The presidents of Ukraine (Volodymyr Zelenskyy) and the United States (Donald Trump) recently met (Mar 2, 2025) at the White House to discuss the future of Ukraine and a mineral extraction deal. The meeting was not a success. On March 11, 2025, after a telephone call between President Trump and Vladimir Putin, Ukraine tentatively agreed to 30-day cease fire. It is still not clear whether Russia will abide by the cease fire.
In my mind, these developments bring up the question about what Geopolitical alignment would be best for Ukraine (UA): Russia (RU), the World System (W), the European Union (EU), the United States (US) or none (BAU or RW). The graphic above shows the time plot for the growth component of the UAL20 model under each alternative Geopolitical Alignment. Maybe surprisingly, the US Geopolitical Alignment would be one of the worst! In this post I'll explain the alternative forecasts in detail.
- RW [-8.136 < AIC= 3.753 < 14.38] The Random Walk (RW) model (Just one damned thing after another) provides a comparison to other Geopolitical alignment models (below) using the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC). Ukraine has been buffeted by many shocks to include the 2014 Annexation of Crimea by Russia and the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine. From the time plot above, the future forecast for the RW model is not much worse than the BAU model (no Geopolitical alignment) or alignment with Russia (RU). In the short-run (year-to-year) the RW model is the best descriptor of Ukrainian growth (see the NOTES below).
- BAU [103.6 < AIC= 108.73 < 112.3] The Business As Usual (BAU) provides the best future forecast and the AIC is right in the middle of the pack. However, at this moment in history, it seems that Ukraine will not be isolated from Geopolitical entanglements.
- WORLD [96.17 < AIC = 106.4 < 115.6] Alignment with the World-System would produce a collapse mode, but not the worst.
- US [99.01 < AIC = 106.6 < 113.2] Alignment with the US produces one of the worst collapse scenarios.
- EE [22.18 < AIC = 76.07 < 120.7] Alignment with Eastern Europe also produces a collapse scenario but with recovery around 2050.
- EU [90.97 < AIC = 206.8 < 120.0] Alignment with the European Union, a topic of hot debate for Ukraine, would also produce a mild collapse scenario.
- RU [65.15 < AIC = 113.4 < 140.6] Finally, Geopolitical Alignment with Russia, which seems to be the aim of the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine, would produce a cyclical growth scenario.
None of these growth scenarios look great and some are awful for Ukraine. Geopolitical alignment with Russia would currently mean a massive military loss for Ukraine. If, however, Russia were to eventually follow it's best future (alignment with the European Union), the picture would be very different.
NOTES
The systemic growth state variable (UK1) is interesting in that CO2 (-0.44492), GDP (-0.0949) and Labor Force (-0.431) enter negatively.These negative weightings mean that, in Ukraine, growth is under Error Correction and Control: (Growth-CO2-L). I will have more to say about the result in the discussion of the Ukrainian economy (here).
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