Hello, and welcome back to The Best & The Brightest, your Tuesday foreign policy edition.

Remember the war in Ukraine? Yeah, that one. It’s still going, still killing thousands, even though the West’s attention has moved on to the war currently raging in the Gaza Strip. (As one source joked bitterly, “I’m surprised you care about Ukraine, now that there’s a younger, hotter war on the scene.”) That’s what I’d like to talk about today, but before we do, a couple thoughts on that younger, hotter war…

Over the weekend, Bibi Netanyahu made some of his most shocking comments in a while. “I’m proud that I prevented the establishment of a Palestinian state,” Netanyahu said at a press conference in Tel Aviv on Saturday night. He also bragged about undermining the Oslo Accords, which he called “a fateful mistake.”

Let’s just say his comments didn’t land well inside the Biden administration, which has been quite clear that a two-state solution is the only solution it supports. Giving voice to that frustration on the Sunday shows, Senator Chris Coons, from Biden’s home state of Delaware, called Bibi “an exceptionally difficult partner.” “He has done everything he can to undermine a positive vision for peace for Israel,” said Coons, who is often seen as a kind of Biden surrogate. Privately, administration officials are even more blunt, though they are hesitant to say anything, even anonymously, because they don’t want to be seen as undermining the Israeli government as it fights a war. But the sentiment is, in short: With allies like this, who needs enemies? (In fact, when I offered this formulation to several senior administration officials, they laughed in bitter agreement.)

Bibi’s comments weren’t exactly a surprise. He has almost seemed to relish torpedoing any possibility of Palestinian statehood—and has talked about just this openly, for years. (Recall that his political party’s original charter also called for a version of “from the river to the sea”—only of Israeli sovereignty.) Bibi’s embrace of Trumpism—as well as his iciness toward the Obama White House—helped to make Israel a more partisan issue in American politics and poisoned the well with many in the current administration, several of whom are Obama alums. “I can’t think of a single person who likes him,” a senior Biden campaign source told me of Bibi. (The timing of Bibi’s comments also didn’t escape notice, given the heat Biden is currently taking from his left for supporting Israel.)

There’s also a feeling in the Biden administration that Bibi’s latest comments were a naked political play to his own base in Israel because the man has literally nothing else to run on: The idea that he’s the only one who can keep Israelis safe is clearly out the window, as is the idea that he’s a master diplomat with durable relationships all over the globe, including the Arab world. (Even his buddy Vladimir Putin threw him overboard and fêted Hamas in Moscow.)

There’s also a tacit recognition in the administration that Bibi has every incentive to continue to be a wartime prime minister because, as soon as the war is over, he will have to answer some very difficult questions. The end of the war will also, most likely, be the end of his premiership, people in the Biden administration believe. And as the war drags bloodily on, and as Bibi and his ministers continue pouring gas on the fire, it’s apparent that more and more people in the Biden administration are looking forward to that day.

Okay, back to Ukraine. But first, here’s Abby Livingston from the Hill…

• More complications for Ukraine funding: Early January is always pretty miserable on the Hill, but this January is expected to be exceptionally awful, given the cascade of deadlines (a potential government shutdown, Ukraine/Israel funding, etcetera) that the House and Senate both punted into the new year.

  The heavy January workload will likely be further complicated by Iowa’s presidential caucuses, which culminate on Monday, January 15. Depending on the margins in the Hawkeye State (Trump appears on track to win that contest) and how Nikki Haley is faring in New Hampshire ahead of its January 23 primary, Donald Trump could be sewing up the nomination just as Congress enters a full-blown, multidirectional scramble. If so, Democrats fear Trump could redouble the pressure on Republicans to oppose more Ukraine funding, or to blow up already fragile negotiations on border security.

• Paging Emily Post: Ordinarily, candidates and incumbents tend to spend the last few weeks of a fundraising quarter trying to bring in as much money as possible. But the last few weeks of the fourth quarter include two of the biggest, most family-centric holidays, which makes it a fairly dormant period. In other words: It ain’t cool to dial for dollars just as donors are starting vacations and spending time with their families.

  As such, this week marks the final fundraising sprint. Everyone wants to secure bragging rights before campaigns file F.E.C. reports in late January. Despite all the transformations in politics in recent years, candidates’ quarterly fundraising totals remain the best way for the political class to glean who’s up and who’s down in House and Senate races. But enthusiasm is dwindling by the day—especially because fewer and fewer members are in Washington—as the last fundraising events of the year wind down.

  A former Democratic fundraiser explained to me the rules of raising money over the Christmas holidays: Don’t schedule call time between December 23 and New Year’s. Aggravating a donor on Christmas Eve is not worth any anticipated return. The exceptions here are unexpected and fast-approaching special elections, like Long Island’s race to replace George Santos. But, per this Democrat, it is okay to blast away at digital fundraising and to track down outstanding checks and previous commitments—but the sooner before Christmas the better.

The much-anticipated spring offensive may have failed, and the commander of the Ukrainian armed forces may have labeled the war a stalemate, but the administration was clearly at pains to push out a different story. “The other thing this analysis concludes is that [the war] has set the Russian army back 15 years,” the staffer added. “So for very little financial cost to a very rich country, and with no American boots on the ground, we’ve set Russia back 15 years.” Everyone, after all, loves to back a winner.

Now, as the year draws to a close, it is clear that the Ukraine aid package won’t pass until January at the earliest, if at all. Senior administration sources have told me they’re confident it will pass, but those closer to the negotiations aren’t so sure. Some are worried that, even if a deal can be made, it won’t get the votes, especially in the House. One senior Republican official told me that the administration’s stance was “a little overly optimistic considering how thorny [immigration reform] has been historically, but we’re all trying our hardest. No one’s negotiating in bad faith.” But, the official noted, “this is an issue on which no one has been able to do anything in 40 years.”

Here’s what that means in non-D.O.D. speak. There are three buckets of money allotted for Ukraine military aid. The first is the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which gives money to Ukraine to buy American weapons. This bucket has been empty for at least the last two to three weeks, but because Ukraine has already made its purchases and it takes so long to produce these products, that materiel will continue to arrive in Ukraine for another couple of years.

The second bucket is the presidential drawdown authority, which allows the president to dip into America’s own stocks and send weapons to Kyiv. This, said Mark Cancian, the Pentagon budget expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, goes back to a law passed in the 1960s that allowed the president to send equipment that America is phasing out to our allies, for whom it would still mean a marked improvement in capabilities. One man’s obsolescent arms, in other words, are another man’s cutting-edge weaponry. Thanks to the creative accounting I wrote about earlier this fall, the Pentagon discovered it actually had about $6 billion more in this bucket than it had originally thought. Of that, there is an estimated $4 billion left. “I’m frankly surprised it has lasted as long as it has,” Cancian marveled.

Still, that doesn’t mean that military aid will fall off a cliff come the new year. Whenever the president announces a new weapons delivery to Ukraine, it takes a while—sometimes months—to reach Ukraine, and there is still materiel en route from earlier aid packages. And because of how military contracts and manufacturing work, some of the goods that Ukraine signed contracts for in the spring of 2022 will start being delivered this coming spring. That will continue for the next couple of years. Moreover, the E.U. is still sending about $1 billion of aid for Ukraine per month, which is now more than what Washington sends (we’re down to $700 million monthly, from a high of $1.5 billion). That said, American military aid deliveries are slowing. By spring, said Cancian, they’ll be at 40 percent of their summer 2023 peak, and by next summer, it will be just 12 percent.

According to a senior administration official, Biden will announce one more aid package for Ukraine before the end of the year. (The amount, being worked out by the Pentagon, is still in flux.) That materiel will start showing up in the first weeks of January. “It’s not like they’re going to run out of ammunition on January 1,” the official said, “but they’ll start to feel the pain pretty soon.”

The war has been at a stalemate for the last couple months. Winter is setting in, and the administration official said they expect Russia to keep pounding Ukrainian infrastructure. Moreover, whatever their limited capabilities, the Russians “have no intention of letting up on offensive operations,” the senior administration official said. “We think Putin will make some moves come late January/early February.” Added the official, “The clock is ticking, and it’s not our side, in terms of getting the Ukrainians help.”

Michael Kofman, a military analyst at Carnegie who has been a kind of prophet during this conflict, said that, though the war in Ukraine is likely to go on for years, 2024 will be a decisive one. Ukraine can use 2024 to reinforce and rebuild its military capacity and retake the initiative in 2025, or it might start crumbling as Russia continues slowly, stubbornly—and according to Kofman, overconfidently—pushing along the frontline.

Much of how 2024 goes for Ukraine, however, will be decided here in Washington. “Next year could well be the turning point in the war,” Kofman told me. “If leaders in the West don’t make decisions well in advance and follow through, then they’re going to leave Ukraine in a very disadvantaged position. Russia has a host of problems, but next year the material advantage is on the Russian side. It may not prove decisive, but it will begin to mount.”

Moreover, even if Congress reaches a deal early next year and aid begins to flow again, the days of a new Ukraine supplemental getting passed every couple months are long gone. “Whatever funding Ukraine receives now will be the only funding they are likely to get from the U.S. for the next year,” Kofman warned. “And then the truth is, nobody knows what’s going to happen in 2025.” That is, who knows what happens if Donald Trump wins the presidency and some European elections don’t go Ukraine’s way.

It’s not 2024 just yet, but there are already reports that Ukraine has been rationing its artillery as U.S. aid has slowed. That need will become even more acute should Congress fail to reach a deal. If the spigot gets turned off at the end of the year and stays off, said Cancian, a retired Marine colonel, “by February, two months from now, Ukraine will have difficulty launching even local counterattacks. They will go totally on the defensive. By summer, they will have a hard time fending off the Russians. It’s less bleak than people think because people thought there’d be a cliff. That’s not true, but it’s a slower death rather than a fast death.” He added, “Without more aid and more funding, the Ukrainians are doomed.”

Julia