The alternative to the cornering and humiliation of Russia would be for the United States and its allies to halt or reduce their aid to Ukraine and impose a stalemate. But that would mean delivering a victory to Russia, because it would still hold more Ukrainian territory than it did in 2014 and would have gone unpunished for pervasive war crimes, including mass murder. In three or four years, a rearmed Russia, thirsting for revenge for the losses and defeats it has suffered, would do the same thing again, and against a dispirited Ukraine. If that were to happen, it would be an utter disaster for American policy and Western security. Such an imposed stalemate would be profoundly immoral, but equally to the point, it would be profoundly stupid.
So this is indeed a dangerous moment, because Putin will inevitably find himself humiliated and cornered and may very well look for a way to lash out. But as General James Wolfe said before storming the heights of Quebec in 1759, war is an option of difficulties. The error lies in thinking that one can titrate the application of violence to achieve exquisitely precise results. To the extent that the West continues to attempt to do so, it will merely ensure more mass graves like those of Bucha and Izyum, and more soldiers lying limbless or in the burn wards of Ukrainian military hospitals. So now, as ever, Churchill’s observation that courage is the virtue that makes all others possible holds, particularly for the leaders of the embattled West. Zelensky could not put it better himself.
+1 👍
It’s a proxy war. It’s no different than Korea, the Suez, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Central America, and Africa. The West doesn’t need Ukraine to win, just grind down Russia to the point Putin throws up his hands and goes home or his inner circle decides he needs to have a 9mm brain aneurysm.
The lessons powers need to learn is if you’re going to war, go to war and mean it.
That’s one helluva quote.
At this point Mr Putin either wins or he loses – and he must lose, for the good of the Ukraine and for the good of RUSSIA (and the Central Asian states who depend on Russia to prevent them being absorbed into China – I was just reminded, on Twitter, that much of the natural resources, such as gold, is actually in those Central Asian states).
Korea sort of worked – but it was a long-term disaster not to allow General McArthur to strike (with conventional weapons – it is a lie that he wanted to use nuclear weapons) at Chinese bridges and supply roads and bases. Part of the terrible Truman Administration policy of allowing the Marxists to take China (that could have been prevented – the KMT was given deliberately terrible “advice” by Washington, such as the demand to call off the 1846 Manchurian Offensive, and then American aid was cut-off at a critical time – the treason, and it was treason, of the American “old China hands”).
The creation of the People’s Republic of China Communist Party Dictatorship (by the so called “liberals” in Washington), did not “just” lead to the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese under the tyrant Mao, it has also created a terrible threat to the entire world – the PRC being the number one manufacturing power since 2012, in the end military power depends on economic, manufacturing, wealth.
Suez, Vietnam, Afghanistan – all disasters and disasters for the same reason, VICTORY was never the objective, the objective was always a “political settlement” – and that means DEFEAT.
Mr Putin must be defeated – going for a draw will not work.
To quote from “Game of Thrones” (before the show fell apart) “Winter Is Coming”.
I was recently sent some articles showing that VICTORY is no longer the driving objective of political and military thinking even in Israel.
If true that is very bad indeed – there is no draw, there is only win-or-lose, victory or defeat.
And for Israel – defeat means extermination, another six million (plus) dead Jews.
So hardly a Happy New Year.
No, it really does, because all the other things you mention only happen if it does.
Putin is an old man. An armistice now and a new leadership in the West and Russia in a couple of years time is likely more beneficial for everyone involved. If we can avoid a nuclear war at the potential risk of the dirty laundry of the Biden family being aired then it is a cost I’m willing to pay, much more than the current destruction of lives in the Ukraine. No doubt Eliot Cohen would still have a bright future at the Atlantic writing about “DeSantis is literally 10 times worse than Trump who already was literally 10 times worse than Hitler”.
You mean the Vietnam model that the US introduced back in the ’70’s?
It does appear we’re following it again now, in Ukraine. Send in just enough to not lose, but the cost to send enough to win would be too unpopular. And too confronting to the enemy. And unneeded – we’ll just wait them out and they’ll see we’re right. Etc. . .
It worked so well back then.
A ‘stalemate’ is a determination of the game in chess, as much a final outcome as victory or defeat. It ends the encounter. An impasse is a temporary situation, where neither side can progress. There are no stalemates in wars except where both sides are destroyed. Sooner or later, one will regain the initiative.
In chess, being enemies is the essence of the game, like Luther, they can do no other. In life, being an enemy is a choice or a necessary reaction to another’s choice. We, unlike rival predators, can trade with others and co-exist to mutual benefit, each side benefitting the other by exchange and comparative advantage.
But the lessons of economics are viciously hated by many.
It matters less what the US or NATO will actually do, than what Putin thinks the US or NATO will do, in response to his escalations.
That is why having Biden at the top at this moment in history is particularly tragic. If, in 100 years, historians are writing the history of the 21st century nuclear exchange, they will begin, as Churchill did in his history of the second world war, with the failures of western leadership to show resolve when resolve could have made a difference.
For what it’s worth, I agree: Vladimir Putin must be defeated. I just wish the stakes weren’t quite so terrifyingly high.
“Putin is an old man”
So was Robert Mugabe. Then he got older. And older. And…
Ferox,
If in 100 years, historians are writing the history of C21, they will have to wade through all the fake news saying it was Trump’s fault. The truth is so utterly drowned out on all fronts that historians will f*ck it up and the necessary lessons won’t be learned.
🙁
Freddo
September 26, 2022 at 7:52 pm
+1
This war is just like all other wars – it would have been best not to start it.
US interference in a far away land and people – arming the Ukrainians and egging them on to fight the Russians was a disaster. The price: utter destruction of Ukraine and some 8 million refugees. Stalemate is the best possible result now, with the very real danger of nuclear confrontation lurking just behind.
Wars are always easier to start than to end. This war won’t end before Putin goes. When will that happen? Allah knows.
I don’t know that it’s been a disaster for the West. Expensive? Sure. But we did end up with Finland and Sweden in NATO and a whole lot of Russian equipment destroyed and some nice unrest in Russia from the hoi polloi that don’t want press-ganged to be cannon fodder for Putin’s ego.
a disaster for the West?
Maybe not yet. But at least a considerable risk of nuclear confrontation.
A disaster for Ukraine. For Russia too. And West Europe hard hit by energy scarcity. Nothing to celebrate.
I think every sane person would prefer that the war hadn’t started, and to hell with the Donbas and Crimea.
“But we did end up with Finland and Sweden in NATO”
Is this a plus or minus? A greater obligation for defending far countries. A greater risk for confrontation.
Or does the UK rely on the Finns for it’s defense?
I mean – we lived perfectly well with a neutral Sweden and Finland. It was good enough.
I’m sure German pensioners will be so pleased, assuming any of them survive the winter.
Jacob (September 27, 2022 at 11:48 am), I think you are in error about a number of things.
WWII needed to be started – and earlier than it was, not later. Hitler would have been happy to fight only Poland in 1939 and declare war on the UK and France in May 1940. Our declaring war on him in 1939 was a bad idea only in being so late.
The first thing Biden egged Zelensky on to do was flee the country. It was Zelensky who yelled back, “I need ammunition, not a ride!”
As for arming the Ukrainians, Trump sent them arms but Biden (both before Trump, under Obama, and afterwards) didn’t, until after the war started.
Happily, the destruction, though sad, is far from utter. Your estimate of refugees seems high to me, but since they’re not causing the problems that certain other groups of refugees did and do, what’s the problem?
As Mr Ed explained, stalemate is an outcome of a conflict, ending it, whereas impasse is a state during a conflict that will sooner or later change. At the moment, we are not seeing impasse, let alone stalemate. Things may halt for winter – but they didn’t in WWII (and winter is not yet here).
Nuclear confrontation is already here. Putin is nuke-rattling. I see no reason, still less advantage, in letting ourselves be rattled. The behaviour you reward you get more of.
I suspect Mr Putin today agrees with you. 🙂 Alas, he seems not to have thought so hard about that in February.
Probably true, but it could have its objectives defined down and down and down, or reach a state of genuine impasse as the two sides glare at each other across the border, or …
Allah hasn’t a clue. God knows, but I doubt Putin knows yet, though he may be beginning to have suspicions.
Refer your comment to Mr. Putin on that score as he started this war.
As opposed to the extinction of Ukraine & the extermination of their intelligentsia? Oh and as for Ukraine being “utterly destroyed”, here is a link to one of my fav cocktail bars in Kyiv. So no, Ukraine has not been utterly destroyed any more than London was by 1942.
And you hilariously claim to give a damn about how many Ukrainian are getting killed? At this stage stalemate is the worst & bloodiest outcome for Ukraine. Clearly, you just want a more convenient-for-you Russian victory. I’ve heard similar argument made by people in USA arguing that if US had not supported Israel all these years & it had therefore been crushed by its neighbours, Middle East would have been more peaceful & less people would have died over all. Not such a great outcome for Israel’s Jews of course, but hey, why not step back and give peace a chance, right?
I have opposed that point of view for the same reason I reject yours regarding Ukraine.
Comparing everything to WW2 and Hitler is a poor argument. Not all situations are similar. The other comparison, the one I prefer, is the one to the outbreak of WW1. Sleepwalking into disaster. All parties had perfectly good reasons for their actions (in WW1), and the end was a terrible catastrophe for all.
“As opposed to the extinction of Ukraine & the extermination of their intelligentsia?”
This is an imaginary hypothetical.
I’ve heard similar argument made by people in USA arguing that if US had not supported Israel all these years
This is counterfactual. Who actually helped Israel most with armament and munitions in the crucial days of 1948 was Stalin. (By mistake). So, let’s not get into facile and un-similar analogies.
Besides – it was not the US that egged on the Israelis to declare independence. On the contrary, the US establishment and state department tried to prevent it. (Good thing Truman ignored them). Israel was not tempted by promises of NATO membership.
Flubbers wrote: I’m sure German pensioners will be so pleased, assuming any of them survive the winter.
Well,. I guess the next time a sitting U.S. president says Germany needs to get off the Russian gas tit, the Germans won’t simply laugh at him.
“I suspect Mr Putin today agrees with you. 🙂 Alas, he seems not to have thought so hard about that in February.”
Putin’s mistakes are poor justification or consolation for your own mistakes ( I mean Biden’s).
I mean – if Putin is a fool it doesn’t prove his adversaries are wise.
Please feel assured, Jacob, that there is no danger of my ever suggesting to you that Biden is wise – or even the rightful, lawfully-elected president of the United States.
Bullshit. As I’ve pointed out to you before, along with links to official Russian state owned media sources in Russian, with links to helpful translations in case your Russian isn’t up to translating it yourself, the intention to eliminate an independent Ukraine was a stated intention by pretty much everyone official following the Russkiy Mir ideology. The number being bandied about for Ukrainians that would need to be ‘liquidated’ was 2 million. It is no more imaginary or hypothetical as a statement of intent than stated NSDAP aims regarding the ‘Jewish Problem’ in the early 1940s. That is whose side you are on, and that is who you are urging Ukraine to surrender to.
Not at all, do you really think Israel would have survived the later wars with zero US support?
Ukrainian nationalism has been a thing in its modern form since Catherine the Great annexed Ukraine in the 1783, so the notion Ukraine declared its independence once again because it was egged on by USA just indicates your grasp of the region’s history is woeful.
Perhaps less of them should have voted for Angela Merkel then, and fewer Germans should have laughed at Trump’s warning.
Let’s be brutally honest, here: No great empire just folds its tents and goes away. The Soviet Union’s collapse didn’t involve much in the way of conflict, but the fact is, they simply papered over the cracks and here we are, having the “wars of imperial collapse” some thirty years later.
Nobody wanted to be in the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union except Russians, ‘cos they got the most out of it. The Ukrainians got screwed; Stalin sold their food and starved them to death to pay for industrialization, which was the whole point of the Holodomor: Trade kulak lives for Western industrial plant. That Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol? That plant was bought from the US, built by US experts, and paid for with monetized Ukrainian lives. Which, I’m sad to say, we bought–All that wheat the Soviets traded for the industrial plants? Guess what? That wheat was on the market precisely because they’d stolen it from the farmers who raised it.
And, we bought it. Karmic debt is due, I’d say, so the fact that the US is sending the Ukrainians weapons to defend themselves some 80 years too late? All I can say is, about damn time.
Think about all the things that were enabled by the West selling technology and industrial plant to the Soviets: Without it, Stalin would have had no weapons with which to invade Finland or Poland; all the resources he gave Hitler that enabled the destruction of France and conquest of Western Europe? He’d have had nothing to offer, and the Germans would have remained safely bottled up in misery within their own borders for a lot longer.
So, yeah… It takes time to shake out, but the Karma Police finally get their men. Sadly, usually not the right men, but subsidiaries of the men themselves–Americans paying taxes today to pay for weapons going to Ukraine are merely paying back what we owe morally for taking part in that cursed transaction made on the blood and bones of dead kulak children.
Likewise, Russia would not be the horror that it is had Western Europeans not actively aided and abetted their military growth with technology and aid. Mid-19th Century Russia armed itself with Western technology and industrial plant, run by serfs owned by the Imperial state. Today, Rheinmetall sells entire training areas to the Russian Federation through cutouts, and every single modern Russian armored vehicle is filled with French and German electronics and optics. Russia would be entirely unable to wreak the horrors it has without our aid; freezing in the dark is only Europe’s just deserts.
Russia has been a horror show for its neighbors going back centuries. It’s not for nothing that the Russian Empire was referred to as the “Penitentiary of Nations”, and it’s about time we helped the inmates escape. It’s also enlightened self-interest, because a powerful Russia is a dangerous one to everyone around it.
I’d say we paid that debt between giving the Soviets the materials to survive WW2 (while they provided the lives), and the 150,000 dead Americans in Berlin, Korea, Vietnam, and all those other Cold War loses trying to stop the Soviets.
bobby b – you made a small mistake, it was not the 1970s, it was the 1960s, it was Robert McNamara (who made a mess at the Ford Motor Company – and then went on to the Pentagon where he also made a mess) and the rest of Kennedy’s “wizz kids”
Victory was an “outdated concept” – according to these fools. The received the recommendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff about what needed to be done to WIN in Indochina – and they laughed and flung them in the fire (the fire that consumed America in defeat and chaos), just as the flung all military plans to deal with the Castro regime into the fire, President Kennedy personally changed the plan – he choose the site (the “Bay of Pigs”) and denied air support. But the media, utterly corrupt even then, covered for him. Just as the media covered up the rigging of the 1960 election – as they have covered up the rigging of the 2020 election.
Perry is correct – there is no substitute for victory.
Victory over Putin – AND victory over the accursed Progressives in the West.
The enemy of my enemy is not my friend – I hate both of them.
Steven R – a lot of the materials sent to the Soviet Union came from Britan and the British Empire.
The cost was paid by the men (the vast numbers of lives) lost to the Japanese in Malayia, Singapore and Burma, and the Dutch East Indies, and by the Americans in the Pacific.
“We provided the materials – the Soviet provided the lives”.
No – we provided the lives as well, by betraying our own men. Vast numbers of them.
No modern aircraft, no tanks, no antitank guns, for the Far East, it all had to go to Stalin.
Treachery, treachery, treachery.
And speaking of Stalin – two powers invaded Poland in 1939, not one.
Why did we only declare war on one of those powers.
What about the other power that invaded Poland, and Estonia, and Lativia, and Lithuania, and took land by threats from Romania, and invaded Finland.
Why were so many in the West in sympathy with the “Progressive” Soviet Union, regardless of its actions.
Paul,
I think possibly one of the most glaring instances of this was the UK selling/giving jet engines to the USSR before they even flew in any British aircraft. This was c.1945-1946 and It might have been the RR Nene. The Americans thought we were insane. The pigeons came home to roost of course when MiG-15s powered by the Nene-derived Klimov VK-1 came over the Yalu in the Korean war.
“Why did we only declare war on one of those powers.”
-an extremely good question! I suspect, if I’m being charitable, it was because Hitler’s Germany was seen as threat #1.
‘In June 1941, Hitler astonished the world again by invading Germany’s nominal ally Russia, turning it into an ally of Britain. Churchill, a long-time anti-communist, remarked, “If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons.”‘- from a quick Google search.
As to Israel… Well… US support is not entirely without some self-interest. I suspect the combat data from IDF F-15s and F-16s has been very useful. Also, of course, US monies for the IDF have to be spent on US kit which means essentially the money is going to Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics et. al. via Tel-Aviv. You could almost call it a Jewish pork-barrel 😉 Also it is strategically important to have a firm friend in the area. Saudi Arabia doesn’t cut it and never has, Turkey has proven under Erdogan to be dodgy.
The only thing we can know with certainty will never happen is that Eliot Cohen will never go to the Ukraine to pick up a rifle and put his own neck on the line.
Why should he? This is how US neutralizes Russia for 20 years, without getting US soldiers killed, so US can concentrate on real threat: containing China.
“Please feel assured, Jacob, that there is no danger of my ever suggesting to you that Biden is wise – or even the rightful, lawfully-elected president of the United States.”
Thanks. Assurance accepted.
While Russia is, and always was, a gigantic mess, Ukraine is not one ounce less so, despite they being – understandably – rabid anti Russians (at least some of them).
I don’t see the case for Western interference in this mess.
You have made it very clear you know very little about either place. But what mess Ukraine it is in matters very little because Western support for Ukraine is not about Ukraine, it is about the western interest in not allowing Russian expansion westwards. Ukraine is not a threat to the west, Russia manifestly is.
Yeah yeah, you like Putin for whatever reason, but fortunately enough people in the west see what you say you don’t see (not that I believe you for a moment). The west has a very strong interest in not once again having Russia border with Slovakia and Romania.
Paul Marks (September 27, 2022 at 9:06 pm), while we did indeed send aid to Russia, necessarily at the expense of our own forces, the large bulk of the aid for Russia came from America (and aid also came to us).
Likewise the Russians did the bulk of the dying. The combination of US willingness to provide aid and Stalin’s willingness to spend the lives of the people he ruled like water was very bad news for the Germans. After Stalin retook the Ukraine in late 1943 and early 1944, he conscripted loads of Ukrainians and threw them into battle.
Also causing an ammunition problem on the German side was the fact that in 1943 a great deal of German artillery, and by 1944 an absolute majority of Germany’s artillery, was in the cities of the Reich pointing skywards, firing 18000 shells for every one that hit a British or US plane. So we too caused an ammunition problem for the Germans but at far less cost in allied lives.
We did indeed provide many lives, but – through Stalin’s folly, not his intent – the Russians provided many many more. The western decision to combine western (mostly American) aid with Russian lives in order to kill many Germans (and keep many more occupied) can be strongly strategically defended.
Kirk (September 27, 2022 at 7:36 pm), in correctly noting the communists’ desire to fund western tech. purchases with grain, your account of the terror-famine arguably understates the degree to which communism’s war against the people they ruled and against economic reality were in effect motives in themselves. At the end of the twenties, as regards agriculture, the party began to be offered a lesson in the basic economic law that excess taxation destroys the sources of revenue. The party punished the peasants for the crime of exemplifying that lesson, in part by extracting yet more excessively to make up the shortfall, then punished them harder for continuing to exemplifying that lesson, and so on. (There was also this kind of thing.)
I think your phrasing too harsh or misdirected in saying ‘we’ of the purchasers of Russian grain and dairy products by, and at the instigation of, westerners now long dead. The spiritual descendants of all those liars swearing that famine was not happening, that the communists were not using slave labour, etc., etc., are the current NYT and suchlike woke of today, not us. Anyway, IMHO, supporting the Ukraine against its invaders being the right thing to do today, the guilt of past generations of western fellow-travellers, or even of wider groups who believed them and tolerated them, can be discussed to improve our knowledge but does not need to be invoked to justify our support.
Niall, I’m not talking the sort of guilt that you can adjudicate in court, but the sort of thing that causes others to note your troubles in life and nod knowingly, acknowledging the historical roots of your current grief.
Russia has been a bad actor since the time of the Tsars. The Tsar’s intelligence agencies fomented the Serbian nationalism that led to the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, with the resulting war becoming the proximate cause for the death of the Tsar and his entire family in a dank basement of a house in Ekaterinaberg.
Karma. Not the sort of fate you’d mete out in a court of law, but identifiable nonetheless.
The sort of bad-bargain transaction that led to the people that built Azovstal for the Communists doing the work? Life answered for life, when the wars began. Stalin built his empire on selling the foodstuffs that supported Ukraine, starving them to death. That empire was what enabled Hitler to conquer Western Europe, and freeing that cost the lives of those who profited. Again, not something a court would work out, but Clotho, Atropos, and Lachesis? They watch; they observe; they spin, measure, and cut accordingly.