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Navigating the Vortex

Navigating the Vortex

By: Lucy P. Marcus & Stefan Wolff
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 We live in a complex and ever-changing world. To navigate the vortex we must adapt to change quickly, think critically, and make sound decisions. Lucy Marcus & Stefan Wolff talk about business, politics, society, culture, and what it all means.

www.navigatingthevortex.comLucy P. Marcus & Stefan Wolff Economics Political Science Politics & Government
Episodes
  • A fudge on Ukraine and a delay on Mercosur —how the EU procrastinates and fails to prove Trump wrong

    A fudge on Ukraine and a delay on Mercosur —how the EU procrastinates and fails to prove Trump wrong
    Dec 20 2025
    By agreeing to provide a loan of €90 billion for the years 2026-2027 “based on EU borrowing on the capital markets backed by the EU budget headroom”, EU leaders have set the direction for the future of support for Ukraine. At stake at yesterday’s meeting of the European Council was Kyiv’s ability to continue to defend itself against Russia’s ongoing aggression — as well as the credibility of the EU as a player in the future of European security.The key decision for the EU’s leaders was whether, and how, they would continue to support Ukraine financially over the next two years. Europeans have provided a vital drip-feed of ongoing financial assistance to Kyiv throughout almost four years of war. But they have also struggled to fill, in its entirety, the hole created by the withdrawal of US support since the return of Donald Trump to the White House in January 2025.The estimated €136 billion budget support needed by Ukraine in 2026 and 2027 is a relatively fixed figure regardless of whether any peace initiative comes to fruition. A large part of it — €52 billion in 2026 and €33 billion in 2027 — is for military support. The EU-agreed loan of €90 billion thus covers at least the essential military needs of Ukraine. It will either contribute to the ongoing war effort or help create a sufficiently large and credible defence force to deter any future aggression by Russia. Brussels is now the most important financial partner for Ukraine by any measure.To fund support for Ukraine in the future, the commission developed two proposals. The most widely supported — but ultimately rejected — proposal was to use the frozen Russian assets held by the Belgium-based Euroclear exchange as collateral for a loan to Ukraine.In view of Belgian opposition — because of insufficient protections against likely Russian retaliation — the European Commission had also proposed joint EU borrowing to fund support for Kyiv. Despite resistance from a group of EU member states, this was the only agreeable solution at the end.The agreement on a loan to Ukraine funded from EU borrowing achieves the primary goal of securing at least a modicum of budgetary stability for Kyiv. But it came at the price of EU unity. An “opt-out clause” had to be provided for Hungary, Slovakia and Czechia. All three countries are governed by deeply Euro-sceptical and Russia-leaning parties. The deep irony is that by opposing EU support for Ukraine, they expose Ukrainians to a fate similar to that they suffered when the Soviet Union suppressed pro-democracy uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and then Czechoslovakia in 1968.The EU until now managed to maintain a relatively united front on sanctions against Russia, on political, economic and military support for Ukraine, and on strengthening its own defence posture and defence-industrial base.Over the past year, these efforts have accelerated in response to Trump’s return to the White House. Since then, Trump has shifted the US position to one which is in equal measure more America-first and more pro-Russia than under any previous US administration. And the pressure on Kyiv and Brussels has increased significantly over the past few weeks. First there was the 28-point peace plan, which may have been a US-led proposal, but read as if it was Kremlin-approved. Then the new US national security strategy, which gave significantly more space to criticisms of Europe than to condemnation of Russia for the war in Ukraine. And in an interview with Politico, Trump called European leaders weak and alleged that “they don’t know what to do.”No longer casting Russia as a threat to international security and considering Europe’s liberalism as dangerous and contrary to American interests shows how detached the US has become from reality and the transatlantic alliance. At the same time, Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, keeps insisting that he will achieve his war aims of fully annexing another four Ukrainian regions — in addition to Crimea — by force or diplomacy. Giving his usually optimistic outlook on Russia’s military and economic strength, Putin reiterated these points at his annual press conference on December 19.In light of how squeezed Brussels and Kyiv thus now are between Washington and Moscow, the agreement on EU financing for Ukraine, despite its flaws and the acrimony it has caused within the EU, is a significant milestone in terms of the EU gaining more control over its future security. But it is not a magic wand resolving Europe’s broader problems of finding its place and defining its role in a new international order.Neither is EU dithering on other issues. The agreement reached at the summit between the EU’s leaders on how to financially support Ukraine was overshadowed by their failure to overcome disagreement on signing a trade agreement with the South American trade group, Mercosur. A decision on this trade deal with Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, ...
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    7 mins
  • New US national security strategy adds to Ukraine’s woes and exacerbates Europe’s dilemmas

    New US national security strategy adds to Ukraine’s woes and exacerbates Europe’s dilemmas
    Dec 11 2025
    Ukraine is under unprecedented pressure, not only on the battlefield but also on the domestic and diplomatic fronts.Each of these challenges on their own would be difficult to handle for any government. But together — and given there is no obvious solution to any of the problems the country is facing — they create a near-perfect storm.It’s a storm that threatens to bring down the Ukrainian government and potentially the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky. This would deal a severe blow to Kyiv and its western allies.On the frontlines in eastern Donbas, Ukraine has continued to lose territory since Russia’s summer offensive began in May 2025. The ground lost has been small in terms of area but significant in terms of the human and material cost.Between them, Russia and Ukraine have suffered around 2 million casualties over the course of the war.Perhaps more importantly, the people of Ukraine have endured months and months during which the best news has been that its troops were still holding out despite seemingly unending Russian assaults. This relentless negativity has undermined morale among troops and civilians alike.As a consequence, recruitment of new soldiers cannot keep pace with losses incurred on the frontlines – both in terms of casualties and desertions.Moreover, potential conscripts to the Ukrainian army increasingly resort to violence to avoid being drafted into the military. A new recruitment drive, announced by the Ukrainian commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrsky, will increase the potential for further unrest.Russia’s air campaign against Ukraine’s critical infrastructure continues unabated, further damaging what is left of the vital energy grid and leaving millions of families facing lengthy daily blackouts.The country’s air defence systems are increasingly overwhelmed by nightly Russian attacks, which are penetrating hitherto safe areas such as the capital and key population centres in the south and west. It’s a grim outlook for Ukraine’s civilian population who are now heading into the war’s fourth winter. A ceasefire, let alone a viable peace agreement, remains a very distant prospect.The political turmoil that has engulfed Zelensky and his government adds to the sense of a potentially catastrophic downward spiral. There have been corruption scandals before, but none has come as close to the president himself.The amounts allegedly involved in the latest bribery scandal – around US$100m (£75 million) – are eye-watering at a time of national emergency. But it is also the callousness of Ukraine’s elites apparently enriching themselves that adds insult to injury.The latest scandal has also opened a potential Pandora’s box of vicious recriminations. As more and more members of Zelensky’s inner circle are engulfed in corruption allegations, more details of how different parts of his administration benefited from various schemes or simply turned a blind eye are likely to emerge.This has damaged Zelensky’s own standing with his citizens and allies. What has helped him survive are both his track record as a war leader so far and the lack of alternatives.Without a clear pathway towards a smooth transition to a new leadership in Ukraine, the mutual dependency between Zelensky and his European allies has grown.The US under Donald Trump is no longer, and perhaps never has been, a dependable ally for Ukraine. What is worse, however, is that America has also ceased to be a dependable ally for Europe.America’s new national security strategy, published on December 4, has exploded into this already precarious situation and has sent shockwaves across the whole of Europe. It casts the European Union as more of a threat to US interests than Russia.It also threatens open interference in the domestic affairs of its erstwhile European allies. And crucially for Kyiv, it outlines a trajectory towards American disengagement from European security.This adds to Ukraine’s problems — not only because Washington cannot be seen as an honest broker in negotiations with Moscow. It also decreases the value of any western security guarantees. In the absence of a US backstop, the primarily European coalition of the willing lacks the capacity, for now, to establish credible deterrence against future Russian adventurism.Efforts by the coalition of the willing cannot hide the fact that a fractured European Union whose key member states, like France and Germany, have fragile governments that are challenged by openly pro-Trump and pro-Putin populists, is unlikely to step quickly into the assurance gap left by the US. The twin challenge of investing in their own defensive capabilities while keeping Ukraine in the fight against Russia to buy the essential time needed to do so creates a profound dilemma.Without the US, Ukraine’s allies simply do not have the resources to enable Ukraine to even improve its negotiation position, let alone to win this war. In a worst-case scenario, all...
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    7 mins
  • Navigating the Vortex | Ethnopolitics Edition | Episode 1

    Navigating the Vortex | Ethnopolitics Edition | Episode 1
    Nov 27 2025

    On 14 November 2025, we spoke to George Kyris about his article on the recognition of Palestine.

    George is an Associate Professor in International Politics at the University of Birmingham and the co-founder and chair of the ECPR Research Network on Statehood, Sovereignty and Conflict. You can find out more about him here.

    You can access the article we discuss in this episode here for free.

    The special issue on The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Reflections on the Politics of Stalemate, co-edited by Karl Cordell, Brendan O’Leary and Stefan Wolff (Ethnopolitics 15(4), 2016), is available here.



    Get full access to Navigating the Vortex at www.navigatingthevortex.com/subscribe
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    21 mins
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