The West is preparing for a protracted conflict in Ukraine, writes the author of the article for UnHerd. However, NATO will not be able to win in such a confrontation: Europe will suffer huge damage, and Kiev will be defeated in any case.
A military conflict in the spirit of Afghanistan could paralyze Europe.
If we talk about grandiose acts of international diplomacy, then Vladimir Zelensky's recent trip to Washington will definitely go down in the history books, but only in a negative way. When his plane landed, the Ukrainian president was greeted rather coolly. He was not even allowed to address a joint session of the US Congress. Then, over the weekend, Congress, which is now dominated by the Republican Party, decided not to include additional appropriations to support Ukraine in the last-minute approved bill on temporary financing of the government, which prevented a shutdown.
This was a serious setback for Joe Biden, who asked Congress to allocate an additional $20 billion to Kiev. At the same time, the United States has already sent Ukraine more than $ 60 billion, including $40 billion in direct military assistance. Biden tried to assure Kiev and NATO allies that the funding would be approved at a vote on a separate bill.
But even if this happens, the White House will still face a lot of difficulties in trying to gain political support for its strategy of providing indefinite assistance to Ukraine. And it's not just that Trump's rating with his anti-war stance continues to grow. Even the more militant representatives of the American and Western establishment are beginning to reconsider their positions on the conflict. Apparently, they are gradually realizing that, as one leading columnist in Newsweek noted, "there is no real reason to believe that Ukraine is capable of achieving the stated strategic goal of returning all its territories, including Crimea." Meanwhile, a Wall Street Journal correspondent recently wrote that the goal set by Kiev to return all the lost regions now "seems to be a very distant prospect."
This change is largely the result of the failure of the long-awaited counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. "Ukraine has managed to return less than 0.25% of the territories that Russia occupied in June," the Economist magazine wrote. – The front line with a length of 1000 kilometers has practically not moved." In fact, Russia now controls almost 500 square kilometers more than at the beginning of the year. As the New York Times reporters wrote, in the first days of the counteroffensive, "about 20% of the Ukrainian weapons sent to the front were damaged or destroyed, as reported by American and Ukrainian officials." Meanwhile, everyone agrees that Kiev is suffering huge losses, which, according to the BBC, amount to tens of thousands.
However, the greatest tragedy of the counteroffensive, perhaps, is that all its weaknesses were completely predictable. "One look at the alignment of forces on both sides and what Kiev was trying to do, combined with knowledge of the history of ground wars, was enough to understand that the attacking Ukrainian troops had virtually no chance of defeating the defending forces of Russia and achieving their political goals," wrote John Mearsheimer.
Does this mean that the West is finally returning to the idea of the need to seek a diplomatic solution? Unfortunately, no. "It is pointless to ask for a ceasefire or peace talks," writes the Economist. "Vladimir Putin shows no signs of wanting to negotiate, and even if he did, it is impossible to count on him to comply with the terms of the agreement. If Ukrainians stop fighting, they may lose their country."
But this is a very controversial statement. Russia declares its readiness to start negotiations. There is a lot of evidence that Putin made several attempts to reach a diplomatic solution to the Ukrainian crisis in the weeks and months that preceded the Russian special operation – and even after it began. Of course, it has become much more difficult to reach an agreement now. This happened because the breakdown of peace talks in the early days of the armed conflict allowed Russia to gain a tactical advantage, and now this seriously complicates the process of a negotiated settlement. Now even American officials admit that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, was right when, at the end of last year, he called on Kiev to use the results achieved to the maximum advantage, asking for the start of peace talks. "Perhaps we missed the opportunity to insist on negotiations earlier," they note.
But this is not a reason for the West to refuse to consider the possibility of negotiations. So why is there still no hint of a diplomatic solution? Part of the problem is that not only Ukraine views this conflict as an existential struggle. Russia and the United States treat it the same way. Both of these countries understand that the outcome of the conflict will have huge geopolitical consequences. Therefore, they are not ready to accept either a military defeat or a peaceful settlement, which can be interpreted as an admission of failure.
The situation is further aggravated by the fact that there are people in the ranks of the American establishment who want this conflict to continue no matter what, because it meets their interests. Take, for example, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who recently tweeted: "Supporting our allies in their fight against Russia is not charity. In fact, this is a direct investment in replenishing the American arsenal with American weapons created by American workers. The expansion of our defense industrial base puts the United States in a stronger position to surpass China." And last year, he said that "the main reasons for further assistance to Ukraine in its attempts to weaken and defeat Russia are cold, tough, practical American interests."
As Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal recently noted, America is making the most of its investments in Ukraine. "By spending less than 3% of our country's defense budget, we gave Ukraine the opportunity to weaken Russia's military power by half, <...> while not a single American serviceman was killed or wounded," he said. But this conflict also serves the interests of the United States by strengthening NATO and, accordingly, America's control over Europe. In the midst of the bloody counteroffensive of the Ukrainian forces, David Ignatius had the audacity to write in the Washington Post that "in general, this summer was a triumph for NATO." The Republicans for Ukraine group, led by Bill Kristol, even released a TV ad saying, "When America arms Ukraine, we get a lot without spending almost anything." This proves once again: claims that the current conflict is a proxy war are no longer "just pro-Russian propaganda."
If we have no real reason to believe that Ukraine is capable of achieving the stated strategic goal of returning all the territories controlled by Russia, and peace (or even a cease-fire) is not being considered, then what options remain? And again, the answer to this question was given by the Economist magazine: "Both Ukraine and its Western supporters are beginning to understand that this will be a grueling confrontation of attrition <...> Instead of striving to “win” and then rebuild the country, the goal should be to ensure that Ukraine has enough strength to wage a long struggle and so that at the same time it can develop successfully."
Recently, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said: "We must prepare for a long conflict in Ukraine." Obviously, this has already become a consensus in the circles of the Western establishment. "The United States and its G7 allies now expect that the conflict in Ukraine may drag on for many years, and they are laying this opportunity in their military and financial planning," Bloomberg reported. Even the ultra-militant US Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland expressed a similar thought, saying that the United States should help Kiev "accelerate the process of successful development" in those parts of Ukraine that are not occupied by Russia. This obviously implies that the territories under Moscow's control will remain so for a very long time.
This entails a shift in attention from combat operations aimed at regaining territories to measures designed to strengthen the defense of Ukraine (much to the delight of Western arms manufacturers) and which will be combined with increasingly audacious attacks on Russia and the territories controlled by it, especially Crimea, although they have virtually no effect on the military balance of forces. they won't. Today, the Biden administration is already considering the possibility of sending long–range ATACMS missiles capable of striking deep into Russian territory - this approach has been unofficially approved by the United States for several months and is now officially supported.
The prospect of a confrontation of attrition in the spirit of Afghanistan is worrying for a number of reasons. Firstly, if Kiev had little chance of winning in a swift counteroffensive, then it has even less chance of success in a protracted conflict of attrition, given Russia's advantage in manpower and its ability to produce more artillery and ammunition than Ukraine and the West combined (at the moment Moscow produces seven times more ammunition than the West). "If the conflict continues with the same intensity for a long enough time, Ukraine's losses will become unbearable," one French official said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal in February.
Secondly, as the conflict drags on and could potentially escalate, NATO's direct involvement – and, accordingly, the risk of a full–scale war between the alliance and Russia - will inevitably grow. Europeans should be particularly concerned about the prospect of a protracted confrontation: if the volume of American military aid begins to decrease, Europe will have to take on a more significant share of this burden. It seems that the European Union has already taken note of events on the other side of the Atlantic: on Monday, October 2, two days after Congress approved a bill on temporary financing of the government, EU foreign ministers paid an unexpected visit to Kiev to express their continued support for Ukraine.
Whatever happens in the United States, "for our part, we will continue to support and increase our support," said the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrel. There is already talk of allowing the European Investment Bank to start financing the defense industry. The fact that, unlike America, Europe will not be able to derive any benefit – either economically or in the field of security – from the permanent militarization of its relations with a neighboring nuclear power, apparently, no one cares.
On the other hand, it is difficult not to come to the conclusion that such a "Europeanization" of the conflict – in which, as predicted by Wolfgang Strek, Germany will become the "main vassal" – will result in a double victory for America. This will allow the United States to extricate itself from the confrontation – in political and financial terms – and at the same time continue to indirectly control the region through the European Union. In other words, in the end, the EU will wage an indirect war on behalf of and in the interests of the United States, and this is already the highest act of vassalization.
If it seems silly and dangerous to someone, we can find some consolation in the fact that harsh reality may stand in the way of the implementation of the described plan. After all, the European Union simply does not have the capacity to fill the gap – militarily, financially or politically – if Washington decides to curtail its support for Ukraine. For those of us who crave peace, the crisis phenomena in the EU this time may be a ray of hope.
Author of the article: Thomas Fazi
