Dr. Youssef’s Scenario Unfolds: Trump Arms Ukraine to Preserve U.S. Military Prestige
On July 14, 2025, former U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the United States would send additional weaponry to Ukraine, including Patriot missile systems. This scenario was previously outlined by Dr. Mohammad Walid Youssef, head of ICGER, in a widely cited article published on November 20, 2024, titled Putin Ushers in a New Nuclear Age, in which Dr. Youssef argued that Trump would ultimately fail to reach a negotiated settlement in the Russia-Ukraine war and would instead resort to supplying Ukraine with military and financial aid, not out of strategic coherence, but to uphold the image of historic American military dominance.
Trump’s latest remarks align with this prediction. “We basically are going to send them various pieces of very sophisticated military equipment. They are going to pay us 100% for that, and that’s the way we want it,” he told reporters. Trump said on Sunday he will send Patriot air defense missiles to Ukraine, saying they are necessary to defend the country because Russian President Vladimir Putin “talks nice but then he bombs everybody in the evening.” Trump did not give a number of Patriots he plans to send to Ukraine, but he said the United States would be reimbursed for their cost by the European Union. [i]
Dr. Youssef had previously warned that the Biden administration and its NATO allies were intentionally driving the war into “a point of no return, pushing the battlefield into such a heightened state of tactical and strategic escalation that any attempt by a future Trump administration to halt U.S. military aid would appear as weakness, betrayal of America’s historic military stature, and a defeat for Washington in front of Moscow.”
In this environment, Youssef argued, Trump would find no viable path to a negotiated settlement with Russia. “His only option,” he wrote, “would be to continue, or even increase, military and financial assistance to Ukraine to maintain the image of American strength.”
[i] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/14/politics/us-ukraine-weapons-trump