“Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy – or of a collective death-wish for the world.”  President John F. Kennedy at American University, Washington D.C. June 10, 1963

*

The course of the war in Ukraine can be quickly summarized: Russia’s opening move was checked by the West. It involved the employment of a small force of less than 200,000 to intimidate the Ukrainians and nullify the military threat which Moscow perceived from Kiev and the proposed NATO expansion. Its object was to prevent the project to create a Western bulwark out of the large Ukrainian state on Russia’s border.

As Prof. Mearsheimer has said, Putin was certainly committed to the Minsk agreement because he wanted to shut down the conflict in the Donbas, so he would not have to send forces into Ukraine. On December 17, 2021, Putin sent a letter to Biden and to NATO informing them they had to do certain things, to find a solution to the problem. But Washington refused to go along, presumably preferring to draw Russia deeper into Ukraine. Putin was left in a position where he had to give up on Minsk II, believing he was being strung along by the West. He was undoubtedly right.

The Ukrainians put up sufficient resistance to the last-minute improvised Russian military operation and the West bolstered them with unprecedented support. As Fiona Hill revealed in Foreign Affairs the talks at Istanbul, which could have brought a quick end to the war and settlement on Minsk lines, were sabotaged, with Boris Johnson playing a key role. So it was back to the drawing board for the Kremlin.

Moscow turned its attention to the east and its primary interests in Ukraine. These were the Russian population of the Donbas and its strategic interest in Crimea. The military objective seems to have been to defend the Donbas and Crimea and bleed the Ukrainians white in a war of attrition, whilst constructing a defendable line. Initially this worked but in the Autumn recently taken territory had to be yielded by the inadequate Russian expeditionary force to numerically superior Ukrainian forces. However, after this 4 oblasts were annexed by Russia, constituting around 23% of the Ukraine SSR’s territory.

The 8 month battle for Bakhmut, recently won by Russian forces, has been the main event of the war so far. The importance of this has been hugely minimised in the West.

The maximalist Russian territorial ambition in Ukraine is probably the next 4 oblasts on the left bank of the Dnieper, including Kharkov and Odessa, constituting around 46% of pre-1991 Ukraine – and perhaps a strip of territory to the North of Kiev. This would result in a disabled, dysfunctional Western Ukraine rump state, cut off from the Black Sea, containing nearly all the nationalists that hadn’t left the country. There is probably no Russian desire to absorb any nationalist Ukrainians or march West. In the best scenario for Russia it spends the next generation rebuilding the part of Ukraine it will be left with after the front lines settle.

But the realisation of this ambition obviously depends on the future military situation and the Western response.

At present there is incessant talk of a Ukrainian counter offensive and great pressure on Zelensky to launch it. He stated last August that “everything began with Crimea and everything will end with Crimea” signalling this is Kiev’s war aim. In recent weeks Zelensky has left his bunker and has been touring European capitals to convince Europeans to hand over their arsenals, telling them if they don’t part with them they may have to hand over their sons in a future war.

Russia, if it ever had any intention of launching its own offensive, seems to have shelved this idea for the moment and put all its efforts into disrupting the upcoming Ukrainian counter-offensive. With this in mind the Russians have been degrading Ukraine’s air defences and destroying the war material brought in from the West, and assembled for the counter offensive, with some success.

As for the Ukrainians – in fighting this war are cohering as a nation. They are throwing off their Russian aspect and homogenising around a nationalist core. Ukraine is a more cohesive entity with a stronger sense of nationalism than prior to the Special Military Operation. It may have lent its country as a battlefield and its people as cannon-fodder to NATO but it is certainly not just an instrument of Washington. The war has given Ukraine something it never had in the past and Kiev feels the sacrifice has been worth it – if victory results. And Kiev shows every willingness to make further sacrifices if it enjoys continued support by the West.

The Ukrainian population in February 2022 was around 35 million. It is now below 25 million. That means that in February 2022 the balance between Ukrainian and Russian populations was around 1:3.5. It is now 1:5, with 8-10 millions gone, many to Russia. It’s children are liable to becoming long term residents of various foreign states. Perhaps the majority of these 8-10 million Ukrainians are not coming back.

Ukraine is currently engaged in total war and is drafting reluctant citizens of advanced age into its army. It seems to be saving its best forces for the counter-offensive because it appears draftees are sent to the front with less than a month’s training, to places like Bakhmut. On the other hand, Russia has not even declared war or mobilised to any great extent and is employing a private company to do much of its fighting.

As Prof. Mearsheimer notes the Ukrainians issue flamboyant statements about killing 7 Russians for every man they lose themselves. However, there is a total ban on information about Ukrainian losses. What we do know, however, is that artillery, the God of War, is the cause of over 90 per cent of all casualties in Ukraine and Russia has an advantage of perhaps 7:1 in this area, since the deindustrialised West no longer possesses the productive capacity to supply Kiev. Those in the know are pretty certain that Ukraine is losing between 2:1 and 3:1 the number of men Russia is, at the most conservative estimate, in the war of attrition. Considering the widening population disparity that is very bad news for Kiev that the Western media does its utmost to conceal.   

The fact of the matter is that Ukraine’s state structures and economy are wrecked and Kiev has traded its former independence for political, military and economic dependency on the US. It is quite clearly losing the war, no matter what valour is displayed on the battlefield. Hence the demand for the counter-offensive.

*

Now let’s look at the most important, and neglected part of the War – what is happening in the United States.

The Western narrative has swung from depicting Russia as a Superpower to being a pushover. Neither of these characterisations is true. All the evidence is that Russia wants a quick end to the war by neutralising the perceived Western threat from Ukraine. However, the West is determined to prevent Russia from exiting the war except through something which can be presented as defeat. The West’s broad aims are: to remove the successful Kremlin administration that resurrected Russia; defeat Russia militarily within Ukraine; wreck its economy and knock it out from the ranks of the Great Powers, in order to deal with China, which has been identified as its main adversary.

So far the West has been unsuccessful in all of these ambitions. It particularly underestimated Russian resilience against Western sanctions, which have been an utter failure and disastrous for Western Europe. In fact, the Western sanctions have been worse than unsuccessful. Instead of achieving their broad objectives they have unleashed a seismic geopolitical shift in the world, enhancing both Eurasian development and multi-polarity, which struggled to be born up until 2022, when the West forced Russia into a corner.

One is reminded how Britain focused its intentions on destroying Germany at all costs in 1914 but saw its own power melt away in consequence of what it unleashed.

It is inconceivable that the finest minds in the US do not understand this – that the War in Ukraine is much more than the war for Ukraine. It must be understood that far higher stakes are being played for by the West, whether by accident or design.

And, this has made the idea of a Russian victory as intolerable in Washington as a German victory was in Britain in 1914.

Is this another case of World Domination or Downfall?

General Ben Hodges, former US Commanding General in Europe, suggests that Ukraine can defeat Russia by the late Summer if the West is prepared to give the Ukrainians what they need to do the job. Hodges believes that one key to defeating Russia is the provision of long range precision missiles targeting the Russian presence in Crimea – removing the Black Sea Fleet and Air Force to make Crimea untenable for the Russians. He welcomes the UK’s supply of Storm Shadow missiles which he says can destroy the Russian Fleet. Hodges is clear that the UK is leading the fight for Ukraine, and not the US administration. He has a point – Prime Minister Sunak has metamorphosed into a Johnsonite warmonger as the Tory Party disintegrates around him.

Hodges and his associates in the US-Ukraine Foundation believe the US administration is not convinced of Kiev’s ability to win the war and is uncomfortable with the potential outcome of a Ukrainian victory. Hodges agrees with the argument that, for peace in the world, Russia must be fully defeated and broken into pieces, arguing that Russia has never been a nation state and was always an Empire – and the US does not tolerate empires! So Russia has to be absolutely defeated, just like Germany and Japan in 1945. (Zbigniew Brzezinski of the Chessboard, the former US national security advisor whose son Ian is now part of the US-Ukraine Foundation, used to observe that Russia cannot be a democracy if it continues to be an empire).

According to Hodges, Russia will only settle when it faces total defeat and the loss of Crimea. The objective of the Ukrainian counter offensive, therefore, must be to break the land bridge between Crimea and Russia and the West must give Kiev the tools it needs to do the full job now and not defer the problem of the Russian presence in Crimea for perpetuity. He believes that Kiev has saved up its best forces, resisting the temptation to engage them at Bakhmut, to launch its upcoming counter-offensive with the newly NATO trained men and weapons provided it. He speculates that the actual counter offensive will involve a narrow 50 mile wide thrust toward Crimea that will break the Russian lines spread thinly across 900 mile front, at its weakest spots.

The Biden administration, it is suggested, has kept Ukraine in the war but has not enabled it to win the war. The administration has not been supplying the Ukrainians with what they want, when they want it. As with Himars, Leopards and F16s, the administration has been forced to provide only when the Ukrainians appear to be running out of steam, after previous refusals. They are just keeping the war ticking over rather than trying to win it.

This caution is misplaced according to US-Ukraine Foundation. They point out that it was the smart and economical plan to fight Russia in Ukraine. Nowhere else was better for the US interest. No one else was capable of what Ukraine is doing, with its large territory, big population and war fighting experience. It is not an opportunity that should be lost with all the work that went into it, to force Russia’s hand.

In explaining the timidity of the Biden administration Gen. Hodges believes China, while staying out of the conflict at present, has warned the US that it will not tolerate a Russian state collapse. The US-Ukraine Foundation suggest that the Biden administration has also been spooked by Russia’s nuclear sabre-rattling and Washington does not fully understand the stakes it is playing for. If the counter-offensive is stopped and the war goes badly, the Biden Presidency is finished and Trump and the isolationists are in. If that happens the US and NATO will suffer a catastrophic moral defeat. China will be emboldened over Taiwan. So Ukraine has to be supported now to the maximum.

They demand that the US wages a full moral war that makes appeasement or a negotiated settlement impossible. The Saddam Hussein scenario should be the model for the US in dealing with Putin and Russia suggest the US-Ukraine Foundation (In one UUF video conference Luke Coffey of the associated Hudson Institute makes the astonishing claim that the last invasion of another state was conducted by Saddam Hussein!).

A particular criticism of the US administration is that there are no clearly stated Western Democratic War Aims. They have been deliberately hidden by the US administration for flexibility in settling. The demand of the maximalists is for the US to use the upcoming NATO Vilnius Summit to send a clear signal to Russia. Vilnius should include a strong statement of principle, from which there can be no retreat, committing the United States to a full Ukrainian victory – as defined by Kiev.

It is also suggested that recently leaked Pentagon documents show Washington is preparing the public for the failure of Kiev’s counter-offensive. The leak has led to pessimism and unwelcome suggestions of a negotiated settlement. Support for Kiev is waning in the United States as a result – hence demands for Kiev to do something with the weapons it has been provided and the 30,000 troops trained by NATO countries at great expense.

The Biden administration, it is suspected, would call a halt to the war on the pre-February 2022 lines, feeling this would be sufficient chastisement for the Kremlin, nullifying the possibility of any future Russian adventures in Europe. It will take a generation for Russia to rebuild and it will think twice about taking on the West again, according to this position. With Russia out of the game and Ukraine parked and secure, then the US could move on to confronting China. A frozen conflict in Ukraine would be a good result for the US on the lines of Eisenhower and the Korean War.

This is the line that the historian Stephen Kotkin, who is close to the Biden administration, has been laying out in interviews i.e. that Ukraine could do with a fast track into the EU and shedding its hostile Russian populace, who would be future insurrectionists and a big obstruction to progress in the event of full reconquest of Ukrainia irredenta. Kotkin has suggested that Kiev needs to win the peace rather than achieving a total victory in the war. He has pointed to rebuilt South Korea, with its Western security guarantees, and its successful economic progress, as the model for Ukraine. And he believes that China will organise the armistice as it delivers Putin and the US delivers Zelensky to copper fasten a deal.

It is being acknowledged among the Washington elite that the US is, at present, “losing big time” outside the West. The understanding that NATO expansion is primarily responsible for the conflict in Ukraine and is the cause of the Russian intervention is dominant everywhere in the Global South. Prof. Fiona Hill, formerly of many ideological posts in US administrations, has recently written:

“In the current geopolitical arena, the war is now effectively the reverse (of what was intended) – a proxy for a rebellion by Russia and the “Rest” against the United States. The war in Ukraine is perhaps the event that makes the passing of pax Americana apparent to everyone. 

In its pursuit of the war, Russia has cleverly exploited deep-seated international resistance, and in some cases open challenges, to continued American leadership of global institutions. It is not just Russia that seeks to push the United States to the side-lines in Europe, and China that wants to minimize and contain U.S. military and economic presence in Asia so both can secure their respective spheres of influence. Other countries that have traditionally been considered “middle powers” or “swing states”—the so-called “Rest” of the world—seek to cut the U.S. down to a different size in their neighbourhoods and exert more influence in global affairs. They want to decide, not be told what’s in their interest. In short, in 2023, we hear a resounding no to U.S. domination and see a marked appetite for a world without a hegemon.”

A moral war involving intense atrocity propaganda conducted around child kidnapping is suggested by some to counter and overcome the resistance of humanity outside the reach of the US hegemon. But will this work when the West has indulged itself in extravagant child killing in various parts of the world since 1991?

*

Those are the 2 positions in America as I see them. Now I shall make some comments on why both are, frankly, delusional and highly dangerous to humanity.

The argument that Russia, in the event of its lines crumbling, might be forced into a position of using its nuclear arsenal in Ukraine is dismissed as a bluff by General Hodges and the maximalists. Faith is placed on Russians “seeing sense” and removing Putin rather than seeing the destruction of their army, navy and airforce as an existential crisis and responding with no holds barred war. Hodges and the US-Ukraine Foundation see Russia, already as waging full-scale war against Ukraine, despite the evidence. But this argument is really as false as the view – held by some on the other side – that Washington and NATO are presently waging full scale war on Russia.

It shows why former Generals and Think Tanks will only ever lead the world to destruction.

On the other hand, the US Foreign Policy establishment is, so powerful in Washington that all a US President can really do is restrain it from leading the world toward catastrophe. And President Biden is more than likely not that President, being a War Hawk on Ukraine himself and having played a key role in bringing on the Russian intervention in 2022.

Most concerningly of all, US leaders appear to have lost all appreciation of the limitations of power. The basic relationship between nuclear and conventional forces is that nuclear forces are for use when conventional forces fail. That is how NATO understood the relationship between nukes and conventional force during the Cold War in Europe, and why more limited battlefield nukes were invented. But now the US denies this relationship in relation to Russia. It did the same with the idea that Russia did not have a Munroe Doctrine when announcing the intention to drive NATO up to the Russian border in 2008. But it found out Russia did have a Munroe Doctrine after all. Finding out that Russia has a nuclear doctrine will be much more disastrous.

Putin told them explicitly and publicly on a number of occasions that he would not tolerate what NATO was doing in relation to Georgia and Ukraine. He acted on both occasions. Why do they believe he won’t act this time when he has stated that the world is not worth it without Russia?

If the Russian lines are broken, how will Russians be restrained from treating the situation as a full existential crisis and go down with all guns ablaze? Does anyone seriously believe that such a catastrophic situation could be managed at that moment to a peaceful outcome by the Biden administration?

Washington’s is a dubious strategy indeed and too clever by half. In the counter-offensive it is very possible that the Ukrainians will get pulverized after making initial breakthroughs. And what then if this third Ukrainian army is destroyed? The building of a fourth with what is left in Ukraine?

Whatever way the situation is looked at, aside from the world of make-believe the Western media presents to its public, this all looks like a colossal blunder and much worse than Iraq and Afghanistan. The US has really got itself and the West into deep trouble and there is no obvious way out. The danger is that if the Ukrainian counter offensive misfires Washington will have to countenance 11^th hour NATO intervention or accept some form of catastrophic defeat.

The main target of the US is obviously still Putin. Putin is a minimalist conservative who has a great deal of admirers outside the West, particularly in the traditional societies of Asia and the Global South. The bulk of humanity does not forget US actions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Central America, Vietnam etc. as quickly as privileged Westerners and the bitter nationalists found in ex-Soviet states do. In fact, Putin also has more than enough admirers in the West itself as an antidote to the destruction of families by the ideology of woke progressivism spread by the Western political elite, media and multinational corporations.

Prof. Stephen Kotkin often argues that Russia’s great weakness is that it offers little to the World in comparison to Western Democracy. Without Putin it offers even less and Washington knows it. The removal of Putin would probably lead to either a return to the Yeltsin years in Russia, when even the Donbas and Crimea preferred to stay with Ukraine than join Russia. Or alternatively, Putin would be replaced by a Russian chauvinist/nationalist who would have little appeal outside of Russia and who would be much more dangerous than Putin. Does anyone remember how “hang the Kaiser” worked out after 1918?

The development of a multi-polar world free of US hegemony is very dependent on the survival of Putin. There is understanding all round that the future of the world has been put at stake by the conflict in Ukraine. All Putin’s attempts to minimise the stakes have so far failed – and Ukraine by itself cannot raise them. The only means Russia has of deciding the conflict is by applying sufficient force to the situation that breaks the capacity and will of the Ukrainians to fight. Only that would give Washington the escape route much of the Western public and most of humanity wants.

There is unlikely to be a negotiated settlement in Ukraine. There is no territorial compromise possible as a basis of agreement between Ukraine and Russia. There is also no ground for agreement on neutrality. The bragging statements made by Western and Ukrainian leaders about how they lied to buy time during the Minsk process has made Russia unlikely to trust the West again. Putin surely has learnt by now what Stalin knew. There is no going back. The only direction of travel is to the East. And former Western allies are going East too.

A frozen conflict is, therefore, a far more likely outcome of the war, with great forced migrations completing the process of national development in Ukraine that was provoked by the West in 2014. If that happens, the West will, of course, continue to support Kiev to tie down Russia while Russia attempts to exploit the fractures in Europe that are growing all the time.

It was in 2008 and 2014 when the course was set by the West for the momentous events that now take place in the World.

As JFK noted: “…that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy – or of a collective death-wish for the world.”

Which one is it to be? That is the question.