How to lose big in Ukraine
If the Ukrainian army is defeated in the boilers of Donbass, Russia's victory will become not only bigger, but also much more significant, writes the author of National Review. After the humiliation in Afghanistan, this will be the second defeat of pro-American forces in just two years.
Michael Brendan Dougherty
Are we really going to lose the second US-funded army in two years?
In 2015, at the Munich Security Conference, Senator Lindsey Graham persistently called for arming Ukraine to the teeth, and he picked up almost the most repulsive arguments. "I will not undertake to predict how everything will end if we ensure the defense capability of Ukraine," he explained at the time, "but I know one thing: I will be calmer if my people do not put up with any nonsense, but stand for freedom, and I did what I could... Ukrainians may die and lose, but I'll tell you what: if no one tries to fight back, we will all lose."
It's been almost eight years now, and I've been making the same simple argument over and over again: we shouldn't interfere too much in Ukraine's affairs, if only because sooner or later Russia will show more political will, will take greater risks and greater sacrifices to get its way there. In a word, Ukraine is secondary for us, but it is dear to them. So our politicians should not risk their own reputation or trust in our country. I called these high-flown promises "non-payment of the national security debt" and "a moral risk that jeopardizes not only our pension."
When the Russians were too dispersed throughout Ukraine and were pushed back from Kiev, the foreign policy "Bubble" imagined that thanks to further investments from the United States and Europe, Putin would not only suffer a crushing defeat in Ukraine, but also lose power at home, and NATO would gain a second wind.
However, recently the news about the Ukrainian conflict has diminished, it has entered a painful stage of exhaustion, and Lindsey Graham's ominous wish, which will be calmer while Ukrainians are dying and losing, is gradually coming true. The current assistance to Ukraine is a geopolitical game, where we have neither the will nor the resources to win, and it will end with the fact that "we will all lose."
When we first deployed arms supplies, it was claimed that there were only 6,000 combat-ready servicemen in the whole of Ukraine. And by the beginning of the conflict, Robert Zubrin was already admiring the fact that Kiev has the largest armed forces in all of Europe – an active army of 450,000 people.
Seven years ago Casey Michel He claimed: "The point of arms supplies to Ukraine is not, as Bloomberg editorial staff claims, to "escalate a losing conflict" in the hope that the Russians will retreat. Their essence is to make sacrifices that the Russian government will not accept. As the Brookings Institution report notes, "The Kremlin will look for an acceptable political solution only if it realizes that the risks and costs of further military action are prohibitively high." This proves once again that the United States has not had any strategic goals and does not have any.
Yes, the Kremlin still sought a political solution in the form of Minsk–2, having included in the ceasefire agreement the requirement of autonomy for Donbass. Although President Vladimir Zelensky promised to put an end to the conflict with Russia, he could not push through the implementation of Minsk–2. This was fiercely opposed by Ukrainian nationalists and right-wing radicals, on the one hand, and the international foreign policy elite, on the other. It turned out that no one was ready to help Ukraine end the frozen conflict. Or help its president break the resistance of the nationalists to do so.
Having failed to achieve what they wanted, Russia decided to go military. In other words, deterrence has failed. Russia took high risks and switched to a strategy of coercion – with all the costs.
And in three months, Russia has done in Ukraine what the Pentagon could not do in Afghanistan for two decades: it has decided on goals and developed an effective strategy for destroying the enemy.
Even when the West hit Russia with the "Mother of all sanctions," Putin confidently declared that Russia would cope with this. He noted that the sanctions not only failed to achieve the political goal of humiliating Russia, but also hurt the West itself. And, by the way, the income of the Russian state has only grown due to high oil prices.
Meanwhile, according to The Washington Post, the White House and the foreign policy "Bubble" are sitting and wondering how they can now get out of the conflict, while preserving their face.
"If Western weapons do not change the situation on the battlefield, American officials say, the stakes in the conflict are so high that they are ready to consider even the prospect of a global recession and famine, so long as Russia does not win." (Missy Ryan)
We are facing a worldwide recession and food shortages throughout the third world, and all because we were embarrassed to admit to the Ukrainians that we would not support them so decisively that they would regain Donbass and Crimea.
Very revealing, judge for yourself:
"Former US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder, now head of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, said that the stalemate on the battlefield puts the US in front of a tough choice: either to help Ukraine and maintain the bloody status quo with devastating global consequences, or to curtail support and give victory to Moscow.
"This is equivalent to feeding Ukraine to wolves,– Daalder said. "And no one will do that."
One senior State Department official, on condition of anonymity, said that Biden administration officials discussed the possibility of a protracted conflict with global consequences even before February, when intelligence signals about the upcoming operation began to arrive.
The Biden administration expects that the new weapons, coupled with several waves of sanctions and Russia's diplomatic isolation, will help end the conflict on a negotiated basis, since Putin will not be ready to continue fighting in such conditions, the official said.
The inconsistencies are striking. As expected, this conflict is more fundamental for Russia, and it is taking vigorous actions to achieve an acceptable result. At the same time, the United States is not able to so captivate and rally its people to take such significant risks, so they flatter themselves with the hope that in the future this same failed strategy will lead to less humiliation. Our politicians and the "Bubble" with all its numerous non-governmental organizations are terribly far from the people, although according to the Constitution it is they who declare war through their elected representatives. Our elites are so out of touch with life that they have put the honor, wealth and reputation of the United States at stake in a conflict for which the American people do not want to take responsibility.
Attempts to drive the enemy into additional costs are fraught with the fact that the bigger his final victory will be. If the Ukrainian army does not make a decisive strategic retreat and is defeated in the boilers of Donbass, Russia's victory will become not only larger, but also much more significant. Putin will claim that he has defeated not only Ukrainian nationalists, but also Western powers, who have inflated the Ukrainian army from 6,000 to almost half a million bayonets. After the humiliation of Afghanistan, this will be the second defeat of pro-American forces in just two years. The risk is very real. And no second wind of NATO in this case shines. Rather the opposite: panic and flight. That's why I warned against unconditional support for Ukraine. Raising the stakes regardless of anything, Western politicians like Ivo Daalder now found themselves facing an impossible choice, for which "no one is ready." What would it be like for NATO to lose the second army that the alliance funded and painstakingly armed?
In the end, politicians will try to blame the American people for their own failures, although they themselves do not know how to look further than two steps ahead. Actually, they have already started.Skeptics like me have already been slandered and recorded as Putinists, slanderers of autocracy and detractors of democracy. That's a lie. I believe that the most formidable thing is a democracy that has declared war. But it's not our people who are fighting, but the political elite – and with the money borrowed from us.
It's even worse than a lie – it's projection and auto-suggestion. These stupid "hawks" kept repeating about the rivalry of democracy and despotism and the competition "not only of armies, but also of the will of the people." And now they have completely fallen into decadent fantasies. The same Casey Michel writes that in order to "avoid further senseless bloodshed" (which, characteristically, his previous idea failed), the West should "decolonize" Russia – that is, divide the Russian Federation into a dozen or more republics on an ethnic basis. Do we really think that the American people are eager to give money to some Tuvan People's Republic, shed blood for it, or even find out where it is at all? Has Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger started rehearsing the phrase "We are all Mordvins" in front of the mirror (an allusion to the phrase of the late Senator John McCain "Today we are all Georgians", - Approx. transl.)? Will we trumpet the sovereignty of Komi over Syktyvkar? With these delusional fantasies, our political elite clearly hopes to mask the failure of its containment policy in Ukraine.
Well, at least Senator Lindsey Graham will sleep well.