump 1, we shifted tremendously toward Ukraine, because recall that under the prior administration, they just wouldn't give them any sort of real true weaponry, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance support.

Now in Trump 2, you've seen that support continue.

It's continued quietly.

You've seen different kinds of support come in, for instance, bringing the Treasury Secretary over.

to talk about economic assistance, urging our European allies to do more.

You don't hear a lot about it, of course, because we have a lot of conflicts going on simultaneously right now.

We've got Gaza.

We have Ukraine.

We have Iran.