DeSantis on our Ukraine involvement
I see no problem with his statement. I’ve highlighted certain words I think are important:
While the U.S. has many vital national interests — securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party — becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them. The Biden administration’s virtual “blank check” funding of this conflict for “as long as it takes,” without any defined objectives or accountability, distracts from our country’s most pressing challenges.
In other words, we need to avoid becoming even more involved (such as, for example, sending troops), and we need to define the mission more clearly and not make our participation unlimited.
He further refines that position here, including being explicit about no troop involvement:
Without question, peace should be the objective. The U.S. should not provide assistance that could require the deployment of American troops or enable Ukraine to engage in offensive operations beyond its borders. F-16s and long-range missiles should therefore be off the table. These moves would risk explicitly drawing the United States into the conflict and drawing us closer to a hot war between the world’s two largest nuclear powers. That risk is unacceptable.
In the next paragraph, he states that we shouldn’t have regime change in Russia as a goal. The rest of his statement is pretty ordinary.
In fact, I see the entire statement as a fairly reasonable, middling position. Those who are out to get DeSantis – from the left and from the right – don’t see it that way, of course.
Hmmm, well, let’s see how that’s going under the Biden regime, shall we?: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/biden-china-saudi-iran-talks
I agree this statement is not terrible and in most cases necessary, but I disagree with a few key points and I admit I find it to be one of the more disappointing parts of DeSantis’s track record (which itself is a stark point).
A few key issues I disagree with:
Firstly:
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but
Firstly: Putin’s war goals and general track record have shown this was never primarily a “territorial dispute” but an all-out attempt to destroy the independence and sovereignty of his neighbors and bend them to the will of a hostile, anti-American greater Russian regime. As I have pointed out many times before, Putin has flatly rejected definitive territorial or political settlements in his “Near Abroad” many times before – even those that would see him gain significant territory and resources – in order to leave the door open and situations in a deadly state of flux. Zelenskyy’s offer of a plebiscite in the Donbas and Putin’s rejection of that is a good piece of evidence there, as are his initial stated war goals, which are breathtaking in their illegality and recklessness (and which at least officially and in part have since been walked back, but the fact that he was prepared to state this at all is startling).
On the subject of analogies to the 1930s and the like, while I have on the whole agreed that Putin’s conduct is quite similar to that of Shicklegruber and Stalin in many regards (even if nowhere near in terms of scale and intensity), the comparison that speaks to me in this case is that of the Japanese Warlords and to a lesser extent Stalin in China. In particular the Japanese stance after the “Declaration of Holy War” in 1940, which rejected any possible compromise with the KMT or any other “non-reformed” Chinese government. That I think is important because it underlines that this was never a matter of determining who has which piece of real estate alone.
Add that to Ukraine’s strategic importance and indirect links to crucial US concerns and you can see why I find this disappointing.
None of this makes Ukraine the premier concern of the US or necessarily of great concern at all, but it is worth underlining what the nature of the conflict is while we are formulating policy.
Secondly: Wars can be budgeted for, but they are not fought on concrete budgets. They may be waged using schedules and timetables, but they are not ended according to them. As such, I do think a Blank Check approach is the appropriate and more realistic stance, or at a minimum giving the Kremlin the implication that such is the case would be better in the hopes of extracting concessions.
Probably reading too much into this, but we tried “peace should be the objective” multiple times over, and it has rarely resulted in much lasting good. Just ask the Georgians from 2008 or for that matter the Ukrainians from Minsk.
I realize this is intentionally ambiguous platitudes, but still.
Agreed.
I disagree with this for a few reasons.
Firstly: While I do view it as an overstatement to classify this as a “border dispute” the fact remains that the Russian Government claims that “Ukraine….borders” are very different from that recognized by the Ukrainian government, the US, and most countries. And so will exploit that.
Secondly: To be blunt the Ukrainians have already had significant success in launching “offensive” actions outside its territory in the form of aerial and remote strikes on Russian soil, which have helped strike some fear into the Kremlin and remove the much-abused impunity the Kremlin used throughout the Donbas War without seriously risking escalation. Which is why I am in support of giving them long range missiles and would at least consider F-16s. If only as ways to help deter the Kremlin.
My nitpicky self would probably prefer rephrasing it to be “enable Ukraine to engage in territorial aggrandizement beyond its borders” or “seek territorial annexations beyond those agreed in 1994.” Which would allow the kind of strategic attacks on Russian soil that we have seen to be kosher while still ruling out some kind of aggressive Ukrainian annexation of internationally recognized Russian territory.
Thirdly: There’s the blunt fact that – as DeSantis probably knows -there’s extremely little support for territorial annexations in Ukraine. Even Ukraine’s genocidal homegrown brands of Fascists like those of Melnyk and Bandera really weren’t that interested in territorial expansion, and most of the territory they were interested in grabbing was annexed to Ukraine following WWII, ironically by Stalin.
If there was much of a market for a “Greater Ukraine expands” the more likely direction would ironically be against not Russia but Poland, due to complicated and bloody history where Stalin drew a line and wiped out or deported the Ukrainians to the West of the line and wiped out or deported the Poles to the East of it.
And that’s all a moot point because a Ukraine trying to keep its feet in the game is going to be little interested in pursuing that anyway.
Honestly I’m of two minds of this. I do think the US should be pursuing a policy of regime change vis a vis Putin. However, I do not think such a policy should be pursued at any cost or regardless of the consequences, and I certainly do not think it should be linked to a satisfactory ending to the war in Ukraine.
And in any case the US and its “leadership” should shut up about it publicly beyond vague, ambiguous threats in response to Putin’s actions.
It might set up the stage for it, as Gorbachev’s succession after the Gerontocratic Interregnum helped set the stage for the Soviets to pull out of Afghanistan.
Firstly: Which history are we talking about? Because history has shown that is very possible, but also the inverse is. Regime change in WWI Germany may have indirectly led to Hitler, but it also removed the monstrous Ludendorff and led directly to the Weimar Republic (whose internal flaws and failures to reform I argue are far more responsible for Hitler than Versailles or regime change). The Argentine Junta’s defeat in the Falklands led to a restoration of democracy, and the fall of the genocidal Pakistani junta in 1971 led to a milder if still corrutp and racist banana republic.
Secondly: I’d argue that regime change would require removing “the Kremlin”, such as it is, altogether, since Putin is just a symptom of the problem.
Thirdly: Whether or not regime change results in a surge of Madisonian Constitutionalists in Moscow is ultimately rather moot, since US policy should not be dependent on Madisonian Constitutionalists in Moscow when they are on frighteningly short supply at home. It should however be able to account for a Russian regime that is sufficiently chastened to not pursue more aggression and threats to the US, its allies, or other neutrals for the forseeable future.
To be blunt, I don’t really give many damns if whoever takes over from Putin turns Chechnya into a mass grave again (and horrifyingly enough part of me thinks such a policy might be beneficial to US interests by trying to remove Kadyrov) so long as they don’t try and do it in the wider “Near Abroad.”
Fourthly: Puzzling over the future state and nature of a Russian regime or leader to succeed Putin is interesting but I think largely academic. We know Putin and those he would have succeed him are not Madisonian Constitutionalists, nor are they even amiable dictators that we can reasonably do business with. They are brutal, anti-American warlords who have decided to cast their lot with America’s enemies – including the PRC – and made that decision around a quarter of a century ago. They are a known quantity in a very bad sense, and as such I do think seeing their fall from power would be a welcome development that should not be deterred for fear that someone hypothetically worse might come to power.
Especially given how this regime and its leaders have been happy to at least threaten to do much that we’d fear the “someone worse” would do.
I see little benefit to them remaining in power and while this is an end that should not be pursued too openly, I will enjoy it if they come.
KIND OF LATE TO THE PARTY, RON.
People have been talking about this for literally more than twenty years, and even some of us who were slower starts started talking about it around the mid 2000s, and even those slower generally recognized it around the time of the Beijing and Sochi Olympics.
In short, blaming the Russian alliance with the PRC on sanctions is giving them entirely too much power and warping history. This is and has been a conscious policy of the Kremlin for about twenty years and we should expect it to remain such as long as Putin or his political or ideological heirs remain in power. Which is one reason why I believe regime change in Russia is necessary to change that.
Russia’s own government acknowledges foreign revenues have dropped.
That said, I agree with the rest. And like I said, it certainly was not disasterous.
“By stating that peace should be the objective, DeSantis is indicating that, as president, he would pressure Ukraine and Russia to hold negotiations. By earlier characterizing the war as a “territorial dispute,” the reader can also assume that in those negotiations, a President DeSantis would want Ukraine to make some territorial concessions.”— Byron York, Washington Examiner
I’ll bring this over to this thread. This is from the Washington Examiner article Kate linked to.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/ron-desantis-in-the-mainstream-on-ukraine
I wish this were our policy. Does what York wrote reflect DeSantis’s policy or is it York’s interpretation of his policy?
“Zelenskyy’s offer of a plebiscite in the Donbas and Putin’s rejection of that is a good piece of evidence there…” – Turtler
You’ve mentioned this before. My only recollection of this was Zelensky making vague statements about a referendum somewhere, but had no chance of going forward because of opposition by hardliners in Ukraine.
Once again Doran does NOT get it.
This whole episode smacks of Obama’s MO (i.e., a “Biden” by any other name would smell as sweet).
IOW, this whole thing was either done with “Biden”‘s blessing…or it was organized BY “Biden” using China as the—convenient—cutout. (Though Occam might opine that it was “merely” a joint effort—just another one of Obama’s “joint” efforts, that is.)
OTOH, the above analysis of mine could be total garbage.
What has GOT to be certain is that the Saudis generally know which way the wind is blowing when it comes to self-preservation. They have to in order to survive. (They’re generally preternaturally paranoid in any event…’cuz they live in a tough part of the world, have had a rather violent history—not to mention weltanschauung—and know what THEY would if they had the power to do it….)
And what THEY SEE is that “Biden” is pushing JPCOA II again(!) which means that “he” is making sure that the Mullahs will eventually get what they want—and this is the “beauty” of JPCOA II: even WITHOUT a treaty/agreement/memo of understanding/handshake/eyewink—whatever—being officially signed/shaken/winked. This because JCPOA II is letting the passage of time (stalemate be damned—actually, stalemate be blessed!) do the dirty work.
(So much for all those who heave a sigh of relief whenever “Biden” declares that it looks increasingly that an agreement will alas NOT be reached, or however “he” wishes to phrase his gross deception.)
Yes, the star of Iran is in the ascendant. And the Saudis have noticed. Ditto the Gulf states, which ought to make one wonder how stable the Abraham Accord (that are not really accords, just ask “Biden”, that stickler for “CORRECT” terminology). That is UNLESS the Saudis were, somehow ferociously threatened—sub-rosa—by the WH thus “allowing” themselves to be persuaded of the efficacy of making nice to Teheran….
He sees our countries are being depleted in one year there is no confidence in any policy maker who have sought to carve up our military
A hard rains gonna fall on this country when we get to the contest that matters
@Brian E
I’ll dig up what other sources I can, but I remember a lot of the more detailed ones were in Ukrainian or Russian, neither of which I can read and so have to have translated.
But in any case no such deal could even theoretically move forward without Putin and the Kremlin at least broaching the matter, and they did not. Which I think is far more important than “Ukrainian hardliners”, especially since Zelenskyy came to office in spite of many of them and Putin cannot be readily voted in or out of office in the same way.
On this I have to respectfully disagree with you. Territorial annexations would just be rewarding the Kremlin for bad behavior, especially without the prospect of enforcing it. That was the key weaknesses of Budapest and Minsk.
Moreover, I’m not the only one that has pointed out how the Kremlin often uses negotiations or feelers for negotiations as a stalling tactic in the military. Rather similar to the Iranian Mullahs in that sense.
Which is why I am rather indifferent and not that interested in pushing negotiations on the Ukraine war, and am much less receptive to further Ukrainian territorial concessions.
But one thing I would be willing to consider from the Ukrainian POV and that should be given due consideration would be territorial concessions in parts of the Donbas in exchange for peace AND nuclear weapons systems being returned to Ukraine, on the grounds of Budapest.
That I think would actually yield a lasting peace or at least make it more likely, and it would also deter more funny business a few years down the road (which has been Georgia’s bane). It’s also help provide a key buffer and limit the risk of this escalating.
I honestly don’t know, and I am sure that is partially DeSantis’s intent. Allows for flexibility.
Turtler:
I read the phrase “further entangled in a territorial dispute” somewhat differently. If DeSantis had said something like “a MERE territorial dispute” I would agree that’s a trivialization of the larger issues, but I actually think DeSantis is being careful here to say it is a territorial dispute but not only a territorial dispute. If he were saying it was only a territorial dispute, he would also be saying we should butt out of it. He is definitely not saying the latter, and therefore I believe he is implicitly but not explicitly acknowledging it is more than that and that we do have a strong interest in it, but that we don’t have an unlimited interest in it.
Now, he might be criticized for threading the needle and being a bit cagey, but that’s what I see. I think being cagey is wise – it’s a minefield of an issue for anyone on the right.
@neo
On this much we agree. This was very clearly a carefully worded statement, and one that is generally agreeable. And I agree this is a minefield, and that this statement is not only subject to different interpretations but on some level meant to be subject to different interpretations, as alluded to by both yourself about how you view it and Brian E about himself and York.
I of course have my own interpretations and opinions on it as well. And on the whole I found the statement to be broadly acceptable but somewhat disappointing for the reasons I mention, though I certainly do not think this makes DeSantis a Putin puppet or a squish or the like.
And yes, needle threading and being cagey are important skills. Especially to conservatives now.
It clearly was not “a territorial dispute” when Putin launched an all-out assault on Ukraine in February 2022. That was a declaration of the re-establishment of the “Russian world.” The results of the multiple failures of the Russian military, and of the strong defense from Ukraine, are that it is now a territorial dispute over whether Russia can hold the border areas it claims. I think the DeSantis statement reflects what the reality is now, not what was last year.
he chose poorly, the donbas is the industrial, and resource base of the country, but the collapse in afghanistan, masterminded by the same camarilla, running our side of the war encouraged him,
deep down this crew hates the core of the military and this country, they don’t even pretend to hide it, there are so many injuries against the body politics, we can’t stop counting, the j 6 crackdown is just a taste of what they feel about dissent in general, and we have seen that the tech companies are raring to shut down everything but the most canned narratives, and 80% of the press goes along,
“Reasonable” and “middling” – agreed. Very reasonable fellow, Gov DeSantis.
That said, I’m periodically checking this thread for eruptions. I hope everything is okay at the “DID SOMEONE SAY UKRAINE?!” household.
Biden and Co. have botched the Ukraine war from day one.
They did nothing to convince Putin an invasion would be too costly for him.
They expected Ukraine to fall within days and offered Zelensky a ride to safety. What was their plan then? Guerilla war by a government in exile? Or???
When Ukraine repulsed the drive on Kyiv and they saw how inept the Russian army was, it appears they hatched the idea of regime change in Russia.
Yet, in spite of big setbacks, Putin remains solidly in power, and the Russian economy does not seem to be suffering all that much.
Sanctions have not hurt Russia all that much because China and India are buying their oil and other commodities. I have seen no effort to try to get India to support the more democratic Ukraine versus the Russian oligarchy. Why?
The European NATO nations, whose interests are most at stake, have not stepped up to the plate. They have let the Biden and Co. provide the lion’s share of the aid. Biden has apparently done nothing to get them on board.
Biden and Co. have been gradualists in providing lethal aid. The MIGs that Poland is now sending could have been in action ten months ago. Patriot missile batteries should have been sent as early on as possible. In the meantime, Ukraine’s infrastructure is being destroyed and civilians are dying unnecessarily.
Standing inn Kyiv and promising the U.S will provide aid as long as it takes was a macho moment for Biden. But Putin has watched the U.S. get involved in, and then tire of other wars. He knows how public opinion can shift in democracies – something he doesn’t worry about. With China and India providing the economic muscle, he believes he can wait us out.
At the very least, Biden should unleash our oil and gas industry to drive the price of oil and gas down. That would hurt Putin more than any other single thing he could do. But he won’t do that. He’d rather bankrupt the country than give up on the climate crisis.
The second thing he could do would be to immediately end the social justice programs in the military and re-direct them to their real job – destroying our enemies. He won’t do that because…..BLM and LPGTSXYZ.
No matter what DeSantis’ posture vis a vis whether it’s a territorial dispute, his priorities of energy independence and a strong military. would put him head and shoulder’s above Biden or any other Democrat.
Banned:
“Too clever by half.”
You do know what that means?
Way past time for Congress to say ‘yay or nay’ concerning any further involvement in Ukraine. Will they allow an all gender draft? Or will they ‘suit up’ the thousands of ‘military age’ invaders coming across our border – promise them a ‘green card’ if they survive?
The Biden/Maidan/Slavic Spring in the Obama World War Spring series, can be aborted with the precedent set in Europe. Invade Ukraine, carve the sections populated by Deplorable-Ukrainians, Russian-Ukrainians, Jewish-Ukrainians, Gipsys et al, and establish a Rosovo nation independent from the apartheid regime in Kiev. Or the South African precedent, where transnational interests favored the Xhosa, suppressed the Zulu, and left native collateral damage under a “progressive” Constitution.
“Without question, peace should be the objective.”
The US and EU leadership are only interested in a ‘peace’ whose prerequisite is Russia’s surrender and Putin’s ouster. And they are willing to fight to the last dead Ukrainian in a futile attempt to achieve those goals. The life expectancy of the average Ukrainian soldier* sent to the front line at Bakhmut is reportedly now 4 hours.
* old men and young boys
The US and EU leadership are only interested in a ‘peace’ whose prerequisite is Russia’s surrender and Putin’s ouster. And they are willing to fight to the last dead Ukrainian in a futile attempt to achieve those goals.
==
If the Putin is distressed at the bloodshed, he can withdraw his troops.
The Biden/Maidan/Slavic Spring in the Obama World War Spring series, can be aborted with the precedent set in Europe. Invade Ukraine, carve the sections populated by Deplorable-Ukrainians, Russian-Ukrainians, Jewish-Ukrainians, Gipsys et al, and establish a Rosovo nation independent from the apartheid regime in Kiev. Or the South African precedent, where transnational interests favored the Xhosa, suppressed the Zulu, and left native collateral damage under a “progressive” Constitution.
==
This reads like you were drunk when you wrote it.
First I want to say that I voted twice for Trump, and if (which hope not) he is the nominee I will vote for him again. But when he says such nonsense ( I was thinking of something stronger) that he would end the war in a day I have to think he has really lost it. I know a great many of his supporters think he could, but only by telling Z and the Ukrainians that no more aid, settle with Russia now and accept it could it be done. That would be the death of Ukraine and other countries.
“Probably reading too much into this, but we tried “peace should be the objective” multiple times over, and it has rarely resulted in much lasting good.”
The Human Race that survived 50 years of nuclear brinksmanship during the Cold War would probably disagree with that.
And when everyone quibbling with DeSantis is criticizing him for the same thing, not being “war-mongery” enough, talking about “the Left” and “the Right” just obscures the real issues.
Mike
Geoffrey:
After many months of silence, where are your “13 minutes, and NATO?” Not sure where you are getting your casualty fancies, buy they don’t comport with reality, but then neither did your previous talking points.
n.n.
Often cryptic in the past, is comparitively eloquent when it comes to mother Russia. Tell us, n.n., did Ukraine invade Roosia too in February of 22?
Everyone and the real issues?
Time will tell.
DeSantis 2024.
@MBunge
Why am I not surprised you have decided to claim to speak for “The Human Race that survived 50 years of nuclear brinkmanship”? It fits with your overly inflated ego.
In any case, the Human Race was hardly monolithic during that time. And even during that time among the by-no-means-genius leadership in Foggy Bottom it was recognized that there were dire consequences for allowing communist aggression to happen without a cost.
And even then the Reagan Revolution and the idea that the Cold War could be ended with a “We Win, they Lose” was viewed as catastrophically apocalyptic by the usual suspects and indeed much of the general public. In spite of how Reagan simply read what the Soviet dogma believed and recognized they were never committed to any kind of win-win solution, at least arguably until Gorbachev and even that was more due to the weaknesses inherent in the system than anything else.
But please Mike, do go on about how you THINK you know history better than I do and how everybody who disagrees with you is a moron that strawmans you for daring to cite you accurately. That has totally not made you look like a ridiculous liar.
This is stupid even on your grounds. Apparently recognizing the US negotiates best when it negotiates from a position of strength and it should give as little away as possible prior to negotiations is “warmongery”? Recognizing that the Russian dictatorship has no legitimate title to the territory it occupies and cannot be trusted to keep a peace settlement unless kept at gunpoint and sufficiently deterred is “warmongery” as opposed to acknowledging Basic History for the past quarter century, as seen in Georgia?!?
Also: while you love waxing poetic about the Kremlin’s excuses and justifications while totally-not-excusing-excusing the invasion with dumb analogies to Cuba and Mexico, you have talked about Russia being concerned about its near abroad and strategic buffer territories. Which is fair enough. But that can go both ways.
Especially for a country that has legal title tot the territory and does NOT have nuclear weapons (in part because we naively insisted they turn them over to Russia because the geniuses at Foggy Bottom decided fewer nuclear powers was a net positive regardless of the circumstance). Does Ukraine not have a right to seek strategic depth on its own soil?
Except you note I mentioned almost nothing about those in these comments. Nice strawman though.
I think I will be adopting om’s choice of phrase. Don’t be a Bunge.
@Geoffrey Britain
In which case I would oppose that policy, though I certainly sympathize with it for the reasons I have said. Putin’s entire regime is rotten to the core and no friend of US interests. The only serious arguments I see against desiring his ouster is that if opposition to instability in and of itself (which is the more serious argument) and the idea he might be replaced by someone worse (to which I can only say “cites facts not in evidence” given how awful Putin’s government has been and its willingness to drop red meat sounding like those hypothetical worse regimes).
Well the Ukrainians are willing to fight to defend their homeland from invasion and partition and I see no reason why they should not be supported.
To which I simply say “Bullshit. Got any evidence for that?”
Because I have studied and wargamed things like WWI and the freaking Ethiopian-Eritrean War, and The BEF on the freaking SOMME didn’t suffer life expectancies that low during the height of the 1916 campaign.
Indeed it objectively couldn’t have since most of its troops survived. And Bakhmut is quite lethal but nowhere near That lethal.
This is why it is worth double checking your “reports” in the “reportedly”s.
Also while I am sure there are more than a few old men and boys on both sides of the war the Ukrainian troops are hardly at old men and boys levels of run out.
@n.n.
Because apparently Ukrainians have no right to be concerned if their own President usurps constitutional powers and abuses their rights?
This is incoherent and stupid even by your standards. There is little support for a “Rosovo” in Ukraine outside of maybe Crimea, and in any case invading it to partition the country is what led to this bloodshed already.
Oh and what “Apartheid” in Kyiv? Since when did the National Party of South Africa allow a Xhosa-speaking President ?
@SHIREHOME
I agree Trump has lost a lot of things, but I would not read that statement as that. I guess maybe it ties into the “Trump opponents take him literally but not seriously, Trump supporters take him seriously but not literally.” Some level of peacocking might be necessary and Trump loves doing it far beyond what is necessary, but I do think while he might pressure the Ukrainians over aid, he would likely also pressure Putin as he clearly did and maybe even drop some subtle threats about joining the war or nukes or whatnot to try and force him to the peace table. Classic art of the deal stuff, and not stuff I am inherently opposed to even as something of an anti-Putin hawk.
I doubt even he believes he would accomplish it all in a day, but he has shown remarkable ability to pull off such deals before on rather short time, like the Turkish-Rojava ceasefire.
@JJ
Beautifully well said on the whole.
I’d argue since far before day one. They oversaw the start of it in 2014 and helped set the stage for it by things like blaming Bush for alienating Putin after the 2008 invasion of Georgia and throwing the Georgians under the bus with “Reset.” Apparently they didn’t expect that Putin might bite them too, or if they did they didn’t care when it meant “owning the Cons” in the immediate term.
How many people have died because of nonsense like this?
Agreed. Apparently the plan was guerilla war by a government in exile, and they apparently spent quite a lot of time shipping stuff useful for partisan war as the guerillas to the Ukrainians during the opening days, which MIGHT explain SOME of the delay in sending big ticket conventional war equipment like tanks or artillery. Biden, Obama, and co were not only hesitant to burn the bridges with Putin but also didn’t expect the Ukrainians to put up such a fight or last that long. Ironically mirrors of the assumptions Putin seems to have gone into Ukraine with even in 2022.
Which is bizarre to me as someone who has been watching this for about 20 years. Even I underestimated the staying power of the Ukrainians and feared they might fall (indeed as ludicrous as it might sound I was relieved that the Ukrainians were still fighting at the end of the first day because part of me thought they MIGHT have been beaten by them, even if not most of me) but I NEVER Expected them to go down without a hard fight.
Agreed.
Not really. It’s suffering, but the Kremlin went into overdrive trying to mitigate the damage and in several cases screwed up by overdoing (hence why the Ruble is overvalued and the regime’s working to devalue their own currency in order to better align it with its real value). It basically crushed the Russian economic pre-war recovery and they are on course to contract further this year.
Also what’s important isn’t so much India and China buying up Russian assets so much as at what cost. The sanctions were about screwing Russia out of its profit, which it did by denying the Kremlin access to many markets and strengthening the hands of those they did still have access to for better negotiations. And the Chinese and Indians have taken the opportunity and are basically gouging the Russians, making them pay through the nose to sell to the Sino/Indian middleman who will then sell the oil and pocket most of the profits that’d have otherwise gone to Gazprom or the like.
A good question, and I think probably ties to a large degree to Obama, Biden, etc. al. demonizing Modi. On the whole the US’s policies towards India are in my opinion one of our greatest of all time follies in the annals of US Foreign Policy (which is no mean feat!) going back to the Cold War, and one of the underappreciated things Trump did was reaching out to Modi etc. al. to try and fix that. But of course along came Brandon and his cronies….
I despise Brandon and his puppetmasters, but that isn’t true. In particular whoever is pulling the strings has taken steps to humiliate many of the holdouts, especially Germany, such as the pledge to send Abrams designed to push the Germans to send their own tanks. Moreover, some of the European NATO nations have stepped up to the plate, and it’s not always those we’d expect. Poland and the other Eastern Europeans are obvious, but not as many people realize the Dutch are also quite pushing.
Agreed.
Indeed, and that’s a problem. It’s also why I am a rather maximalist when it comes to supporting Ukraine, so that on the chance that Western support DOES wane, this can become another frozen conflict on terms rather favorable to the Ukrainians. A Ukrainian Ulcer for Putin.
Absolutely. These are remarkably simple and clear-eyed policies that should have been pursued regardless, since even from the perspective of actual environmentalism a commanding lead would help dictate terms. Which is why Biden and co will not do that.
It’s a shameful year when even the goddamn German Greens have a saner energy policy than we do. And the German Greens DO NOT have a sane energy policy.
100% agreed.
Boss… just checking for clarity and transparency…
Is “Turtler” co-blogger with you?
Spills more words/thread than you and any 5 other commenters combined. Usually TL;DR… really?
@John Guilfoyle
Alas no, I definitely am not co-blog with Neo, for better and worse.
And apologies for TL;DR. It is one of my weaknesses.
Though Mearsheimer is unreliable on some issues (like Israel), he makes a strong case here:
The U.S. is DESTROYING UKRAINE
(8-minute video easily understood at 1.5x)
The point is that regardless of where you may stand on Russia vs Ukraine, Biden's policies represent the worst of both worlds. "We're not going to fight for them, we're going to fight to the last Ukrainian."
One cannot divorce the antihuman project of schwab from this exercise at war with science logic simple human feeling the ones who conducted this experiment in misery three years ago who orchestrated the denial of effective therapeutics who inflict school children with millenarian pap
“We’re not going to fight for them, we’re going to fight to the last Ukrainian.”
==
The use of this asinine trope is a signal to ignore Mearsheimer on this issue as well.
Yeah, it’s a common refrain; but it ASSUMES that “Biden” is in fact fighting AGAINST Putin…
…and while some might believe that that is indeed the case…it seems to me, and I’ve said it before, that there’s just too many very peculiar things going on to make it a certainty.
(That plus taking into account that the “Biden” Credibility Quotient (CQ) is well below zero.)
OTOH, it is entirely plausible that Ukraine is a thorn in “Biden” ‘s side; and just as one can get rid of one’s debt by disappearing the person to whom you owe the debt, there may be reasons why “Biden” is anxious to “bury” Ukraine.
Oh this is a thing again?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11870951/ISIS-K-Afghanistan-hit-Western-interests-Europe-Asia-six-months.html
@Jimmy
Nah, Mearsheimer is unreliable on virtually everything. Including Ukraine. In addition to being moral garbage and nowhere near as smart as he thinks he is.
In particular I laughed out loud when he claimed that Putin “rarely lies to foreign audiences.” Which as someone who has listened to him for decades now is a load of crock.
It also goes against what we expect from political science going back well before Putin. That independent leaders are more likely to lie to foreigners than they are to their own nationals, because usually the latter are the people they have to manage to stay in power.
This goes into a fair bit of detail about that specifically, rarely if ever talking about Putin but about others.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41480851
Meanwhile this talks about the many, many issues with Mearsheimer, and while not perfect (in particular the first link uncritically accepts the idea that leaders of Democratic Countries rarely lie, which for me is another laugh line going all the way back to Alciabides if not further), it does a decent job filleting him.
https://euideas.eui.eu/2022/07/11/john-mearsheimers-lecture-on-ukraine-why-he-is-wrong-and-what-are-the-consequences/
https://www.russiamatters.org/analysis/whats-missing-mearsheimers-analysis-ukraine-war
I am out at breakfast with family and so cannot watch his video and give a response yet, but I am willing to do it.
Honestly for a war weary, disillusioned, and division-riven US under corrupt and incompetent leadership, that’s probably the best of both worlds. While monetarily costly it is rather cheap especially in terms of blood but also finance than fighting ourselves, and the Ukrainians thus far have shown themselves militarily capable of resisting, at least for the foreseeable future. It is a cheap and relatively low-risk way to weaken and humiliate the Kremlin, and past track records have generally shown it is usually rather effective, at least at that stated purpose.
The greater risk comes from cast off effects and second order consequences rather than direct results. See: Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Post-WWIII Ukriane.
Who is a war with the dutch farmers again , who directs the child mutilations who is cauterizing our fuel infrastructure its not putin,
No doubt just another reason for “Biden” to keep that southern border as porous as possible.
@Miguel Cervantes
Agreed. One reason to disband the NHS and its ilk. They are terminally corrupt.
Never stopped unfortunately. Such is the nature of the long war. Just because we are not interested in it does not mean it and they are no longer interested in us.
So forced europe to take 1.5 million refugees from the levant most to germany although we seem to attempting a similar exercise in insanity
That al hijra is the base for the current campaign as the balkan war primed al quedas debut.
“We are going to fight to the last Ukrainian” is one of the best “big lies” ever told. Who does that lie enable and encourage? Not Ukrainians.
Mearsheimer and Col. McBullshit, what a pair.
@om
Moreover it is dumb on its face. Even if we are going to fight to the last Ukrainian, what of it?
Russian imperialists have hardly been subtle about what they think of the idea of a Ukrainian identity and were dumb enough to get their “thoughts” out in the public about this war. And while they have not been quite as godawful about it as Hitler. Stalin, or even Pyotr the Great yet thInge like Bucha and the forced deportations of Ukrainians do little to inspire confidence.
Which does not exactly leave Ukrainians much room but to fight to at least a draw for their continued existence. I have no issue with the US exploiting that hateful failure to weaken Russia, and frankly the Ukrainian public in a whole has little issue with it:
Said it before: Can we back up fast enough, give up supposed allies and friends fast enough not to make Putin mad at us?
Been said that the German senior officers were going to can–likely Epstein–Hitler if the French resisted the move into the Rhineland in 36. Likely true. But it wasn’t necessary. So…there we went. But the Germans had been cheating on the military aspects of Versailles almost from the beginning–it’s what they do–and so the ultimate goal was likely the same. Those more certain than I of things which did not happen might want to make the case that the German effort would have been more effective with the professionals in charge.
Fehrenbach, in his “This Kind of War” gives a bang-up history of the Korean War, its antecedents and results and much thought about the issue of a bipolar, nuke-armed world. He may use the chess analogy used by others. You can talk yourself into giving up this pawn or that bishop–not worth a war–until it’s Check. At which time you surrender all or kick over the board, which is to say go nuclear.
At which time, endless discussions of who said what to whom back in the day about which and what should, instead, have been said, would not–this is a difficult concept–be worth anything.
Oh noes, another YouTube analysis on the Russo-Ukrainian war after 1 year!
Ukraine and its Global Impact – Military History Visualized
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrigMmXt9A0
Food for thought, or not.
Bernard is Austrian, so his pronunciations are a bit off.
This is Brandon’s war. The Dems orchestrated a change of regime under Obama, and Brandon went to Ukraine to collect on it. His family took millions (apparently not just Joe, Hunter, and Jim, but also Hallie, their grieving widow daughter-in-law, being banged at the time by her brother-in-law Hunter) from the regime they put in power. And those bribes are paying off, for the Ukrainian regime, with our continuing costly support.
The Republican base sees how this is weakening our own readiness to protect ourselves, by shipping so many of our reserves to Ukraine, while the FJB Administration is simultaneously destroying our military through political correctness, DEI programming, and idiotic COVID-19 vaccinations (because the age and fitness of most of the people in the military meant that the virus posed almost zero risk to them, while injuries from the mandated, marginally tested, vaccines appear to strike that demographic especially hard).
So, I think that DeSantis is taking the optimal approach here for a Presidential run. He has voiced a principled opposition to Brandon’s War, but not going over the top like Trump invariably does. He is on the right side of the issue (pun intended) but not sounding crazy about that. The nomination fight next year is likely going to be between his effectiveness, versus Trump’s emotionalism. While I believe that Trump had his victory stolen from him, and deserves another chance, right now, DeSantis is looking really good to me, by his taking on the DEI crowd, criminalizing grooming, etc. He seems more the doer right now than Trump was while in office. Could he clean out the political corruption in the FBI and DOJ, that have kept J6 locked in deplorable conditions in DC jails, awaiting political show trials for so long, trampling on their Constitutional rights so blatantly, with impunity? I think that he has a better chance than Trump does – who had 4 years, and managed to fire just 4 people illegally using the FBI against him.
So, yes, DeSantis has, in my view, taken the right path here.
Bruce Hayden:
Minor correction, this is Putin’s war other than that, whatever, especially concerning Brandon’s ability to complete Obama’s agenda for regime change in Russia. I guess you forgot Obama’s promise to Russia about his greater flexibility after his 2012 reelection? Cough, BS.
Glad to have one voice speaking for the Republican base. Now I know who to listen to. (sarc)
Looking at the comments the 24/7 pro Ukraine propaganda has been quite effective and successful.
Personally I find no fault with any of DeSantis’ points.
So, om, Richard Aubrey, Art Deco, we should give just enough aid to keep the war going indefinitely, to what end? Piss off Russia and destroy Ukraine? His point, and I think DeSantis’s as well, is we should be pushing for a settlement, not prolonging this hopeless endeavor indefinitely at huge cost of dollars and lives, and to no good end for Ukraine. What’s the alternative to what we’re doing, which is not likely to work? I would prefer Russia to be defeated and for Ukraine to remain intact and sovereign, but that isn’t going to happen under current policies. I didn’t see any constructive solutions in your responses.
Jimmy:
Russia looses in Ukraine, goes back to its pre 2014 borders, decides to reign in its imperial fantasies? Oh, noes!
You seem to accept Russian goals as inevitable, as in Ukraine becomes a vassal state of the Motherland.
“Piss off Russia?” “Hopeless endeavor indefinitely ….. ” Better to cut Ukraine off at the knees?
By the short hairs indeed.
Interesting logic at play, objecting to more timely and effective aid to Ukraine because it would be escalatory. Then objecting to the aid that is provided and that seems to have stymied Russian goals as being too little and just enough to provide false hope to Ukraine. And then posting the argument that the conflict will continue indefinitely (forever?), so give Russia a breather. Roosia wants.
The Cold War seemed endless until it wasn’t, but Vlad wants to bring it back again. Nope, it is the West that is forcing Russia (and Vlad) into his defensive aggression.
@Jimmy
All right, back from breakfast and some shows with family, so now it is time to go back to CO-BLOGGING WITH NEO (TM).
(With apologies John G. I hope you can forgive this humble TL:DR troll his humor.)
Anyway, let me go through this tripe from Mearsheimer bit by bit. So having found a suitable Youtube Mirror to put this on, let’s go to the races.
As someone who watched the slow motion abortion of Iraq and especially Afghanistan under Obama, I beg to differ about the “that’s what we do.”
But I would argue that in Ukraine doubling down is one of the cases where it is thoroughly warranted. Particularly since Putin has not exactly been one to avoid doubling down.
And pray tell WHAT events in 2014 would have made a convincing case that NATO expansion was a bad idea? Because it certainly wasn’t what happened in Ukraine. This is a point I return to time and again and again and again.
Because while the likes of Mearsheimer point to the Russian invasion of Ukraine as some kind of instinctive lash-out by a cornered Russia under Putin (which itself is a rather irrational and un-realist view that involves ignoring Putin’s involvement in Ukraine before, but I’ll get to that), people like me can point to it as a catastrophic failure of Russia’s policies in its “Near Abroad” and its inability to get along with the independent nations to its West, as well as a failure of Ukrainian neutrality and non-alignment.
Which is I remind you what Putin nominally claimed he wanted at the onset of the renewed invasion in 2022.
If neutrality isn’t going to do you much good – and the track record of the nations outside of NATO that have gotten invaded versus those that are i n it says plenty – why wouldn’t you seek NATO entry? Why wouldn’t rational or at least rational-like political and military actors seek such a thing? Even if you disagreed with what they wanted to do and wanted to prevent NATO expansion, you should at least be rational enough to acknowledge this is a pretty reasonable and expected response to Putin invading the largest country in the “Near Abroad” with the stated goal of undercutting its sovereignty, and that your strategy to try and stop NATO expansion would involve planning around that.
But to admit that is to shift the blame for this to the Kremlin and its actions in its near abroad rather than to NATO. Which is not what Mearsheimer wants to do.
Firstly: This is stupid and wrong . Finland and Sweden are as of now defacto members of NATO. Attacking them would almost certainly result in NATO activating and going to war as a result of the security understandings.
Ukraine is not and never has been a defacto member of NATO, even though since the Russian invasions of 2014 it has obviously aligned with it, sought patronage and support through it, and hopes to join as a member at some point.
Secondly: Mearsheimer cannot tell me that the Russian dictatorship did not understand this. They invaded Ukraine. They pointedly did not invade any NATO member state, nor did they press attacks in ongoing invasions (like Georgia in 2008) when that ran the risk of running into NATO troops stationed there.
So this is simply propagandistic word salad from Mearsheimer meant to present a sanitized, seemingly-reasonable view of the Kremlin’s position that does not accord with reality, either as it actually is or as “the Russians” actually saw it. If they thought Ukraine was a defacto member of NATO, they would NOT have invaded it. PERIOD. FULL STOP.
Thirdly: Even if we pretended with this Big Lie that Ukraine was a “Defacto” member of NATO, or for that matter a member of NATO properly, that would not give Russia ANY JUSTIFICATION WHATSOEVER for invading.
As the Russian government itself acknowledged multiple times in things like the Helsinki Final Act and Astana.
So no matter what lens you use to look at this particular claim, it boomerangs back in Mearsheimer and Putin’s faces.
Fourthly: Who is “We” Kemosabe Mearsheimer?
Because any definition of that “we” that does not include the Ukrainians themselves – and at least two separate and politically opposed Ukrainian presidential governments and two separate and opposed AMERICAN Presidential Governments – is worthless.
And understanding that would also mean understanding why this pivot happened. Namely the violent failure of Ukraine’s prior neutral foreign policies in the face of Putin invading Crimea and the Donbas in 2014. Again, facts not seriously disputed by anybody (at least in as much as Crimea goes).
Which bring us back to the central point of Russian actions and the consequences thereof, and how BLIND PEOPLE could have anticipated much of what happened (certainly, Enrico Dandalo would not take this kind of mealthy-mouthed nonsense).
But that would put primary blame -f if not sole blame – AGAIN back on the Kremlin.
Mearsheimer’s a dishonest idiot, but I am very certain he is not actually so idiotic that this concept and its generally successful and economical track record is unknown to him. Nor is the basic concept that this is desirable both from a position of US interests and US obligations, as outlined in Budapest 1994, where the US, UK, and Russia all pledged to defend Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity and to support it in the event it was attacked by an outside party.
It is frankly a much better policy than most alternatives such as either “fighting for them” directly (with the ensuing risk of a world war or apocalypse) or doing nothing or encouraging the Ukrainians to lie down and die/submit to Moscow yet again.
And again, the historical track record underlines how this is often successful on an absolute scale (China in the 1930s, Greece in the 1940s, Colombia in the 1980s) or relative for the side donating even if not for those being sponsored (Ukraine and the Baltics in the 1940s and 1950s, Laos during the Secret War, etc).
Mearsheimer, please look up the history of Ukrainian troop contingents in Iraq and Afghanistan and Trump’s arming of Ukraine and then shut the fuck up about “this late date.”
The US and its allies have been arming and training elements of the Ukrainian military for about a quarter century now, and even outright having them fight alongside us in Iraq and Afghanistan. What’s also remarkable and worth noting is that by and large Russia did not object to this (as it was doing similar) prior to 2014. Which is important because it flies in the face of so much of Mearsheimer’s whitewashing and theory of mind for the Kremlin.
Correct. Which isn’t surprising because the Ukrainians have been doing that since 2014 and on a full scale for more than a year, and this again dovetails with many of our anti-Soviet proxy conflicts.
Translation: Mearsheimer has learned literally nothing from the Yugoslav Wars and the US-sponsored modernization of Croatian and Bosniak militaries that utterly defeated the once-superior Serbian-dominated Yugoslav military and paramilitaries that “nobody believed they’re gonna defeat” in battles like Operation Storm.
I wish I were surprised, but given that this is Mearsheimer it is about par for the course.
In short, the US and its allies have two major “win conditions” with a third possibility being stalemate.
Firstly: See that the war in Ukraine does such damage to the Russian effort that it collapses and Russia withdraws. The Afghanistan Option.
Secondly: To modernize and train the Ukrainian military to such a degree it is capable of retaking the parts of its territory occupied by the Russians. The Croatian option.
With a stalemate being letting the conflict devolve again into a frozen conflict while we continue supporting the Ukrainians to deter further misadventures from the Kremlin. Which was pretty much what we saw in the Donbas from 2016-2021.
All of these are broadly good outcomes for the US, and I encourage pursuing them as far as reasonable.
Don’t know for sure – though I have very good guesses – and on some level I only care a middling amount. Because one tends to win wars by forcing one’s enemies to confront more nagging questions than oneself does, and frankly Western diplomacy has spent several decades too long obsessing too much about what the Russians are going to do to the effect that it has hamstrung our own policies.
But I would guess “probably continue doing more or less what they have been doing in Ukraine and have done in Transnistria and Georgia.” Which can be analyzed and counteracted against.
I count myself as among those people (albeit not in quite the obviously-strawmanned terms Mearsheimer uses). and Mearsheimer is unsurprisingly not mentioning the reasons why we believe in such possible outcomes. Starting with the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the debacle of First Chechnya, and the decision by Russian forces to limit their attempts to advance in the Donbas after 2016. To cite just a few.
Now, I’ve been blunt in talking about how I regard Mearsheimer as a dishonest, incompetent, ignorant, immoral idiot. And I stand by that finding. However, I Don’t actually think he’s THIS incompetent or ignorant that he literally does not know what happened to Russia in Chechnya and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan or Serbia in Bosnia and Krajina, wars I might add that were far less costly than Ukraine has been so far to Russia.
But he’s going to pretend he doesn’t know what happened, because acknowledging that reality would undermine his argument and give succor to my arguments.
So he’s going to play dumb(er than he actually is). And it’s going to be painful to watch an ostensibly knowledgeable, expert man try to ignore the contrary evidence to his agenda in much the same way it is to watch Fauci claim that masks are necessary and that Lab Leak was delusion.
Christ, I’m just two minutes in and this is already so much…
Funny, so have I. And while my “entire adult life” is much shorter than Mearsheimer’s I think it still is no small feat. And again, I’m not the one that has gotten amnesia about Afghanistan.
Kindly research the Crimean War, the Battle of Warsaw, and the New Years’ Day Escalate on Grozny and then shut the hell up.
The Russians are a unique nation and culture with their own distinct histories, literatures, and characteristics, but they are ultimately HUMANS that live in REALITY, and they tend to react to similar problems and prompts as humans do. When their war effort costs a lot for little apparent gain, they despair (and for wars much more existential than this one; see Solzhenitsyn’s wartime diary entries). When losses mount high, they mourn. And when beaten badly enough they decide it isn’t worth it and go home to lick their wounds and cast angry eyes at those in power deemed responsible for it.
This should not surprise anybody. Moreover, it should be equally unsurprising because that sort of human commonality is the basis on which international relations theory and a hell of a lot other stuff remains. The Russians are not exempt from this, and their leadership can only double down so much.
(Of course the same applies to ourselves and the Ukrainians, but Mearsheimer isn’t trying to propagandize on their behalf).
Firstly: the fact that the Russian government will lie through its teeth to try and benefit itself should surprise absolutely nobody except maybe Mearsheimer. Especially since they would go on to sign the Astana Accord acknowledging the 2008 decision was well within the rights of both themselves and all involved.
(They were obviously being insincere with said acknowledgement, but that doesn’t change its legal merits. It also points to the fact that they were being insincere when they grandstanded about the 2008 decision being an “Existential Threat!”).
Secondly: For such an “EXISTENTIAL THREAT” The Russian government sure as hell could bide its time and wait about half a year before violently retaliating against Georgia in 2008. So you’ll forgive me if I am inclined to dismiss this as similar victim-blaming crybully nonsense from the Kremlin.
Thirdly: How is Kremlin support of violent separatists and territorial balkanization not an EXISTENTIAL THREAT to its neighbors such as Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine?
International relations are always at least a two way street, and I KNOW Mearsheimer knows this (I’ve read enough of his work), so his selective obliviousness on this obvious point is annoying and painful to work through. It reeks of hypocrisy and special pleading.
Which was started BY WHAT Oh Mr. Mearsheimer> STARTED. BY. WHAT?!?
Apparently not enough to have Putin instruct his foreign policy stooges to not sign the Astana Accord of 2012.
Which again points to how Mearsheimer is pointedly cropping the evidence or “evidence” to fit his narrative rather than adjusting his theories to the evidence.
Correct, but it is also one Russia could learn to live with. Because the secret is that essentially every nation and polity on Earth has to adjust to living in the shadow of actual existential threats. Finland and Estonia and Georgia sure as hell have to. Russia had to for centuries up until about the 1600s.
1618, 1856, 1918, 1989, 1996 called.
They will not roll over and play dead EASILY. But that is unsurprising. It also isn’t that important since the same can be said for the Ukrainians.
The important point is that: Beat them up enough and frustrate them enough and roll over and play dead they WILL.
And this is why I insist on calling Mearsheimer not only an idiot and an incompetent, but also a liar and Kremlin apologist.
But I hate to tell you, Mearsheimer, but The Russians have ALREADY brought out the big guns. ESPECIALLY on a conventional scale.
The Russian war machine pulled in elite units from as far afield as Kola and *Freaking Kamchatka.* And they’ve generally burnt up, suffering hideously heavy losses and needing to be reconstituted with yet more waves of mobilization.
Perun and his sources cover this to a large degree.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lem3enNkbV0
In short: As far as conventional military forces go there really isn’t much more the Russians can send in.
Which should be incredibly goddamn unsurprising to someone who has actually studied or wargamed Russian history worth a damn. Which apparently includes myself, but does not include Mearsheimer.
In general since at least the rise of Moscow and probably MUCH earlier, the core of the Russian military has been a RELATIVELY small (but still large in objective numbers) “Professional” core of troops (whether we’re talking Quasi-Viking Druzhina or modern Contractniki) who are tasked with being the fine tip of the spear, bolstered by regular inflows of conscript or levy troops raised on a schedule. This is the mixture that has won or lost Russia the vast majority of its battles, campaigns, and wars because the situation isn’t so dire to demand more.
It’s when the situation is either perceived as going South or at least needing more that the Powers that Be slam on the ALERT button and start general mobilization, ballooning the “Core” military by at least twofold and usually more with conscripts not just from the normal intake but extraordinary ones.
This is the war machine that has won or lost Russia most of the battles, campaigns, and wars you’ve HEARD about, whether it be Kullikovo Field, Crimea, or the World Wars.
This also means that (unsurprisingly) if and when the situation starts to go South, there’s usually a period of time where the “Regular Core” are the troops getting absolutely minced by enemy action, destroying or crippling the better equipped, better trained, more experienced units while the Powers that Be rush to muster troops. This is particularly evident if you look at things like the Eastern Front of WWII, where after about 20 years of incredibly savage if middle-to-low intensity fighting the Axis came over the border and wiped out Soviets by the millions.
This also means we should expect the first casualties in a conflict the Russians fight to be generally better trained, equipped, and experienced than the norm.
On some level that isn’t surprising, because this is also pretty normal as far as military organizations go across nations and cultures. But the Russian lack of organic militia systems through history and its modern day contract system means that this trend is even more pronounced than we’d expect in -say – the US, France, or UK.
TL:DR, The Russians have already rolled out “the Big Guns” at least as far as conventional forces go, and those are the guys that got devastated over the course of the first year of fighting. If they had many more big guns, we’d expect them to already be rolled out and fired now.
While they have very obvious hesitation to using non-conventional big guns like Nukes, precisely because it would not end well for them. The fact that Mearsheimer apparently hasn’t asked himself “what is even the VDV or a Guards Tank unit” is downright embarrassing.
You mean like they’ve been doing throughout this war?
Please research what inner city Donetsk and Luhansk looked after the heavy artillery sponsored “liberation” of them during the first leg of this war in 2014-2015 and then get back to me.
So forgive me if I am not very moved by the “They’re going to keep doing what they’ve already been doing” claim like it is some kind of shocking escalation.
Firstly: The fact that you are conflating Fallujah and Mosul with the utter destruction of Grozny shows your hand. Mearsheimer, please remove yourself from our misery. Thank you.
Secondly: They’ve ALREADY BEEN doing Groznys, to the best of their abilities.
Even before the start of the current phase of the war, as shown by the protracted sieges of the airports in Luhansk and Donetsk.
As the grandson of an Army Ranger that fought in the Pacific, there’s something that disgusts me utterly about this lying scumbag trying to cite the experiences of the Pacific War as part of their agenda of shilling for the Kremlin.
The fact that so many of their points are objectively wrong or otherwise inapplicable does not help.
So let me go through the nonsense.
Firstly: March 10th, 1945 happened midway through the Battle of Iwo Jima and well before Okinawa began. It also happened years after the first US bombing of the Home Islands in the Doolittle Raid. The reason was motivated less by fear of what invading the Home Islands would be like as much as basic retaliation. That while we were not fond of the idea of razing entire cities through bombing, the Japanese and other Axis had opened that particular Pandora’s Box so we wanted to retaliate.
And we did.
We began using China to bomb Japanese cities in the Spring/Fall of 1944, and prior to that we were constrained by lack of logistics or suitable bases to launch the raids from. In sharp contrast to Germany, which we had been relentlessly bombing since 1942.
Secondly: In keeping with this, we had begun using firebombings to raze German and Japanese cities well ahead of either the Iwo campaigns or Okinawa, most famously with the USAAF and RAF at Dresden in Feb 1945.
Thirdly: Mearsheimer overstates the reasons why we used the nukes. Their initial target was not Japan but Germany, and it was the fact that Germany surrendered before they were ready that spared them.
Moreover, as becomes obvious if one ever reads the plans for Operations Downfall and Olympic, the US and its allies did plan to use nuclear bombs for the invasion of Japan, helped by staggering ignorance about their horrifying side effects.
Fourthly: Mearsheimer is blathering a lot about the Pacific War because it helps him give a false impression, without addressing an even more relevant issue.
By 1944, Japan was probably the most Rogue State to Ever Rogue, with only a handful of nations in all of history like North Korea and 19th century Paraguay even coming close. Both due to its tin eared diplomacy getting it into war with almost everybody, and its utterly hateful, atrocious conduct in such a war. Literally nobody was prepared to shed many tears for it being repaid in its own coin for abundant atrocities.
Moreover, Japan also SEEMED TO lack the credible ability to strike back with WMD of its own against its main enemies (little did we know they had at least limited prospects of doing so; see: Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night, aka “Dump Plague across the entire US Western Coast” but that was cancelled and otherwise collapsed as the war ended).
This is not at all the case in Ukraine.
Ukraine does not have any explicit allies or nukes, but it does have diplomatic support and even neutrals and the CCP telling Putin in no uncertain terms that him using nukes in Ukraine will NOT be accepted, and his doing so would actually run the risk of NATO joining the war and him being made a pariah.
This is, what we call in “the business”, context.
I leave it to the audience to conclude why Mearsheimer mutilated the track record of the Pacific War and left out facets that do not fit his narrative.
And if that were so easy they’d have already won. But they haven’t, for the reasons I’ve mentioned before.
Because Russia is not invincible. Great Powers are not infallible. Mearsheimer of all people should know this better than most. Especially since it has largely cannibalized its long term military prospects in order to feed the war today, as shown by losses of troops among training cadres.
If the guys that were supposed to train the next generation of troops get killed or invalided or put into comas from frontline combat, who is going to train the next intake? Especially if the next intake is going to be bigger than normal ones due to the nature of mobilization?
Which is a fairly common strategic and diplomatic gambit they’ve used many times before.
Not really, for the reasons I’ll get into later.
And that was a gamble that FAILED MISERABLY since it not only prompted Western nuclear weapons to go on high alert, but also prompted neutrals and even Russia’s most important ally the PRC to tell them the fuck off (at least in public) and underline that the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine would be unacceptable.
Which I think are at least as “powerful signals” as the long abused high alert nuclear weapons orders from the Kremlin, and also more likely to be effective precisely because they underline that not only will such blackmail not work, it will probably backfire. Miserably.
Which has also forced the Kremlin to climb down from this posture with its tail between its legs, thus showing that A: Like those of us who have studied Soviet history worth a damn predicted, this was a diplomatic move rather than actual distress, and B: That his move backfired.
START?
Considering how this idiocy has cost the Russian people and regime a lot and flew in the face of Moscow’s stated pretexts (and especially Mearsheimer’s excuse for it) about Muh NATO Expansion by prompting Sweden and Finland to try and join while the battle front bogs down into an attritional struggle that has not treated the Russian military well, I’d say the Kremlin is not doing well.
No, we’re talking about how the violent, thuggish leadership of a nuclear-armed great power backing ITSELF into that corner by a mixture of brutality, incompetence, and poorly-managed threats. Hence why it drove most of its “Near Abroad” into either neutrality (as we are seeing with Armenia and Azerbaijan mocking the Kremlin) or alignment with the West, and then making a dumb, apocalyptic threat using nukes on a non-nuclear power (or worse, Nuclear-armed NON-BELLIGERENTS in the most powerful military alliance to EVER EXIST) for the “crime” of making the Russian military look bad by resisting, and demanding its allies and neutrals sign up on the suicide pact to back that bluff.
Which surprise surprise THEY DID NOT.
Which resulted in a strategic and rhetorical Russian climbdown from the nuclear threats as people like me predicted.
Because while I have a low opinion of Putin and the wider Russian leadership, it is not so low that I think they cannot read the room on some level and recognize when nuclear blackmail has backfired and they need to save face.
But in any case, let me restate: The people who pushed Russia into this corner ARE ITS GOVERNMENT. Period. Nobody else has anywhere near the level of responsibility for that as they do.
Yes, it is. But it’s more dangerous for Russia’s government than it is for anybody else, especially if it cannot effectively justify the nuclear blackmail to its own people AND the international community (such as it is). Precisely because it makes its leadership lose face, lose credibility, and makes other people waiting in the wings ask if they will really go to the mat for the current leadership if things go nucellar, or they might decide this gives them an opportunity to try something for themselves with at least tacit foreign acceptance.
It also points the folly of one-dimensional focus on appeasing the current leadership of the Kremlin when they’re the ones who got themselves into this mess, and assuming they won’t do so again is reckless in its own way.
I’m starting to think this clown is where Mike Bunge is getting his talking points from. Same Godawful analogies, same logical fallacies, same hypocrisies, similar
factual F-ups.
In any case, the Cuban Missile Crisis was prompted by Castro’s Cuba explicitly aligning with the Soviets AND Receiving Strategic Nuclear Missiles that could be used to launch a first strike on the US Heartland, with the Castros trying to manipulate the situation into triggering such a launch.
There is no such comparable situation in Ukraine. And I know the Russians know this because they would not have had to climb down as such to their neutrals and allies had they been able to provide comparable evidence to this.
Again, BS Mearsheimer. And both I and the Russians know it is. Because again, there was no systematic effort to gain support for high nuclear alert internationally, there was no evidence that Ukraine posed anything like the potentially-world-ending-threat to Russia that Castro with nukes did to us, and so forth.
Moreover, THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS DOES NOT HAVE THE MORAL OF THE STORY MEARSHEIMER WISHES because as a COMPROMISE for removing the nukes from Cuba, we had to remove ours from Turkey and agree to stop openly trying to overthrow the Castros. Which is why Raul is still in power decades later, running a failed, anti-American terrorist state just off the shores of Miami.
The equivalent would be Moscow accepting Ukraine under the power of a Literal Neo-Fascist, Bandera worshipping, Mass Murdering Douchecanoe with a hobby of sponsoring foreign terrorists in exchange for peace, because sometimes that’s how Great Power Politics Works. That’s also how we would have an indication that the Kremlin truly views the ongoing struggle as an existential crisis and is willing to take drastic measures in order to avoid the oblivion it supposedly fears.
AND YET where is Mearsheimer EVER talking about these aspects of the Cuban Missile Crisis? Of Putin making concessions to Ukraine and Us to avoid defeat or the possibility of world war or nuclear apocalypse? Of how VERY differently the international community responded to Cuba compared to Ukraine and why?
This is how I know Mearsheimer is not acting in good faith.
No, they thought Soviet STRATEGIC NUCLEAR MISSILES in Cuba were an existential threat. And they were COMPLETELY CORRECT because – as Khruschev later admitted- they absolutely were, especially with the Castros and Che around as dangerous third parties that might not follow Moscow’s orders.
Which is why the US was far more serious about the Cuban Missile Crisis than Putin is about Ukraine, and why it not only put its nuclear weapons on alert but ALSO was prepared to make concessions in order to get them removed.
INCLUDING THE CONTINUED RETENTION OF SOVIET *TACTICAL* NUCLEAR MISSILES IN CUBA.
https://www.cfr.org/blog/twe-remembers-secret-soviet-tactical-nuclear-weapons-cuba-cuban-missile-crisis-coda
It was prepared to accept this because Soviet Tactical Nuclear Weapons could not be used to attack the American heartland but could be used to defend Cuba from a Bay of Pigs 2: Electric Boogaloo, and because the US correctly distrusted Castro with Soviet Strategic Nukes badly enough it was willing to cut a deal, and also to explain to its allies and neutrals exactly why.
Where is the similar stance from the Kremlin today?
There is none. Which is again why the Kremlin could be shamed into a nuclear climbdown in a way even the Kennedys could not be over Cuba.
Correct, and rightfully so. HOWEVER, they were also willing to go to the other extreme: to REMOVE parts of our nuclear arsenal and put them in less advantageous positions.
Because that’s how you know a more or less rational regime is legitimately so threatened by what they view as an existential threat.
No, at most it’s how serious nuclear great powers get, which is a VERY elite club on the grand scale of history, AS MEARSHEIMER OF ALL PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW.
Secondly: This underlines that again, for all of its bluster and bluffing the Kremlin obviously DID NOT view the course of the Ukrainian War as being on par with how the US viewed Cuba, as shown by it being willing to climb down when humiliated by having its bluff called by the West and being talked down by its allies and some neutrals.
Correct, but not anywhere near.
And this is AGAIN how you know the current situation is not comparable to that of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Ask literally any actual historical export who thinks the risk of nuclear war was “Very Small” during the Cuban Missile Crisis, or even lesser ones like the Able Archer crisis. I’ll wait.
For once, Mearsheimer, we agree. So the question is: How do we reduce the likelihood for nuclear war?
Because I fail to see how encouraging Ukraine to roll over and give up would lessen it, especially in the medium to long term. I fail to see how an emboldened, even more arrogant Russian leadership lessens it.
And SURPRISE SURPRISE it turns out that many other nations, including neutrals or outright ALLIES of Russia, AGREE! Which is why they told Putin to cut it the hell out.
You think similar misgivings extend further, into the Russian public and leadership? I for one think so.
I agree –
.. in terms of pushing the Russians into a corner.
Once more, evidence that one can invest vast effort and resources into avoiding a point when their livelihood and reputation depend on missing said point.
For Mearsheimer’s sake I really, really hope Putin etc. al. paid him well for what amounts of his soul, because the prospect he is doing all of this WITHOUT being paid off by the Kremlin would be more humiliating.
<blockquote But again, I'm not sure that's gonna happen
Especially after the aforementioned Russian humiliation and climbdown.
And in just a few words, Mearsheimer underlines that he really hasn’t thought that much about the Ukrainian War.
This strawman MIGHT have some merit if American and Russian troops were fighting in Ukraine like it’s some kind of empty Multiplayer Shooter Arena with the Ukrainians either not present or standing impassively on the sidelines. But they’re not.
The Russians aren’t fighting American troops (outside of a modest number of American volunteers that have formally joined the Ukrainian military, and MAYBE a select number of Black Bag Hush Hush Spec Ops outfits operating in theater). They are fighting UKRAINIAN Ones, as well as Ukrainian Society.
It does not take a genius to realize why, given Putin’s statements about Ukrainian nationhood and its territorial integrity.
So the more important questions are
A: Do Russians and the limited number of separatist allies they have or Ukrainians care about Ukraine more?
and
B: Does America care enough to sustain the economic, diplomatic, and material pressure?
Maybe true for the most part though Mearsheimer should REALLY be careful given some of the pollings about a No Fly Zone and the volunteers.
For the reasons I’ve mentioned, they have not made it anywhere near as clear as Mearsheimer wishes to pretend, precisely because much of the Russian public and ESPECIALLY the foreign third parties Russia will need to sustain its economy and war effort reject the idea that it is.
The fact that Mearsheimer is so UTTERLY STUPID AND DISHONEST he is ADMITTING that he is only balancing American Resolve versus Russian Resolve about a war in Ukraine should be a mortal blow to his credibility. Should but alas isn’t in many cases.
Especially since what was it Mearsheimer accused us of doing again?
Oh right.
If American vs. Russian resolve was all that mattered, why is there still fighting going on?
How could America “make” Ukrainians fight “to the last Ukrainian” or at least as far as they have if all that mattered was American Resolve versus Russian Resolve?
To ask the question is to answer it. Mearsheimer is being full of $hit. And on some level he is well aware he is full of $hit, I am convinced. While I have a low opinion on his awareness and consistency, I do not think they are THIS nonexistent.
But to actually engage with these subjects such as how the Ukrainians feel would blast holes in his thesis and demand examination of his other claims. So is it really a surprise he does not want to delve into them?
Moreover, this ignores the fact that a Great Power Patron of a Third Party does not have to have greater resolve than the Great Power enemy of its Client. The US certainly did not care more about China in the 1930s -a distant, foreign country and home to “Asia” that it looked at with some mixed fondness and fear – than Japan did, viewing it as the juggernaut of Asia, flower of its own civilization, and which it had crushing mixes of Inferiority and Superiority complexes towards.
But the US still thoroughly stymied and ultimately defeated the Japanese strategically, even before Pearl Harbor (as the Japanese leadership acknowledged on a material level).
Which led to a retreat into mystical and magical thinking, including the precise “Our Resolve is Superior to Your Resolve” rambling Mearsheimer is engaging in now.
Resolve is important, but it is far from the only or even most important factor.
Especially in a mostly conventional war.
Your guess is invalid because it is fundamentally not describing a war that is ACTUALLY happening, Mearsheimer.
Please address the Ukraine-sized Elephant in the Room and get back to me.
Especially since we’ve seen the Soviets run into problems and defeats against the US in other proxy wars where their resolve was greater than that of the US. Afghanistan, anybody?
It took more than six minutes after the “last Ukrainian” comment for Mearsheimer to DEIGN to acknowledge the actual people LIVING in the country again as a factor. And only then primarily to wax poetic about how they are victims of Great Power politics and “the real losers” of “this war” (started I might add by Putin’s nonsense).
Can you feel my contempt right now? My disdain for this man?
Ah yes, the idea of Poor Little, Impassive Ukraine and its Bucolic Lilliputian People, pushed by the agendas of others and uncritically adopting them.
Except even in the original book the Lilliputians tied down Gulliver and even tried to kill him.
In any case, the West has pushed for that to one degree or another over the years. But so have many Ukrainians.
And even more importantly, in its own way, so has Russia.
It was not NATO or anyone in Ukraine that forced Putin to strongarm Yanukovych out of negotiations for the EU Association Agreement. It was not NATO or anyone in Ukraine that made the decision to deploy Spetznaz into Crimea and the Donbas in 2014 to partition that country. It was not NATO or anyone in Ukraine that kept multiple Russian governments from settling the neverending tariff and pipeline disputes with Ukraine and even nations like Belarus.
There was not only leading, but pushing in this case. And not just from the West towards itself, but also by the Kremlin towards the West.
And the fact that Mearsheimer cannot so much as ACKNOWLEDGE this fact does more to discredit him than anything I can write.
And yet at no point does Mearsheimer stop to think or even vocalize that MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, this thing UNTO ITSELF might be a reason why Ukrainians might seek to get away from an abusive, overbearing neighbor? Especially since such assertions nakedly violate Ukraine’s sovereign rights, as acknowledged by Russia multiple times over in 1994 and 2012 (among others)?
There’s something disgusting and greatly immoral about Mearsheimer trying to justify a Russian invasion and partition of Ukraine by blaming the West.
No, the West did not “take a stick and poked the bear in the eye.” The Bear took its claws and tried to cut down Ukrainian opposition to its vassal (as shown by its prodding of lethal measures by Yanukovych), and then to carve out chunks of Ukraine for itself. As it had multiple times over in Moldova and Georgia.
Which is unsurprising because it follows literal centuries of Muscovite foreign policy in the region.
Also, let’s drop the cute, child’s book metaphor. It is as cloying as it is inappropriate. The “Russian Bear” is a colorful and evocative piece of figurative language, but it is just that. FIGURATIVE Language.
Vladimir Putin is not a Bear. He is a Human Being like you and I, at least in many aspects (Though he is much different from us in other points). As such, he is more than capable of taking responsibility for his actions and adjusting them in response to outside stimuli much more effectively and consciously than a bear is.
As shown by his waiting for half a year before attacking Georgia at a time when their best troops were in Iraq.
As shown by his climbdown from the nuclear blackmail after being told off by the PRC and others.
As shown by his other actions.
Let us treat him like a Human Being in charge of a Great Power, who can be held responsible for his actions and how he responds to those of others. Because that is what he IS.
Especially since Mearsheimer would not like it if we took his analogy further, to ask what we do to bears that attack humans for whatever reason.
We generally SHOOT those bears dead.
Ya got that everybody? Vladimir Putin launching three distinct invasions of a neighboring country is “fighting back.”
And people wonder why I dismiss Mearsheimer as a Kremlin apologist and a Putin shill. Well, this is a good example of why. Painting the aggressor of this war as the victim and “fighting back” is grotesque and utterly stupid, and I will not mince words about that.
Again, why is that?
Because again: we are not talking about a real Bear. We are talking about a despotic, authoritarian Great Power ruled by Humans.
Also some other things that Mearsheimer has never, ever mentioned in the duration of this “Blame the West” BS fest:
1. The Union of Pereyaslav.
2. The “Southern Wrath” against Mazepa and his faction.
3. The dismantling of the Sichs.
4. Russification under the Tsars.
5. The Holodomor.
6. Russification under the Soviets.
7. Putin’s support for Yanukovych’s voting fraud campaign in 2004-2006, up to giving shelter to the “alleged” attempted killer of Yushenko.
8. Putin’s encouragement of Yanukovych using violent measures against his own people.
Why is that, I wonder?
Perhaps because It underlines that “the bear” does not NEED to be provoked by “the West” in order to tear Ukraine apart? That there would likely be very practical reasons for why Ukrainian polities might seek support outside of Russia?
Oh, but let’s just continue on treating Vladimir Putin as something he very obviously is not. He’s just an angry bear We poked in the eye. How can we blame him for the damage he’s done? It’s all our fault.
*SPIT.*
Unsurprisingly this is pretty much the exact “methodology” He has towards Israel, Jimmy, and I’m kind of surprised you find it more convincing here.
YES.
Is there any question why?
Vladimir Putin decided to claim that a mostly internal change of power in one of his neighboring countries was the equivalent of being “poked in the eye’ and so justified a criminal conspiracy to invade that country and “tear it apart” (Mearsheimer’s words, not my own).
To articulate Mearsheimer’s thesis in those words is to reveal it to be the hollow, bankrupt lie that it is. To show where ultimate responsibility truly lies.
I have no interest in a dishonest, racist sophist and what they “think” when they could not even factor in how Ukrainian resolve might factor in regarding a war waged in Ukraine, by Ukrainians.
“The Russians” are not a hive mind, and The Russian Government is primarily responsible. Especially since you do see a great many Russians seeking to escape or go to ground, and some even resisting the Kremlin (as shown by Dugina’s assassination and the Free Russia Legion).
Who the hell are you trying to convince Mearsheimer? OF COURSE YOU WANT TO MAKE LIGHT OF THAT FACT.
If you did not, you would not have bent every word and every effort to minimizing the Kremlin’s responsibility, denying its obligations under international law and simply competent statecraft, and trivializing its guilt. That goes far beyond equivocation or acknowledging “there are many sides of this issue” into outright whitewashing that is worse than things like the Lytton Report, which acknowledged that for all of Japan’s grievances that were justified its actions were not.
And the fact that he lacks the honesty or integrity to outright admit this is repulsive to me.
Grandiose arrogance that they have a RIGHT to dominate Ukraine and that any developments in Ukrainian affairs that do not go its way justify invading and conquering it.
Which is no defense. One cannot say “B- But the West!” to wash it away.
So simple you do not deign to explain how or why.
Any questions why I regard Mearsheimer as a disgusting, dishonest, incompetent, corrupt little man?
@Jim in Alaska
I cannot speak to others but I came to my conclusions well before the “24/7 pro-Ukraine propaganda” began, back when Obama and co tried to hold Minsk I and then Minsk II up as Peace For Our Time and continue “reset” with Putin in order to midwife yet another Iran steal.
Fair, and to each their own. Reasonable people can disagree as to that, as I disagreed with Neo at least in part.
DeSantis is still a good man, certainly as far as I can tell, and I can understand why he wrote what he did. So it certainly isn’t a dealbreaker.
America must come first.
Russia looses in Ukraine, goes back to its pre 2014 borders, decides to reign in its imperial fantasies? Oh, noes!
You really think that will be the result of Biden’s policies? More power to you.
You seem to accept Russian goals as inevitable, as in Ukraine becomes a vassal state of the Motherland.
No, just under Biden’s policies of essentially unconditional but inadequate (for anything other than continuing the bloodbath) support. My view all along is that we should be pressuring both to come up with a negotiated solution. The current Biden policy is antithetical to that.
My view all along is that we should be pressuring both to come up with a negotiated solution. The current Biden policy is antithetical to that.
==
Because reasons.
@Bruce Hayden
No it’s not. I despise Obama and Biden as much as many, and that’s why I’m far more scared of what happens over here than what happens over there, but ultimately Obama and Biden were at least partially depowered mid war, since this started in 2014.
This is ultimately Putin’s war, much like most of the conflicts like it in post-Soviet space. Only he has held power consistently and long enough to have it.
This is untrue.
The “Change of Regime” in Ukraine primarily occurred through two vectors.
Firstly: Street pressure from protests-cum-riots in Euromaidan.
Secondly: A Legislative mutiny against Yanukovych by the democratically elected members of the Rada (which at the time was narrowly dominated by Yanukovych’s own coalition and included many of the mutineers from his ranks) who when he fled Kyiv (ostensibly out of fear for his life, though he seemed to have not claimed such at the time) they initiated Not-Quite-Impeachment to remove him from office on grounds of incapacity.
Obama and co were involved in both aspects but they didn’t dominate either. Especially since the coup de grace was done by the latter and most of those were from parties Obama etc. al. had tried to screw with.
Which Putin responded to by….. Invading in 2014, albeit under razor thin pretexts.
Brandon and co have been engaging in all kinds of corruption and dark money graft in Ukraine well before Euromaidan, ditto Russia.
Very true.
There wasn’t one “the regime” in Ukraine, because Ukraine did not operate like Putin’s Russia. Indeed, there was a major change of government in 2019 when Zelenskyy defeated the previous incumbent Poroshenko, and the “regime” supposedly “installed by Obama” (headed by the “Yats” of the infamous Nuland phone call) was a weak caretaker government meant to establish new elections that in fact collapsed a bunch of times and had to be rebuilt because nobody else had any better ideas.
So we’re supposed to believe that Trump supported and in fact escalated support to Ukraine with lethal weapons and bombed Russian-used Syrian Baathist Air Fields because…. of Ukrainian bribes paid to Obama and Brandon?
Doesn’t make sense.
Indeed, Trump actually pushed Zelenskyy to investigate the obvious corruption involved in Biden’s removal of the (admittedly-probably-corrupt-himself) Attorney General of Ukraine.
Agreed, and this is why I seethe at how our own domestic tyrants are acting. And why fighting them will be much more important than Ukraine.
Fair.
Leaving aside the fact that this couldn’t possibly be “Brandon’s War” as I mentioned before, Trump’s approach on Ukraine was in fact very skillful and far from “over the top.”
I mostly agree, though for different reasons. But that’s ok. I’ll leave Kremlin-baiting and witch hunts alleging other posters are FSB to the left.
We’ll see.
Agreed on the whole, and well said.
Well said indeed. We might disagree a lot on Ukraine, but that doesn’t mean we can’t stand together against evils like what Brandon and co are doing.
@Jimmy
Apologies for the delay and the long, long (and rather profane) response to Mearsheimer, which you can read above.
No, for various reasons.
Firstly: Putin’s already pissed off at us and has been to one degree or another pretty much since the USSR fell, and especially after he was told he wouldn’t be able to jump the line for NATO membership and skip the requirements.
Secondly: Ukraine’s already being destroyed and Putin or at least many of the fanatics around him want to do the job on a level far beyond bombs and bullets, but to erase the very concept of a Ukrainian Nation.
Thirdly: This war is going to keep going on “indefinitely” for a lot longer pretty much regardless of what we do, even if we cut 110% of aid tomorrow.
You might have heard about Stephan Bandera, Ukrainian Fascist leader around the time of WWII (and it is true, briefly a Nazi collaborator before the Nazis backstabbed him). He was head of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, Bandera Branch (OUN,-B) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA, or more specifically UPA-B).
He was by all accounts a merciless, brutal terrorist of a man whose organization had limited appeal outside of the Western region of Galicia, where he fought savage guerilla war against the Soviets and their collaborators, the Polish Resistance, and the Nazis.
It took the Soviets about 12 years after retaking all of Ukraine to finally destroy his organization, well into the 1950s, in spite of having the support of all the nations bordering the region both due to them being communists and historical issues with Ukrainians, as well as having the war machine that played such a role destroying the Axis and which Stalin intended to start WW3 against us with.
The closest parallel to this is Georgia, which has been fighting on and off since 1991.
So I have every reason to believe this war will go long and ugly, even if the Kremlin magically conquered all of the territory tomorrow.
I frankly support giving Ukraine as much aid as is practical *without risking a direct confrontation with Russia*, with the goal of it liberating its 1994/2014 territory, or failing that coming to some kind of more secure peace (such as Zelenskyy’s idea of reunion with Crimea and a plebiscite to divide the Donbas).
The issue of course is that this is going to really look a lot like “keeping the war going indefinitely” as it plays out, because this would be a horrible slow burn strategy designed to slowly exhaust the Kremlin’s war making capacities and Russian public will, like we did in Afghanistan and the Baltic.
The problem I see with this is twofold.
Firstly: I do not at all think this is “hopeless.”
Secondly, and which Mearsheimer etc. al. REALLY do not want to mention: We TRIED pushing for a settlement, Hard. It was the Minsk Summits.
They didn’t work, largely because neither side believed in them enough. Especially the Russians, who knew they had the artillery advantage and were utterly unwilling to remove them from the battlefront.
I don’t see much merit in repeating another Failed Obama-Merkel initiative to try and push Ukraine and Russia into a ceasefire that will satisfy nobody and probably not even cease the firing.
To which I counter: what would a good end for Ukraine be?
Certainly not Kremlin occupation.
Or “Neutrality” as dictated by Putin.
Honestly, I think it is likely to work, though good and honest people can disagree on that (though I do not think Mearsheimer fits that description, for reasons I’ve mentioned). It has a decent track record in the past, including against Milosevic’s Serbia in the Yugoslav Wars and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and to a lesser extent the Baltics.
Fair, and an admirable stance.
I would favor a policy much like that to the KMT in China during the 1930s and to the Contras of Nicaragua in the 1970s and 1980s.
And yes, I do not say that lightly given what an utterly corrupt, horribly authoritarian nightmare the KMT was (as bad as people might think Zelenskyy and Poroshenko are, they don’t hold a candle to good old Chiang or his “Himmler”, Dai Li, to cite just a few).
1. Reject recognition of all annexations by the Russian government or its puppet states in Ukraine, pending some peace deal.
2. Continue supplying Ukraine generously with non-WMD weapons (and using that to help spur some attempted military reform in our own and a stop to prevent DIE and co).
3. Implement major vetting and forensic accounting of what we give to make sure it doesn’t Fall of the Back of a Truck.
4. Have the current government shut up more about the support we are giving, especially in terms of intelligence. I want us to help kill Russian Staff Officers, but NOT TO BRAG PUBLICLY ABOUT DOING SO.
5. Refuse attempts to widen the war or engage in combat troops. Allow those that want to go to go, but don’t do abject nonsense like blowing up Russian planes because one of them hit a drone of ours.
6. Continue sanctions and try to tighten them.
7. Encourage anti-regime actions in Belarus and Russia, mostly by propaganda and maybe some discreet funding.
8. Hold out for some kind of deal.
They aren’t perfect and will certainly not be implemented correctly under current leadership (esp. Point 3), but this war has already lasted since 2014 and I think it’ll likely go long afterwards. So I think basic principles of what we should be angling for are at least as important as the concrete terms we’d hope to get under any given admin.
Perhaps those goals and principles will be unable to be achieved and we’ll have to “give ground.” Which is unfortunate but might be necessary with the left on the ascendency at home.
But at least it provides more ground to give for limited retreats. And a well-armed Ukraine in control of more of its territory and a Russian military down a lot of its best troops and equipment would be a decent peace settlement, even if Ukraine has to give ground.
I don’t trust Biden to do it, but that’s been US policy since well before him, even under Trump.
Honestly I think a large part of that is how the Left has been cutting war production to the bone, and now has to reverse course. Ditto it is a pita to iron out logistics. We saw the oldest parts of this policy before the war started in 2014 due to Ukrainian cooperation with us in Afghanistan and Iraq and a bit of other things, and saw this really start to build up steam under Obama and Trump (odd couple if anything but still). It’ll probably take a year or two for production to really hit its stride in the US and elsewhere, to say nothing of getting the transport issues done.
But it’ll likely happen.
TL:DR, we usually run into production problems with every hot war.
Fair, though – as much as I hate to say it – I would prefer the “current Biden policy” even as you post to that. In part because pressuring both to come with a negotiated settlement was a *former* Obama/Biden/Clinton/Merkel policy that collapsed in short order, in large part because Putin saw no need to hold to it as the stronger power (at least perceived) when it no longer suited his interests, and he saw “Brandon”‘s Administration as a weak horse he could exploit.
Apologies for the ranting.
Turtler, sorry, I didn’t mean to omit you from my response. No time to address everything, but are you really citing Afghanistan as a positive example, or do I misunderstand? That was a disaster, especially under Biden.
@Jimmy
No worries, it’s quite fine.
I was citing US and other Allied support to the anti-Soviet Afghan resistance as a Positive Example, for how it bogged down, frustrated, and stymied the Soviets and helped undermine the regime’s legitimacy, stability, and ability to threaten the wider world.
Though obviously it was a long and ugly war and had really nasty side effects, given the Taliban’s birth not long after the Soviets left and what we had to deal with. And that’s something I have acknowledged a few times (albeit mostly in passing) as the main threat I see to this policy in Ukraine.
But I think it is much less risky, at least in that front, for a few reasons. And on the off chance we did have a “Ukrainian Taliban-like-boomarang” it’d be more likely to be either
A: Nutjob Neo-Fascists
or
B: Woke left-leaning postmodernist oligarchs (as Zelenskyy has shown more than a little bit of pandering in that direction).
Both unpleasant consequences and potentially dangerous ones, but I don’t think moreso than this.
But yes, our war in Afghanistan was a hot mess (though at least it helped gut AQ). ESPECIALLY under Biden. But I was talking about the Soviet War in Afghanistan, not our own.
Hope that clarifies things?
And I think it is Brandon’s war now, even if he inherited a situation that had been mucked up by his predecessors. He owns it now. He wanted to be President, so he’s responsible for everything since January 2021. Just as Johnson inherited Vietnam, and managed to make a mess of it. Nixon managed to negotiate an agreement that might have worked had the Democrats in Congress not cut off South Vietnam and turned it over to the North.
And yes, I misunderstood your Afghan reference. But I’m not so sure we can count on the same outcome here as under the Soviets.
So, om, Richard Aubrey, Art Deco, we should give just enough aid to keep the war going indefinitely, to what end? Piss off Russia and destroy Ukraine?
==
The Russian government is responsible for its own emotional states. As for the current state of affairs, that is what prevents the Ukraine from being destroyed. It also inhibits Russia from acting against other parties in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus.
Meant to add to that last point: The difference being that the USSR was disintegrating in the 80s, and we had Reagan at the helm after Carter was thankfully ousted.
Jimmy, I watched the Mearsheimer video. His positron on Russia reminds me of the way the intellectuals and liberals of the Cold War regarded the USSR. Oh, my, they have nukes, they have a large army, they have a lot of resources, they are dangerous and will surpass us soon. And then the Iron Curtain fell and what did we find? A near third world country with a lot of nukes and a zombie economy.
I heard yesterday that Russia’s economy is about the size of New York state. Pitiful as compared to other great powers. And most of it is based on selling commodities to the rest of the world. It could be much larger if they would adopt free market principles and root out corruption in their economy. They haven’t and it doesn’t seem likely in the foreseeable future.
When it comes to their nuclear arms, they have a lot of land and air-based weapons, but few sea-based nukes. We have to remember, as Reagan did, that we have the most dangerous and least vulnerable nuclear force in the world. Attack us and you will be destroyed. MAD, it’s called. We should not let ourselves be bullied by a weaker foe. We shouldn’t threaten, but we should show confidence in our enormous strength. We are the 800-pound gorilla.
What I think needs to happen is a non-aggression treaty between Russia and Ukraine with assurances that Ukraine will not join NATO.
Our diplomats must continue to emphasize to Russia that NATO is a defensive alliance that threatens no one as long as they aren’t attacked. Russia has nothing to fear from NATO as long as they honor the sovereignty of neighboring nations.
I know Putin doesn’t want to listen to such ideas. He has a life goal of reassembling the Russian Empire. He must be made to understand that the rest of the world will not allow that. That the cost to do so would be too high. To accomplish this, the U.S. must get India and as many other nations as possible on our side. There is much diplomacy to be done, but it must be done from a position of confidence.
Turtler:
On the topic of Ukraine, I’d say that I’m co-blogging with you. 🙂
MIguel cervantes:
Oh, so Putin isn’t the source of all the evil in the world?
@Jimmy
I can’t entirely agree, though my hatred of Biden runs similarly deep.
However, it is important to establish that he is a corrupt, venal, wretched man:
A: Ultimately neither he nor his predecessors had control of everything that happened or were even the prime authors of this. That I believe belongs fully to Putin. In much the same way that the Indochinese wars went back to at least 1945 and were masterminded by Ho and his successors fighting a changing landscape of enemies, (openly) totalitarian-authoritarian leaders can maintain power for far longer than Democratic ones, especially in our 4 year 2 term limited country.
B: As vile and corrupt as Biden is, his capacity is inherently limited. I would be a hypocrite if I did not apply that here, and even his own overweening ambition and willingness to be used cannot entirely override that.
Though he does deserve massive blame for being in the shape he is and still wanting to grasp greater power (or at least its appearance).
He and LBJ and others screwed up plenty, but like I said when chewing out Mearsheimer, diplomatic is a multiplayer game and nobody in the White House, at least I am convinced, has as much responsibility for it as those in and around the Kremlin.
Though that doesn’t mean our own scumbag tyrants do not have much on whatever passes for their consciousnesses.
Agreed, and that is something I have acknowledged. Though to be honest I feel the most likely different outcomes are more favorable than Afghanistan. This is a conventional war with a side of irregular fighting, and so things like the Croatia. and Bosnian Wars of Independence are probably closer to what we have seen.
In particular the Ukrainians stomped a sizable Russian armored attack at Vuhledar, which certainly looks more like Yugoslavia than anything in Afghan history.
https://bnn-news.com/russia-suffers-substantial-losses-at-vuhledar-242941
Though of course the exact numbers might be off.
In any case I will not prize Ukraine’s interests over those of the US and I am willing to abandon it, ghastly as that would be, if it was necessary to preserve the US. But I don’t think that will be necessary. And for reasons I have mentioned I have modest faith at best on the “pressure both sides into a settlement plan.”
Fair, but Russia is also disintegrating and has been for a long time. In many ways it never recovered from the Soviet era, and its demographics are awful. Mark Steyn was writing about this and its political implications all the way back in America Alone at the turn of the century, and it shows to a large degree in Putin’s recruiting of mercenary troops, prisoners, and those from non-ethnically-Russian regions like Buryatia as well as his growing dependence on the Kadyrovs.
Jimmy:
So was Trump’s support for Ukraine against Putin’s proxies a mistake too?
@neo
Oh dear. I am honored and flattered, and honestly I feel unworthy.
But you might want to notify John Guilfoyle of your answer, as he was the one checking. 😉
I would say if the successor state of a founding member of the UN can be made to give up territory by aggression, then international order is in real trouble. Russia is a big country. Russians in Ukraine can move. Also, I think arming Ukraine takes longer than the TV generation appreciates.
Jimmy can’t accept that Putin chose to invade Ukraine so he shifts the Russo-Ukraine war into the Russo-Brandon war.
The Calvin and Hobbes historical transmogrifier.
Yes the uk and us some french handed over the bulk of the funds to isi and general intelligence cadres from which al queda recruited
Interesting take on Ukraine etc.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4138821/posts
Turtler, you minimize the corrosive effect of the Maidan revolution, and the NATO push eastward.
Its more like the crimean war, except the uk despises itself too much to actually mount a light brigade charge
@Brian E
Largely because in this thread we were talking about matters of international law, which makes the legality of Euromaidan and Yanukovych’s ouster much less important (especially since the Kremlin and PRC love emphasizing national sovereignty as a shield to legal matters when it suits them) and makes NATO’s Eastward expansion something that was utterly legal, even if people might disagree with the wisdom.
Moreover I do think NATO expansion as a cause for this war is overstated given the number of conflicts that started before it got going, especially Georgia.
Turtler, you minimize the corrosive effect of the Maidan revolution, and the NATO push eastward.
==
There hasn’t been any ‘push eastward’ since 2004. And, of course, all of the countries which did join NATO during the period running from 1997 to 2004 did so voluntarily.
Russia’s economy is small by Western standards, but so is their debt.
GDP to debt is 17% compared to our 128%. Debt/capita is $2,000 vs. our $88,000.
We appear richer because that’s what debt does, until we can’t make the payments and we’re suddenly poor.
GDP per capita is $37,000 vs. our $68,000.
Which economy is better suited to survive economic hardship?
@Brian E
I agree our debt is in a terrible position and that’s been one of the worst aspects of our financial system. But it’s also not helped by the Kremlin having greater latitude to cook the books and hide funding in various corners.
But I’d argue even more damning than debt is the human debt. Russian demographics are awful and getting worse, and that makes an economy worse equipped to survive economic hardship.
Especially since I also think you are understating their issues. Last I checked Russian GDP to Debt was about 30%.
Also, one of the ugly benefits of being indebted is it indicates the ability to get liquidity. You could probably come up with similar looking figures for Germany vs. Britain in 1918 and get a very different impression of how the war would turn out than what it did.
But that doesn’t mean we are in a good position. We absolutely are not, and we should have focused on financial stability yester century.
Brain E:
Well the Russians have a history of being forced by their government to survive on beets, cabbage, and potatoes, or forced, as in Ukrainians, to not survive by Holodomor; so will you ask a serious question?
I blame NATO:
https://redstate.com/streiff/2023/03/17/international-criminal-court-issues-arrest-warrant-for-vladimir-putin-n717784
Vlad was forced to kidnap Ukrainian children, deport them to “infiltration camps” in Mother Russia, and disperse them into Russian “adoption.” Make serfdom great again?
He chose poorly gambling on a battle plan a northern approach to kyev that has never worked
@LeClerc
I agree, it is an interesting take. One I sympathize with, even if I disagree with large parts of it.
We’re not really at risk for WWIII with Russia, especially when Russia is struggling to subdue Eastern Ukraine. But fair.
However, that raises the question of what would an interest worthy of risking WW3 with Russia be?
Agreed.
I mean, we’re not the ones feeding them into the meatgrinder. I continue to hold that Putin owns responsibility for that on a quite literal level, as both the author of the invasions and the man who decided to force the issue by escalating.
Cute saying. Now apply it to the Islamic State. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Turns out that it’s a bad idea to enslave yourself to kneejerk contrarianism, even when it comes to scum like Kristol, KInzinger, Boot, and co.
Fair, but we’ll need to see how it goes. Also as Georgia can attest, selling our allies short can lead to massive foreign policy failures all their own.
Whacking Saddam and Osama.
Small potatoes I know, but worth noting.
Agreed.
Agreed, and that’s an issue I have. Still, I do think that pointing out the issues with Foggy Bottom doesn’t change the issues with the risks. Vietnam and Ho were going to be an issue even if our “Foreign Policy Elite” said they were and came up with increasingly stupid and immoral ways to circle jerk us.
Issue is that being pro-or-anti-war is all well and good on your own terms, but it doesn’t change what “it’s not our war” literally means. That whoever holds the Presidency (assuming it is not an utter fraud hollowed out further by the Left) will have to deal with it, as Trump knows.
See above.
Very understandably. I still go into periodic rages when I think about Biden and Bagram and Kabul.
Disagree. It’s looking like a money sink, but one among many, and a stalemate generally favorable to us.
Agreed there.
I disagree that this is or at least originated as a territorial dispute. And while I do think it is not a vital American interest, it is an important one and ties into many others.
Agreed.
Agreed, but that’s largely because of the Ukrainian defense.
Unless you ignore the bloody incremental progress Putin has made in places like Georgia and Ukraine, and also his efforts to form another Berlin-Moscow Axis with the German Left.
Simply put, it’s economical, practical, and ethical for us to supply the Ukrainians in their fight to delay or prevent a more direct confrontation with Russia.
Agreed, but it’s worth noting that this conflict will ebb and flow as the ones in Moldova and especially Georgia do, usually indecisively. And the Russian government is not likely to make us evacuate from Helos in Kyiv or Tbilisi.
It’s at this point that I’ll also note that C-17 and Helo evacuations from Saigon and Kabul largely came about as a result of Leftist, Democrat refusal to aid our allies in defending themselves from attack.
A: Needs to?
B: Here’s an uglier fact. We tried that. It didn’t work. And it probably won’t work for the same reason similar things in Georgia haven’t worked. A Ukraine incapable of deterring further Russian aggression is going to invite mischief.
Agreed on the whole, though there have been some sweeping manuvers.
Agreed, but we can say similar with the Russians, who remain at a demographic bottleneck and are facing widespread hesitancy at sending more Mobiks.
Both sides are running out of troops, the Russians at a higher rate than the Ukrainians but with more to burn. And we’ve already seen the major issues the Russians have faced with mobilization.
Agreed,
Sure, but it also has a history of getting beaten down and not coming back, or only doing so a generation or more later. We know the comeback from setbacks because they have generally been larger and more dramatic, but not so many people know about the Livonian War, the fall of Smolensk, the initial Russian successes overruning the Danube in 1853-4, and so on.
And you know what both of those examples have in common?
They were defensive wars to defend the Russian Motherland. Not expeditionary wars of aggression.
Notably, it was catastrophic failures in many of the latter such as the bloody stalemate over Finland and the shattering defeat of Austerlitz that led German and French troops to Moscow.
In this war the Ukrainian Loyalists generally have the home field advantage and they have used it well, bleeding out Russian advances.
They’ve had about a decade to do this.
Moreover, even if they do do that they can’t magically replace the equipment and manpower losses they suffered. Even if they can make good a headcount or barrel number, the experience and skill acquired over years of expeditionary warfare has been diluted or outright gone away.
There’s a reason why the Russian government is openly soliciting aid from the Syrian Baathists and our own abandoned Afghan Government Commandos while frontloading the trenches with Buryats and other people who will not be missed. Because no Russian government wants to have to explain lots of dead Muscovites and Petersburgers, especially not in a war that doesn’t see the enemy burning the outskirts of Moscow.
Ok, at what rate?
Because as scary and awesome as T-14 Armata surely is, it’s not in great production quantities.
It also ignores the fact that the reconstitute and regunning game has two sides to it and the Ukrainians can play it to, both with and without our help.
With training cadres that are between half and third strength due to the poor NCO culture as well as those training officers that are there being shipped to Bakhmut and other areas to get shot.
Except we’ve seen this happen a bunch of times in this war in the past. This war didn’t start in 2022, and it’s worth noting that stalemate has generally benefitted the Ukrainians for various reasons. See the territorial changes of the Donbas from 2014-2021.
And we’ve already seen cases where Russian incompetence or overreach has had their lines shatter, like in the North.
The issue I see is that stalemates have generally helped the Ukrainian side and they have been making gains along the Southern front while most attention is around Bakhmut.
Agreed, and while I disagree with this stance of his to a large degree I can respect it.
Very well said, and why there is much I agree with and respect about this post and its author even if I disagree with it.
And the comment was making such a good argument….
I’m sure the remaining survivors of Saigon and the other Boat People would agree that it isn’t a betrayal….
Agreed.
Cautiously agreed. A lot depends on “on what terms?”
I want a stable Eastern Front to Europe for years to come that will help us sort out our own BS, dispense with Brandon and the Left, and heal America. If a peace deal accomplishes that, I will give it consideration. If a continued stalemate does, I will do that too.
Agreed, issue is how we force peace down their throats. And avoid the Russians from utilizing a well-honed gag reflex to come back in a decade for another round.
Agreed.
Maybe, but they were already plenty close.
It’s also helping to push for a renaissance in European war-making capacity, with even the freeloading Germans having to pay lip service to revitalizing the Bundeswehr and other nations like the Dutch taking it far more seriously than that.
As such, Ukraine is serving as a valuable canary in the coal mine and helping to put the Euros on notice after they’ve skated off of us for too long.
Agreed.
Ok, Literally How?
Because that’s been the policy of our Foreign Policy Establishment since at least the Yeltsin Years, and it’s not been a Great Success to put it MILDLY.
Steyn concluded that Putin and the Siloviki-Security State Marriage he represents were unlikely to ever favor the West over an anti-Western alliance all the way back in the early 2000s, and I think history has more than vindicated him in this. As such, I believe that integrating Russia into the West well be dependent on Putin and his ilk *Going.*
This is quite literally what the “geniuses that brought you Baghdad and Kabul” tried to do. Remember Bush’s talk about looking into Putin’s Soul? Remember Muh Reset after Georgia?
If I had any confidence WHATSOEVER that we could appease Putin and get him on our side against the PRC by doing so, that’d be another matter and while still ethically and legally ugly would at least be practical.
But I don’t think it’s even practical. How many times do we have to keep begging for Putin’s attention and favor like jilted supplicants only to get ignored before we decide the Putin regime is not a trustworthy or reliable ally against the CCP?
The issue is How We Get There From Here.
And frankly I don’t think you get there at ALL with Putin or his political heirs in power, and you probably don’t get there without heavily degrading the Russian military and state in order to bring it around.
Decades of humiliating Egyptian defeats against Israel (where the bloody quagmire in Yemen was the high point) was a crucial catalyst in Sadat’s decision to bring Egypt into the Western camp. Memories of what we could do to Vietnam and others helped push Hanoi to look to us as a counterbalance to their traditional Chinese overlords. Osama Bin Laden talked of Strong Horses and Weak Horses and we have seen the problems with this.
I frankly believe that the road to a pro-Western Russia lies through breaking down the existing Russian regime and its establishment, leaving them and their policies so utterly humiliated and bloodied that almost nobody will look in their direction when planning their political future. To make Moscow and the leaders that will take up it realize that Russia can either have the US as an ally, or it can have it as a potent enemy that they can bash their skulls against.
And I think the best method of doing that is by undermining the Kremlin at home and abroad, and providing Ukraine with calculated aid to help them win this war – whether short or long – so that we can discredit the pro-Beijing elite ruling the Kremlin now.
How much we are willing to gamble on that front is another issue.
Agreed.
I agree to some degree. Putin is a problem, but he is more a symptom of a wider problem and front man for pathologies woven deep into the Russian regime. If he dies with his regime in power, he will be replaced by someone like him who will still be violent, tyrannical, anti-Western, and pro-Beijing.
The exact nature and degree of all of which is ultimately to be determined, but all are ultimately injurious to the US.
Moreover, personalities DO matter. The author acknowledges this by talking about the scum and villainy of Boot, Kristol, etc. al as well as how Trump and DeSantis have had great success. Much of the turn to authoritarianism and anti-Western sentiment can be laid firmly at the feet of Putin personally. Not exclusively, but to a large degree.
Decades of Western Leadership including our Foreign Policy Elites have humiliated ourselves trying to get Putin to change his stripes. I find it more likely we will change the person ruling Russia and the regime than we will change Putin.
Putin also apparently is ok with endless war, and the author – for all of his many good points – does seem to overlook how the foreign policy establishment kept coming up with the “Detente with Putin, Detente with Putin” Playbook I’ve spoken of before, as well as the predictable-as-hell arc of “US Presidential Relations with Putin” where each POTUS goes in promising to “fix” what “their predecessors” screwed up with Putin only to end betrayed and snubbed by him, vowing strong measures until they get replaced by the next POTUS promising to do what they failed to do next….
I do care a great deal for Russia and believe they will be important at curtailing the PRC, but I have no reason to believe Putin or his ilk will side with us over them. They can’t even side with their own people against Kadyrov.
Unlike Neo’s nuanced view of what Governor DeSantis meant, George Will takes him at his word.
Will on Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Ukraine stand: ‘He’s not fit to be president’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yph56HvN9Io
Neo is willing to overlook what may be DeSantis’s inner politician, but not the few neocons left after the disastrous Iraq adventure.
DeSantis is going to get the full Trump treatment when and if he announces. My personal opinion is conservatives need him as governor. Unless election integrity can be strengthened in the next two years, it’s unlikely a Republican can win– and the wreckage left after two more years of trillion dollar deficits might be more of a booby prize than anything else. I was listening to Yellen before the senate and the phrase “$50 trillion” was used.
@Brian E
I wish I were surprised. Will is human trash.
I may disagree with DeSantis on this, but that doesn’t mean I oppose him.
I mean, I confess I am still one of those Neocons, and Neo’s name was originally based on that. But I am not going to sell my soul to the Left over it.
Agreed, though we knew it.
We need more people like him everywhere.
Indeed.
Issue I see is: what happens theN?
I wish I were surprised. But no.
The USD has had a good run, but these people are hell bent on wiping us out.
but not the few neocons left after the disastrous Iraq adventure.
==
You’d rather have Uday or Qusay?
==
Will’s remarks are another indication that at some point in the last 50 years, his work as a producer of topical commentary decayed into a performative exercise. He should have retired 20 years ago.
==
Will is human trash.
==
Take a pill. Will’s activities over the last seven years have told you something that you did not know. What it told you was that his primary motor was the joys of looking down his nose at someone.
George Will:
Otay, old news with a bow tie. Past his pull date years ago.
Regarding your prognostications on Ukraine and assumptions that Russia can and will learn, will do all those things needed to overcome Ukraine; care to cite any evidence post 1945 that they have done those awesome things Brian?
You know, facts, not wishes?
But what about Saint Yanulovitch?
We appear richer because that’s what debt does, until we can’t make the payments and we’re suddenly poor.
==
No, we appear richer because more goods and services are produced here.
“Decades of Western Leadership including our Foreign Policy Elites have humiliated ourselves trying to get Putin to change his stripes.”
How, exactly did they do that? By expanding NATO membership to Russia’s borders? Via the disastrous Western “guidance” after the fall of the Soviet Union? By not treating Russia with anything like the same groveling deference we’ve given China? By blatantly meddling in Ukranian politics to get a pro-Russian President thrown out of office?
It is possible to acknowledge that Putin is a bad guy who wants to do a bad thing (re-establish a Russian ethno-empire that resembles territorially the old USSR) without pretending the U.S. and western Europe have just been singing hymns in Sunday School.
Mike
Art Deco, did we get our money’s worth in Iraq?
One of the problems with looking back is the unknown unkowns, to coin a phrase. The Sunni-Shia divide was certainly disrupted, emboldening Iran throughout the middle east.
Would Hussein’s psychotic sons made things worse at some point?
Would Hussein provided more resources for AQ?
Whatever effect Hussein would have had in the ME, destabilizing effects of Iran’s increased dominance is known.
Whatever effect Hussein would have had in the ME, destabilizing effects of Iran’s increased dominance is known.
==
Iran isn’t enjoying ‘increased dominance’, except in your imagination.
MBunge:
Absurd strawman argument on your part. No one here – and very few people elsewhere, for that matter – is “pretending the U.S. and western Europe have just been singing hymns in Sunday School.”
If you want people to respect what you’re saying, perhaps you should ditch the strawman arguments along with the insults.
Brian E plays the counterfactual game and asks other to prove his negatives.
what do we make here again, you can count things on one hand, go through a home depot store try to find some product made here,
My take on George Will.
Bunge:
Look up Kalinigrad on that thing called Google or with an atlas or map.
That is Russian (since 1945 or so).
Does Russia get to decide what Poland and Lithuania get to do regarding NATO, even though the nominally independent country of Belarus is on the eastern borders of Poland and Lithuania separating them from the rest of your Mother Russia?
Don’t be a Bunge.
Correct spelling is Kaliningrad.
How, exactly did they do that? By expanding NATO membership to Russia’s borders?
==
I cannot imagine why the Baltic states might want protection from Russia.
It is truly incomprehensible that the Baltic countries have the highest percentage of GDP going to support Ukraine.
Ungrateful children, they must love Mother Russia, not scorn her embrace! They are naughty! Spare the rod and spoil the child! (sarc)
By blatantly meddling in Ukranian politics to get a pro-Russian President thrown out of office?
==
He left the country when the security services told him they would not shed blood to protect him. His own party wouldn’t stand up for him in the legislature. A new president was elected three months later.
==
Some variation on Yanukovich’s departure has occurred in Latin America on nine separate occasions since 1990. No clue why alt-right combox denizens have been such a terrier about this one passing political conflict abroad. Kind of funny the way alt-right pests insist that no political events abroad should interest the United States government on the one hand, then develop peculiar attachments to certain foreign actors. The Arab brigands on the West Bank and Gaza, Slobodan Milosevic, Yanukovich all have their advocates.
“Iran isn’t enjoying ‘increased dominance’, except in your imagination.” -Art Deco
Phillip Smyth of “The Shia Militia Mapping Project” might disagree with you:
“The Islamic Republic of Iran remains the principal creator and backer of Shia militias throughout the Middle East. As the 2018 U.S. National Defense Strategy noted, “Iran is competing with its neighbors, asserting an arc of influence and instability while vying for regional hegemony, using state-sponsored terrorist activities, a growing network of proxies, and its missile program to achieve its objectives.” The 2019 U.S. Worldwide Threat Assessment added that Iran “probably wants to maintain a network of Shia foreign fighters” in Syria. Its existing proxies there, in Iraq, and in Lebanon have contributed to myriad terrorist activities while maintaining stances that are violently opposed to the United States and its regional allies. A view into how Iran uses these multinational networks can help clarify the state’s ideological and political goals in the region.”
He does acknowledge: “At the same time, not every Shia armed group is a proxy of Tehran”
I suppose it’s possible Iran would have this influence regardless, but it’s also possible Iran’s threats brought the Abraham Accords countries together.
https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/shia-militia-mapping-project
Brian E:
Analysis of Russian tactics so far:
Russian Tactics: Stupid but Effective? – Military History Not Visualized
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gN05h-sRgA
00:00 Intro
01:13 Command Level Issues
04:45 From Column to Skirmishing Line
05:59 Lack of Cohesion
10:44 “Pre-Combined Arms”
15:52 Platoon etc. sizes
17:11 Effective Tactics
18:09 Wagner Tactics on Assault
22:27 What is an RPO?
23:23 No Breakthrough
24:49 No more Convicts in the Future?
And your Russian army is going to overcome these issues? Otay.
@MBunge
THIS is what you are going to try and contest? That there hasn’t been an ugly nearly quarter century long bipartisan history of US POTUSes trying to get Vladimir Putin’s Russia to be their ally EXACTLY like the Free Republic poster has proposed doing?
This is a bad joke, even by your standards. Which I suppose isn’t a surprise because the way you conduct yourself makes you a bad joke.
But to summarize history like you clearly have not learned, every US President I have lived under has been on the record cloying with Vladimir Putin and trying (often in very humiliating fashion) to try and get an alliance with Putin.
I will just cite some of the most infamous cases here.
Bill Clinton: https://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/04/world/clinton-and-putin-meet-at-kremlin-with-wide-agenda.html
Dubya Bush: https://www.ctpost.com/opinion/article/Letter-When-I-looked-Putin-in-the-eye-17020054.php (This is where the justifiably infamous “Looked into soul” farrago is from).
Obama: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/us-russia-relations-reset-fact-sheet
(This is also where the despicable “Reset” and “Reset Button” came from, and came notably just after Putin’s invasion and further balkanization of our ally Georgia).
Trump: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-putin-meeting-russia-us-g20-undisclosed-white-house-confirms-a7848061.html
(Trump was never Putin’s puppet, but he did feel obliged to try and get him on side like pretty much every POTUS had before him – ironically following furrows from Foggy Bottom’s establishment – and he was smeared and villified for it.)
Biden: https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/16/europe/vladimir-putin-met-joe-biden-and-got-what-he-wanted-intl-cmd/index.html
Among other things.
These are a smattering of examples from literally dozens if not hundreds across those Presidencies, and OH BOY I could provide more. However, I think they handily establish what I was saying. That attempts to befriend and ally Putin were absolutely no casual or partisan proclivity but deeply entrenched, utterly failed bipartisan policy from our Foreign Policy elites.
And frankly it made sense, In theory. A Pro-Western Russia would be an immense boon to the world as a whole.
And in theory, Communism should work.
In theory, Shock Therapy should have helped Russia revitalize its economy from Soviet damage and trigger a new growth of liberty (like it did in Hungary and Poland) rather than creating a Neo-Soviet kakistocracy that leaned back on the old Security Organs.
But that’s not what happened, a huge portion of the reason for it isn’t because of the failings or leanings of a given American leader but because of Putin’s personal preferences and values. As Mark Steyn and others pegged early in the 2000s, that it was vanishingly unlikely Putin would willingly align with the West. They have been thoroughly vindicated.
That’s at least as much a failure of Russian diplomacy and policy as anything the West did, and Putin bears much of the blame for it. ESPECIALLY since the invasion of Ukraine- which I might add was one of the countries that INTENTIONALLY AVOIDED seeking NATO membership when it was capable of doing so – THOROUGHLY AND COMPLETELY VINDICATES THE JUDGEMENT of those nations and governments that decided to hop on the NATO train when they had a chance rather than relying on diplomacy and good will to maintain ties with Russia.
Actually yes, considering that guidance – misguided and half-baked as it often was – was designed to HELP Russia, and amounted to very expensive investments and guidance. The fact that it did not work is a great tragedy (and was not inevitable, as again Poland and Hungary show), and was only partially our fault.
So this is really not an argument you wish to make.
Oh puhlease. There’s not much of a better way to address Bush’s “Looked into Soul” malarky or the Kitsch Reset Button of Obama than “groveling deference.” Indeed, many of the failures in our approaches to Putin and the PRC have been similar because they have been far too generous, in large part because they came from largely the same brain trusts at Foggy Bottom.
You give us too much credit. We did meddle in Ukrainian politics, but Yanukovych got thrown out of office mostly due to domestic anger and his own atrocities and follies, especially the decision to leave Kyiv just after an agreement with the opposition was signed and before a bunch of legislative hearings.
Moreover, I note the base hypocrisy. Because the Kremlin certainly has blatantly meddled in the Monroe Zone to prop up pro-Kremlin, anti-American dictators like Chavez/Maduro, Morales, and our “Old Friend” Ortega, as well as more moderate elected kleptocrats like Lula and AMLO. And yet the US has not launched any of its famous coups or “Send in the Marines” antics that you correctly pointed out is our history.
Likewise, Putin played a major role in helping to fan the flames behind the assorted Kyrgyz Revolutions designed to destabilize the country and remove pro-American governments with the ultimate goal of closing Manas Transit Base, the closest parallel to a “Euromaidan with the sides flipped” in post-Cold War Ex Soviet history.
AND YET the US responded not by going in with guns blazing and trying to either create secessionist states or to overthrow the government, but by sending feelers out to the new governments and working to restore business as usual. Which is one reason why for all of the State Department’s many, many, many, many, manymany flaws and sins it has a better track record than the Kremlin in foreign affairs.
But apparently we’re supposed to believe Rules for Thee but not for the Bald Chekist Dwarf in the Kremlin?
I don’t know what’s more humiliating. The fact that you are supposedly much older than I am, but know so little of the history. Including history you claim to have lived through. You preach to us about how we need to read more history but you clearly need to.
I’ve never claimed the West has been just singing hymns in Sunday School, indeed I’ve talked a great deal of the West’s misdeeds.
Though I find it fucking hilarious that you are conflating allowing Post-Soviet and Post-Pact states to join a voluntary defensive alliance of their own will with a bad thing, as well as trying to give what turned out to be mediocre financial advice and rebuilding help after the Soviet morass collapsed.
Also, it IS more than possible to accept such a stance. And I have given due respect to those who seem to convincingly hold it. But it isn’t very convincing coming from you given all your dishonesty, illogical behavior, and Kremlin apologia. It comes across as typically insincere lip service from you for reasons I have stated before.
Now, if you’re not going to stop lying to yourself, at least stop lying to us, about us. And stop strawmanning. It doesn’t work well for you.
“He left the country when the security services told him they would not shed blood to protect him….Some variation on Yanukovich’s departure has occurred in Latin America on nine separate occasions since 1990.”– Art Deco
I think you’re making a mistake to minimize the effects of the illegal overthrow of a duly elected president of Ukraine.
It was this illegal, violent overthrow that resulted in the seceding of the Donbas and Crimea.
Ray McGovern, CIA analyst sees State Department/CIA hands on this, so at minimum our government was encouraging the overthrow of Yanukovych.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIUQW44d3yU&t=27s
@Brian E
And I think you are overstating it, especially given the immense implicit power of parliaments in a parliamentary system and the duly elected nature of the Ukrainian Rada.
Illegal debatably, as we have debated it ourselves
Violent not really. It occurred against the backdrop of mixed peaceful and violent protests and the aforementioned agreement between Yanukovych and the Parliamentary opposition, but the overthrow came after Yanukovych fled Kyiv (again, to the bafflement of essentially every other actor from the hardliners on the street to his own supporters in the Rada) and led to a quick collapse of his support and removal from office.
No, it did not.
What resulted in the “seceding of the Donbas and Crimea” was their occupation by false flagged military units of the Russian Federation and a few friendly separatist paramilitaries. The timeline simply does not work otherwise.
And this is most evident with the Donbas Oblasts, because where Russian or Separatist troops did not forcibly seize power, the areas remained in loyalist hands. And even in the areas where there was occupation you generally saw dissidents and even pre-occupation government officials that did not go with the program be tortured, murdered, or disappeared.
This is another thing that I feel many people ignore. The general failure to occupy most of the Donbas by the “Separatists” or to consolidate said occupation in the face of stiffening loyalist resistance. And indeed how long it took to ultimately crush the loyalist resistance in the supposed capitals of the DNR and LNR.
In any case, whatever genuine separatist sentiment there was on the ground (and in Crimea I admit this was probably significant) it had moderate amounts to do with Yanukovych’s overthrow and far more to do with an armed invasion and occupation.
I have not examined McGovern’s claims and after analyzing so much I am kind of tired of sentence by sentence breakdowns (especially given all I broke down regarding Mearsheimer), so I will probably hold off on hearing him and what he has to say later. But the US Gov’t under Obama and before was certainly not fond of Yanu, and I will freely admit that. But it also has at best indirect ability to sway the Rada’s membership, especially those that came to power against their wishes during the last elections at the time.
We fail to really understand our adversaries and hence misgauge their determination this has been true for about 60 years often we stumble into conflicts on a limited basis but the adversary doesnt have the same time horizon.
I think you’re making a mistake to minimize the effects of the illegal overthrow of a duly elected president of Ukraine.
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I’m not making a mistake. Mr. Turtler has dealt with the fallacies you’ve traded in yet again, about which you’ve been corrected before.
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Yanukovich was an agent of a strand of public opinion in the Ukraine that lost most of its purchase on the Ukrainian public in 2014 and, one may wager, has lost the rest in the last year. That’s not the CIA mindtricking everyone. The consequence of the Russian government’s deft maneuvers has been a new lease on life for NATO, two long neutral countries pushing to join NATO, and the erasure of public support for the Russophile strand of thought in the Ukrainian electorate. Jolly well done.
On winning–or losing–a war.
There have been many references to Viet Nam, Iraq, and Afghanistan in this thread as well as everywhere else except for Mr. Rogers, I think. Never watched him.
Rarely, very rarely, has a war been won as thoroughly as WW II. Yet any effort, however limited in scope is “lost” if we don’t WW II it.
As regards Astan. We could maintain a presence there indefinitely if we wished to pay the price. You don’t win a war against an enemy who’s allowed a sanctuary. And then the question is price versus benefit.
We did not get run out of the place because the locals wouldn’t pose for a Norman Rockwell calendar. There were reasons, beginning, I suppose, with the realization that we might be leaving and some of the locals needed to be prepared. Or the pullout of the contractors who maintained complicated weapons systems–stupid move.
The Kabul dog’s breakfast was not inevitable in a withdrawal but it was inevitable given the administration we now have. It wasn’t necessary.
Iraq is a more or less representative government, with a deal of corruption. Who are we to judge? And they’re not fighting us and instead dealing more or less competently–depending on the week–with enemies. They’d have been in better shape had not Obama abandoned them and required a redo. Not a “loss”.
It’s odd. The only country in which corruption is an issue for the intelligentsia and the mouth-breathers alike is Ukraine. As if we don’t have continents full of such governments.
We allowed Hanoi a sanctuary and they were able to fight us using Russian help and the interest on their principle–their men and material replaced each year possibly forever. This was a choice with the inevitable end.
As to “price”. It was said the First Gulf War was safer than garrison duty for our guys. Figure number in theater and number killed. Then figure the same at home or at some other more peaceful location in, say, Europe or Okinawa. There are training accidents. Guys get killed driving. Other accidents. Occasional suicide or OD.
I won’t vouch for the concept except to say that peace isn’t the same as nobody gets hurt ever at all.
It was reported that we’d had no US casualties in the year preceding the withdrawal. And nobody hurt on the home front?
This is not to say it’s easy. Not getting killed in situations like that takes a lot of effort and is extremely inconvenient, not to mention keeping loved ones awake at night and dreading the Knock on the door.
But to insist we WW II it–or, not having done so we should quit–is irrational.
In the Ukraine situation, the question is what settlement will cause Putin to rethink his priorities–presuming somebody else doesn’t do it for him–and take up some other hobby, or encourage him to make another try at somebody else. Not to WW II the whole thing and insist that, since we can’t, we may as well quit.
Putin’s motivations are impenetrable. What he says may be what he thinks. Or perhaps he’s cagey enough to know he can’t sell what he really thinks and has to say something else. He’s KGB. Deceipt, manipulation, dishonesty. Maybe he believes in the glories of the USSR at its height. Or Imperial Russia at its height. Or maybe he thinks a lot of Russians have a soft spot for one or the other and he can use that to get them aboard his train, and he might be right, or he might be wrong.
Maybe the soft spot wore out. Now what?
It’s hard to say what Russians think of Russia. What Americans think of America is hard enough for Americans to judge.
But tragedy sometimes ennobles and the Great Patriotic War might have made a difference in the views of people otherwise trying to get by in an inefficient and restrictive society with a horrifying history. Still…..this many dead for, what was that again?
This is a matter for the battlefield. And it’s up to Putin how far that’s going to go.
And yet the US has not launched any of its famous coups or “Send in the Marines” antics that you correctly pointed out is our history.
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It’s in our history, but it’s not that important. American troops in Panama (1989) and Grenada (1983) remained for a matter of weeks. Those in the Dominican Republic (1965) were in the capital only, where they remained for about five months, separating a pair of warring combatants. We had an expeditionary force in Nicaragua (1927-33, 1912) that wasn’t very large. We occupied the Dominican Republic for eight years (1916-24), Haiti for 19 years (1915-34), and Cuba for seven years (1906-09, 1898-1902). Haiti is a country that benefits from foreign supervision; we should have stayed indefinitely.
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Please note that in absolute terms, American overseas dependencies had in sum lower populations than those held by Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Japan. Relative to the population of the metropole, ours were less populous than those of Germany and Belgium. Unlike Russia, the Hapsburgs, and the Ottomans, we did not have restive and incompatible populations on our landed periphery. Except for Hawaii and American Samoa, all of our dependencies were purchased or seized from other powers. (Alaska, Hawaii, and the Virgin Islands are the territories among them with a colonial population which exceeds a single-digit share; the others, no).
@ Turtler > ” I hope you can forgive this humble TL:DR troll his humor.”
I will confess to scrolling past the sections that replicate points you have already made (sometimes more than once), but my reaction to all your comments is emphatically RTWT.
I appreciate your grasp of history, politics, diplomacy and strategy.
And the occasional humorous asides.
And especially your willingness to give credit to good points made by the commenters you are fisking, and to acknowledge points of agreement.
As for CO-BLOGGING WITH NEO (TM) — sounds like a great idea!
Although where you find the time to WRITE these tomes is beyond me; I barely have enough spare time to read them!
I suppose it’s possible Iran would have this influence regardless, but it’s also possible Iran’s threats brought the Abraham Accords countries together.
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Non-combatant deaths in Iraq averaged about 1,180 per month from March of 2003 to August of 2017. They averaged about about 150 per month in the period since August of 2017 (in fact, about 60 a month in the last two years). I don’t think the influence of violent irregulars has been increasing in Iraq.
Art Deco:
Don’t confuse us with facts, I suppose there was an argument being made.
Art Deco, I wasn’t referring to Iraq but Iran exporting Shia extremism around the region.
In this case, the fall of Hussein did result in Iranian domination of Iraqi politics. There is pushback.
“In the October 2021 elections, al-Sadr and his allies, the Kurdish National Democratic Party, the Sunni Sovereignty Block, and others gained a majority of seats, prompting him to form the National Salvation Coalition. Al-Sadr vehemently denounced Iran’s domination of Iraq and refused to consider the pro-Tehran bloc led by the former Prime Minister Nuri al-Malaki, known as the Coordination Framework. The theocratic regime in Tehran pulled out all the stops to prevent a National Salvation government, effectively gridlocking the political process. Nine months after the election, no new government exists and the badly needed reforms to revive the flagging economy are still on the drafting board. The Iranians are adamant about returning to the previous pattern of a “national consensus” cabinet, which included the pro-Tehran Shia.
The stakes for Iran could not be higher. Since the American invasion in 2003, the regime has worked assiduously to expand its domination of Iraq.”
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-iran-turned-iraq-against-abraham-accords-203040
Now Brain E is pining for Saddam? Or just the ususal 20:20 hindsight?
Not that BHO and Valerie Jarrett had/have a soft spot for the mullahs. Nope, that wouldn’t have played any role on how things have shaken down in the Middle East. Nope. (sarc)
om, that’s a pretty cheap shot, even for you.
Brian E:
Your continued prattling on about Yanukovitch and Russia have left me less than charitable in certain areas.
And of course there is the Iranophilic policies of BHO and Valerie Jarrett that continue to this day, vis a vis Iran’s pursuit of the bomb and Russian involvement in that program. And of course Iran selling drones to Vlad.
But then you are pragmatic.
In this case, the fall of Hussein did result in Iranian domination of Iraqi politics. There is pushback.
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The term ‘domination’ does not mean what you fancy it means.
Yet another interesting take on Ukraine etc.
https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-new-great-game/
From LeClerc’s link:
“The White House, the Davos crowd, the EU bureaucracy, and their media enablers all talk incessantly about democracy but have adopted an agenda that can only be imposed in an autocratic manner. By squelching all future growth, the current drive to “net zero,” as Deutsche Bank’s Eric Heymann has noted, will have catastrophic effects on middle class living standards. The low-growth program can only succeed by imposing “a certain degree of eco-dictatorship.”
The Western elite’s policies on energy have led to a loss of energy consumption in Europe and the start of a painful deindustrialization in Germany, including threats to its natural-gas dependent, world leading chemical industry. It’s doubtful that addled suggestions for “climate reparations”—essentially a reinvention of Medieval alms for the poor—for minorities as well as less developed countries would be an easy sell among the West’s already beleaguered lower and middle class, who would have to pay for them. This alms-giving approach may appeal to the UN, whose head calls fossil fuel investing “delusional.” Yet developing countries, notes Bjorn Lomborg, get less than 5% of their energy from solar and wind. When World Bank and the IMF block coal, gas, and nuclear plants they are essentially guaranteeing that the poorest countries remain that way.
The much ballyhooed “green” apocalyptic drive to wipe out fossil fuels plays into China’s existing strengths while weakening Western economies. China dominates both the emerging solar and battery markets, and, through alliances with African countries and Asian nations like Indonesia, maintains a strong grip on the world’s supplies of rare-earth elements, critical for wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicles.
As Western financial institutions and non-profits push against most energy development, China invests in sectors that can generate wealth even in the poorest countries. It has already built a metal park and modern coal power station in autocratic Zimbabwe and hydroelectric dams in quasi democratic Lesotho, with other large infrastructure plants underway in the rest of Africa. At the same time, the Russian state affiliate Rosatom is exporting its nuclear-powered technology for plants in Turkey, Iran, and Egypt, whose El Dabaa Nuclear Power Plant will provide power to almost half of its citizens.
Why would developing countries watch the U.S., the UK, and Germany struggling to keep their own factories and homes warm conclude that the West offers a good economic plan for their own development? At the World Economic Forum (WEF) confab in Davos, Switzerland in January, the head of the International Energy Agency insisted that renewables are “the energy of peace. The long-lasting solutions of our energy security go through renewables.” Maybe so, though most developing countries have launched a rush of new coal and natural gas plants in the developing world, while countries like the United Arab Emirates are placing their bets on nuclear power, which is anathema to many Western greens, while also making profits helping Russia evade sanctions.”
This is quite true. The climate crisis agenda is a drive to destroy the middle class in America and stop its rise in developing nations. The developing
nations aren’t buying it. Only by defeating this climate agenda is there any hope for getting the democratic world on our side against aggression like Putin is committing now. It’s as plain as anything can be.
IMO, the Progressives see climate change as their opportunity to install a worldwide system of feudalism – serfs and rulers – kind of like Mao’s China or Stalin’s USSR. A “Greta Game” indeed.
Taking the moral high ground,
Russia agrees to extend the Ukraine grain deal again
Reasonable. I’m sure both Trump and DeSantis approve.
Russia and moral high ground only belong in a sentance written by Humptey Dumptey.
Since they can’t prevent it the must accept it. Chto?
@Banned Lizard
That’s not what the moral high ground menas. Especially when Putin and several of his henchmen were stupid enough to admit they are conducting systematic deportations and de facto ethnic cleansing of the Donbas by way of deporting and Russifying children.
Which is a textbook war crime and has been since the start of the last century.
Rather, this is a matter of practicality. The global economy is not in a great shape already, and a lot of “the Third World” is dependent on Ukrainian cereals. Especially a lot of African and Asian countries that are typically reliable business partners with Moscow and have been willing to at least sit on the fence about it.
Refusing to allow the grains to flow out to them would push those countries into greater and greater instability, and probably force their governments and public’s to care more about Ukraine. And for various reasons that is really, really unlikely to go well for Putin etc. al.
So Putin and co decided this was the lesser problem. Both because it allows them to posture about their “reasonableness” and willingness to negotiate, and because it will minimize the risk of the Third World turning on them just as the first war crimes indictments came down.
@Leclerc
I found this article to be much less interesting than the comment you linked, because it reads like the authors have bought in too much to the CCP’s brochures. In particular hugely underestimating the problems with their system and overestimating its desirability. In particular with things like it’s collapsing stock market and massive social turmoil.
Also, pragmatic interests always drove alignment more than ideology, even in the Cold War.
It has some good points but ultimately it cracks up over those fundamental points and breaks down.