Ukraine: Let NATO fight our war
Or how to compound one colossal mistake with another (equally colossal mistake)
Five months into Putin’s war in the Ukraine and the situation “on the ground” remains murky, with the two sides engaged in an often confused propaganda war about claimed victories and setbacks. Overall, however, firm predictions of the Russians losing, and T-shirt Zelenskyy et.al winning, have all fallen into the pit of wishful thinking.
The situation on the ground is too complicated for soundbites and the usual “credible reports,” generated by controlled Western media, aiming to boost Ukrainian “democracy” and predict the preordained defeat of Putin’s neo-Sovietism. But, as early as this past June, it was obvious Ukraine wasn’t winning and could not possibly win against the Russian juggernaut without direct Western military intervention.
So far, Biden and the rest of Western leaders have been (correctly) reluctant to declare a “free world” crusade against neo-Sovietism and bring the nuclear arsenal to warfighting status—a gesture whose only firm message would have been to suggest our political leaders are in need of emergency psychiatric care. To his credit, Ole Joe, despite his mental haze, realizes this is not a World of Warcraft online game and studiously avoids language that could make the Ukrainians, and their allies in Congress and the US defense establishment, salivate over visions of the Stars and Stripes unfurled in Ukrainian battlefields in a show that’ll make the opening of WWII look like child’s play.
NATO’s blatant attempt to establish a bridgehead on Russia’s doorstep could have not but trigger Putin’s “disproportionate” response, something that came to pass as predicted by the sane Western analytical minority, which includes, among others, Dr. Henry Kissinger, the quintessential Cold Warrior, who defeats all neocons and their allies with both hands in his pockets on the topic of the West challenging the neo-USSR—and has already suggested Ukraine should negotiate and shed territory to Russia as the means of ending a war she cannot win.
That Ukraine is now terribly stuck thanks to her 2014 “revolution” to establish a “genuine” (read US) “Western-type democracy,” complete with a helping hand from neo-Nazi elements and an immediate attack to subdue the Donbass Russophones, is an undisputed truth. But four months into Kiev’s “democratic war” against Moscow things aren’t going well — and this is where the situation could take an ugly turn toward an infinitely more dangerous tangent.
Presently, most (sane) Americans, and practically the whole of EU Europe, reject the idea of direct military intervention on Kiev’s side, which would bring us right at the threshold of nuclear war with Russia.
The Zelenkyy’s propaganda department is well aware of the trend and is now moving to the next (fatal) step of signaling, with a straight face, it is time NATO gets directly involved in the fighting against the Russians—with erudite Ukrainian academics, now working for the propaganda desk, busy at their keyboards with an unsurprising helping hand from no other but one of America’s most prestigious foreign affairs journals, the Foreign Affairs Magazine (est. 1922), the publishing platform of choice for the US Who’s Who of top policymakers involved in foreign and security affairs.
This is chilling reading.
Time for NATO to Take the Lead in Ukraine
The War’s Next Phase Will Demand More From the Alliance
By Alina Polyakova and Ilya Timtchenko
August 4, 2022
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, the West has provided billions in military and economic assistance aid to Kyiv. The United States alone has provided more than $8 billion in security support in the last six months. The money and arms are making a difference on the battlefield. The recently delivered U.S.-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), for example, have allowed Ukraine to launch counteroffensives in the southeast and repel attacks elsewhere.
Support from other NATO allies has been mixed, however. Germany, for example, has been delayed in delivering similar rocket systems, with the first arriving just in the last few days, and other promised heavy weapons likely delayed until the end of the year. France, which has one of Europe’s most capable militaries, has provided only around $160 million in military support to Ukraine, and committed 0.008 percent of its GDP in military aid. In contrast, Estonia, Latvia, and Poland committed 0.84 percent, 0.69 percent and 0.32 percent, respectively, despite having much smaller economies. Poland alone has delivered at least $1.8 billion worth of weapons.
Russia’s advance on Ukraine is now turning into a long war of attrition in which each side tries to wear the other down. Assisting Ukraine for this type of war will require a different approach: the country will require many more heavy weapons, most notably air defense systems, delivered faster and from more European allies. And NATO members in eastern Europe that have drawn down their own weapons stocks will need continuous resupplies.